Can’t Find Your Deer? What to Do Next

Every hunter who hunts long enough has a bad night: the shot looked good, the deer ran, and now the trail has gone quiet. What you do in the next few hours matters more than anything else. Here’s how to give yourself the best chance of finding your deer.

1. Right after the shot: watch, listen, mark

Before you do anything else, stay put and pay attention.

• Watch the deer as long as you can. Note the last place you saw it, which way it was heading, and how it was moving: a hard mule kick, a hunched-up walk, or a full sprint all tell you something.
• Listen. A crash or the sound of a deer going down is worth remembering.
• Mark the spot. Drop a pin on your phone where the deer was standing when you shot and where you last saw it. In the dark, everything looks different.

2. Wait before you track

The most common way to lose a deer is to push it. A wounded deer that isn’t pressured will often bed down close by. A deer that hears you coming will get up and keep going, and the blood trail usually gets thinner every time it moves.

General rules many hunters follow:

If you aren’t sure where you hit it, assume the worse hit and give it more time.

3. Read the hit site

Start where the deer was standing and look for sign before you walk the trail.

• Blood color: bright pink or red with bubbles usually points to the lungs. Dark red often means liver. Blood mixed with green or brown matter, or a bad smell, points to the gut.
• Hair: the color and length of hair at the hit site can tell you roughly where the deer was hit.
• Your arrow or bolt, if you can find it, tells you a lot: look at the blood, smell, and how far it went through.

4. Follow the trail slowly

• Mark the last blood on the ground in case you need to return. Drop a map pin too, or show the drone pilot on their remote’s map where it was.
• Go slow, and look ahead. Wounded deer often head downhill, toward water, or into the thickest cover nearby.
• Keep the group small. One or two quiet trackers are better than a crowd. Fewer people means less noise and scent to push a wounded deer.

5. When you lose the trail

• Go back to your last marked blood and circle out slowly from it.
• Check thick cover, creek bottoms, and brush piles near where the trail ended.
• If you’ve been at it a while and are finding nothing, back out quietly. Pushing a live deer further is the fastest way to lose it for good.

6. Call a thermal drone pilot early and make a plan

A thermal drone sees body heat. From the air, a pilot can search fields, thickets, and swamp edges in minutes that would take a tracking party hours, and a deer usually stands out clearly against cool ground.

What to know about timing:

• Thermal works best when the deer is warmer than its surroundings. Cool nights and early mornings are ideal. Midday sun warming the ground makes it harder.
• A downed deer holds its heat a long time. On land, it often still shows up on thermal more than 24 hours later, in warm weather and cold, so there’s no need to rush the drone into the air. A deer that ends up in water cools down much faster.
• A drone flying overhead usually doesn’t push a deer the way people on foot do, which makes it a good option for marginal hits.

Call as soon as you realize this one might be hard to find. That gets you on the pilot’s schedule, and they’ll talk through the shot with you and decide when it’s best to fly.

Know the rules and get permission

Rules for using drones to recover deer vary by state, and some states limit or don’t allow it. Check your state wildlife agency’s regulations before a search. Pilots who charge for recovery also need an FAA Part 107 certificate. And always get the landowner’s permission before you go onto someone else’s land to recover a deer.