Twin Elements · Hunting Tips & Tactics
After The Shot: What Really Happens in the Minutes That Matter Most
The shot's gone off, the animal's bolted, and for a few seconds you're just standing there. Half convinced you smoked it, half-convinced you didn't.
Which was it?
I've been in that exact spot more times than I can count over twenty five years of hunting. What happens in the next sixty seconds, the next hour, sometimes the next few days, matters just as much as the shot itself.
After the shot: this is my version of a playbook that follows every release or squeeze of the trigger.
Remove the guess work and stress when blood trailing.
Complete a methodical step by step process to make sure that you go from the shot, to first blood and ultimately the animal in your hands!
In This Report
- Treat It Like a Crime Scene
- Record Everything, Immediately
- Finding the Evidence
- When There's No Arrow and No Blood
- Reading the Blood Trail
- When the Shot Wasn't Textbook
- Knowing When to Call It
- The Bit That Actually Matters Most
- FAQ: Is Gassy Meat Still Safe to Eat?
Treat It Like a Crime Scene
The first thing I do, always, is knock another arrow. Or similarly, chamber another round if you're shooting a rifle. Quietly. There's no point spooking an animal that has no idea it's been hit by fumbling around ten metres from it.
From there, it's about staying dead silent and watching. A well-placed heart or lung shot usually means the animal runs somewhere between the hit and one hundred metres, before dropping.
If you're quiet, you'll often hear it happen. That trademark "crash" after a period of intensifying silence.
Watching how the other animals in the mob react is one of the most underrated skills in this whole process.
One thing worth being properly paranoid about: mistaken identity.
If there are other animals still in view, don't assume the one you're looking at is necessarily the one you shot. While guiding clients for Spotted Safaris, I've seen two separate chital stags get shot out of the same mob because of exactly this mix-up, and the same happens with feral pigs. Confirm your original animal is down before considering a follow-up shot on anything else. This matters even more when meat care or a cape is on the line, since hair slip and spoilage don't wait around in the heat.
Hit Or Miss?
The moment after a shot, what do you notice?
Record Everything, Immediately
For me this has adapted significantly over time.
Have you ever experienced the brain fog and confusion after the shot, where you take a few steps or change your angle, then suddenly, you cant even remeber where you shot from, or where the animal was standing, or which line it used to flee?
The fix; Get your phone out and record your thoughts right then and there. I will do this to the point of flipping the camera back and forth on video mode and talk things through.
Where exactly was the animal standing? Was it truly broadside, or slightly quartering? How far away? The longer you wait, the more your memory starts second-guessing itself.
I take it a step further now.
I will snap a quick photo from my exact shooting position. Then I drop a GPS pin the second I take the shot. this is labelled "The Shot".
Then ill add another waypoint where I believe the "Hit"occurred.
If things feel off, ill range the distance between the two spots to assess if my range was accurate.
From that first pin, I switch on the "tracking" feature on my phone or GPS too, so everywhere I walk to track blood from that point gets logged.
It sounds elaborate, but it really isn't. Those few steps log so much valuable information.
If you're filming the actual hunt itself, including the shot sequence. Then watch the footage back before doing anything else. It's the single best thing about recording our hunts, a genuine third-party referee to check your read of the shot against. Ask yourself plainly: is the line to where you think the animal was actually clear, or is there a chance you clipped a branch on the way through?
Did the animal duck the string?
Was the angle I thought the animal was presented in accurate?
Mark The Shot
A dropped pin at the "shot" and "hit" sites saves hours of second guessing later.
Finding The Evidence
Once you move in, you're a forensic investigator.
I'm looking for one of three things: the arrow, tracks, or that first spot of blood.
I personally run white fletching on my arrows specifically so I can read the blood pattern on them clearly.
If you're tracking with a mate, get disciplined here. One person leads, one follows and stays patient, rather than peeling off to "just check over here." When I find blood, I drop a pin in the exact spot rather than relying on my rough walking track or line of sight alone. I'll also mark the trail with visual aids at head height — biodegradable toilet paper is my usual choice, though synthetic tape or flagging needs to be pulled back out of the bush once the job's done.
Read The Arrow
First evidence: the arrow itself tells you most of the story.
When There's No Arrow and No Blood
Sometimes the arrow stays inside the animal rather than passing through, acting almost like a plug. A genuinely lethal hit can still produce minimal to no blood trail for a surprising distance. Two holes, entry and exit, will nearly always bleed more than one. A three-blade broad head behaves differently to a two-blade in how readily the wound seals. On thick-skinned animals such as boars with their fighting shield, buffalo with their heavy hides.
