10/25/2025
Lesson of the day,
Be Patient & Trust Your Dog!!!!
Randy Epley from Lab Tracks Deer Recovery called me to see if we were able to cover a track on a possible liver hit buck for him due to he was at work and couldn't track til later that day. Radar & I loaded up and made the hour drive to meet up with the hunter & his buddy, who come down from Wisconsin each year to tent camp and hunt on public land.
I was having some issues reading Radar's tracking behavior for whatever reasons (head up A$$) and decided to called upon Randy to come back us up after work. I met back up with the hunters and they invited me back to their camp for some food while we waited for Team Zoey to arrive. After their arrival, they quickly got to work, tracking their way through the thick vegetation, and after a little while, Randy came over the radio with great news, Found Em'!
As it turns out, when I had decided to call for reinforcements, we were standing just 50yds from where the buck had expired.🤦 Every tracker says that you learn more from your non-recoveries than you do when you recover, and boy did I learn on this one!
At the end of the day, the ultimate goal is to help the hunter to the best of our ability, locate their trophy. Being a part of tracking networks allowed this to happen, and even though Radar didn't get to tug on the deer at the end, my heart was still full. I got to experience a lot of new things that day, and meet some great guys during the process! Big shout out to Team Zoey for a job we'll done finding the buck!! And Congrats to Luke Thompson for harvesting his first Missouri public land buck, and a dandy at that!
