The Orion Syndicate (#12) - 2020 & 2021 Champions

And another. You'll need to check the LFTS thread for this story. My hero beagle Elly May tracked this big doe 250 yards through a cut-over all grown up with briars early this morning. There is no way we'd have found this deer without a dog and my little girl did a fantastic job!

I said "big doe". She only field dressed 96.8 pounds, but that's a good doe here in the hills.

Elly May is crashed in my recliner now and I won't even make her move. She's earned it, along with a lot of treats later. She sure doesn't need them, but in this case we'll let her live it up.

So, yesterday afternoon was actually a double.

 

Yep, we found the arrow.

Finding the arrow was nothing short of a miracle. We had no blood and we were in the cut-over. I told my wife Beth "If I had to guess, I'd say she went this way because it's the path of least resistance". We were walking blind and it was pretty much looking for a needle in a haystack. About 5 minutes later Beth said "Here's the arrow!" After that Beth said there was no blood. Beth went back and got Elly May and that beagle tracked that deer down in short order.

As to the path the arrow took, it was disgusting. Look at the pic of Elly May licking the deer. That's the entry wound. I was 20' up. The doe was 35 yards away pretty severely downhill. The exit wound was low in the off-side hind quarter. That 2" Grim Reaper made an unholy mess of things.

It got down to about 25-26 degrees last night, so all of that "good stuff" in the abdomen was kind of congealed, like I said the LFTS thread. It was one of the most disgusting gut jobs I've done and I lost a lot of the scrap meat I usually grind for the dogs, but at least it wasn't a kill with no recovery.

Even after a shower though, I swear I can still smell that smell. Nasty.

 

“Your inner Chief”

That made me laugh out loud.

Next week should be really good for me and I’ll do my best to put up a buck score. I actually have a good chance based on what the farmer told me he has seen lately.

 

Team 6 has two decent bucks that haven’t been posted. The guys that killed them disappeared and haven’t been heard from since they posted their kills on their team thread.

 

Go get ‘em Brett!

 

I think one of the teams last year had three that ghosted after posting kills. Two of them were banned from the contest this year.

That will most likely happen to these two if they don’t at least post again and give a good reason, like maybe they forgot to get the required pics.

If those two bucks were added to the team 6 score they would be ahead of us even with your buck added.

I want us to win but not this way.