Ohio shotgunner Owen Daniels is the latest member of what has to be a tiny group of deer hunters who have followed blood trails BEFORE launching an arrow or firing a bullet.
The buck he shot in 2019, however, left no trail at all.
“The first week of gun season, I went almost to the back of the 260-acre farm we hunt,” Owen told Ed Waite, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “As I was sneaking across a pasture where I knew a buck was bedding, I saw a deer slip into the brush at the edge of the field.”
The next weekend, he hunted the farm with his father, spending the first couple of hours near where he’d seen the deer a few days earlier. After that, the two went to the other side of the property.
“After another uneventful hour, we started heading back to the house,” Owen said. “As we were walking out, we came upon a blood trail. Since neither of us had shot anything, we felt it must’ve been a deer that had crossed over from another farm.”
Even though Owen was under the weather and eager to go back home, the two began following the dots.
“I was feeling very sick; coming down with the flu,” he said. “I just wanted to get home and go to bed.”
When father and son reached the pasture, Owen spotted a deer running along the distant fence line. Soon after they knelt in the tall grass, they realized it was chasing a doe, which wound up skidding to a halt a mere 8 yards from them.
The buck, farther away, stopped as well.
Owen fired his shotgun twice, dropping the 14-pointer within dragging distance of their Butler County home. That chore understandably killed their curiosity about the mysterious blood trail.
Owen’s deer has a BTR score of 193 6/8 inches.
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