11/28/2025
⏱️Wait times
This search is a great example of not going too far too soon, and successfully recovering your deer.
This hunter gave us a call yesterday morning saying he shot a buck around 9am, had a great blood trail, but it went further than he was comfortable with. Lots of blood does not always equal a double lung or heart shot. The first drone search was done around noon, and the buck was located. He was in rough shape (breathing heavy, flicking it's tail) and we could see a low entry wound right behind the shoulder.
Due to Kentucky laws, we could not tell the hunter where the deer was located, even though we could tell the deer was likely going to die.
-A second search was done later that day around 5pm, 8 hours after the shot. The buck was located, still alive. He had his head on the ground, tail still flicking and we could see some blood on his legs, just under his stomache. We knew the exit was going to be low and that the deer was likely gut shot.
-A third search was done around 2am this morning. The buck had finally expired. The exit hole was finally visible and was where we thought it was. Full rigor had not yet set in, so we don't believe the buck had been dead for too long. The buck was finally recovered 17 hours after the shot.
Sorry for such a long post, but we get ALOT of calls from hunters that bump a live deer and tell us they gave it 2 hours on a shot they knew was not ideal. Luckily, this hunter did the right thing and called for some advice and was able to tag his trophy in the end.
This was an awesome buck to help drag out and congrats to this hunter on a dandy buck to start off Thanksgiving day.
