Tips & Tactics

Nighttime Trail Keeper

Nighttime Trail Keeper

By Glenn Russell

Photo: Marking blood trails with fisherman’s glow stick capsules can help you find your deer in the dark.

Recently, I read a Buckmasters Tip of the Week titled Illuminated Nock Trick. It described using the illuminated nocks on your arrows to keep your bearings while tracking a wounded deer.

The glowing nocks are easy to see at night and allow hunters to mark places along a blood trail so they can determine the direction the deer is headed, as well as find their way back out of the dark woods.

If you are a bowhunter like me, you only carry three or four arrows in your quiver, and when you shoot a deer and it runs off with it, you are now down one more arrow.

This doesn’t leave many arrows to mark my trail with, especially if I don’t have buddies hunting with me who are using illuminated nocks, too.

Nighttime Trail KeeperWhile I like this concept and I am sure it works well, I have another idea.

I suggest using the little glow sticks used for night fishing. Fishermen use them to attach to either the end of their rods or on their bobbers.

You can keep a pack of them in your backpack, crack to activate and lay the capsules along the trail as you try to unravel the mysteries of where your deer went.

They will also help you easily find your way back out of the woods.

Return to the trail later to recover the used glow sticks and dispose of them properly.

Night fishing glow sticks are available at Walmart or online, and you can get 100 capsules for about $10 or less.

They last for 6-8 hours, so you don’t have to worry about them going out if it turns into a long night of tracking.

If you don’t want to run down the batteries in your expensive nocks, or if you don’t use illuminated nocks at all, this tip will help you navigate a blood trail at night.

It works for firearm hunters, too!

Read Recent Tip of the Week:
Rack’s Pattern for GIANT KILLERS: There’s a pattern of success for hunters who’ve taken world-class bucks appearing in Rack Magazine.

Copyright 2024 by Buckmasters, Ltd.

Copyright 2020 by Buckmasters, Ltd