These are the factors you need to be thinking about when assessing information derived from the blood trail & arrow.
A fatal wound can close over and give you almost nothing to follow despite the animal being mortally hit. None of this means the shot missed; it just means working the ground even harder for tracks and any sign at all.
On The Trail
Blood scattered amongst the leaf litter.
Is this a large or small volume?
What of the colour?
Can you tell which direction the animal is moving from the blood splatter?
Fatal or not?
Reading the Blood Trail
Is it bright and frothy with tiny bubbles?
That's a great sign. Likley lungs.
Dark, thick, and bubble-free?
Could mean muscle or bone.
Watery and off in colour?
Often gut or liver.
Blood smeared at shoulder height on brush, not just on the ground, can tell you as much as the ground trail itself.
Keep a keen eye for snapped off branches and brush thats been trampled. These objects at the height of the shot will absorb blood and can be a lifesaver when the ground is devoid of sign.
The medium matters too. For example, leaves and broad, dry vegetation hold a trail far better than fine green stems. In dry conditions blood can crust up and look like old sap within minutes.
So to in heavy rain, a trail can wash away almost entirely.
I've learned to touch it. Fresh blood stays tacky while still runny. Once truly dry, you lose that. Fallen logs and obstacles an animal has to jump are worth checking closely as that's often where a wound reopens.
As a veterinarian, with means to equipment such as syringes and needles. I've drawn up one millilitre of fluid in a syringe and sprayed it across the floor. What is revealed looks like a murder scene.
But in reality, an animal's blood volume sits at roughly 8% of its bodyweight, so a hundred-kilo boar carries around eight litres. Losing 10% of that volume (800 mls) is enough to cause serious shock.
Don't let a dramatic looking trail fool you into false confidence or false despair. Read the pattern, not just the volume.
The single most important point on any blood trail is the first place the animal actually stops. With a true heart or lung shot, that's usually where you find them dead.
However, if you reach an obvious pool of blood, with no animal there, that tells you one of two things: the animal made a conscious decision to keep moving, or it was about to bed down and die and likely got bumped before it could.
Either way, that's the moment to stop, reassess, and consider giving more time.
When the Shot Wasn't Textbook
Shots too far forward of the shoulder, hitting low in the leg bones, forward in the neck. These often produce a lot of bright, thick blood with no bubbles, sometimes with meat or bone fragments along the trail. The animal will commonly travel a few hundred metres or more from the hit before the trail eventually thins from a steady line to a splatter, then droplets, then nothing. These shots can still be lethal, and sometimes not. I've heard of red deer disappearing into thick country for a week, laying low and then walking back out having recovered to rut once again.
Shots too far back. In the guts or liver. These behave differently.
The blood is darker (liver), or more watery (guts), and the animal will often travel away from the hit site and then bed down. Often taking hours if not a day to succumb.
This is where patience and honest assessment is everything.
If you're suspicious of a poor shot, through the animals guts then you have two options. A second shot is only worth taking immediately, if you're genuinely confident you can place it humanely then and there. Otherwise, pushing a marginal hit too early can cost you the animal, and the meat, entirely.
Trouble
Where the shot actually landed changes everything that follows.
this image showcases that trademark frothy, bright red blood that is typical of a quick and clean double lung shot.
Knowing When to Call It
Giving up after one lap around the hillside isn't good enough. Gridding a search area systematically, using that phone tracking line / route, genuinely works. Animals often run downhill when wounded, and are frequently found near water in the days that follow as blood pressure drops. A foul odour or smell, and birds circling a spot, can also give away a carcass. Sometimes the only real closure comes from returning the next day, or even a week later.
The Grid Gives Hope
Gridding a search area beats one hopeful lap of the hillside.
So often after initially losing the trail, you do a grid search, only to rediscover the sign which leads to your quarry.
Broad, dry leaves hold a blood trail far better than fine green stems such as a blade of wet grass.
The Bit That Actually Matters Most
All of this boils down to one thing; We owe these animals our full effort and our honesty about our mistakes. If a shot goes sideways, the answer is to relax more next time, know your anatomy inside and out, and remember we don't have to shoot every animal that gives us the opportunity. Cut up and process every animal you take yourself if you can, so you genuinely know where the heart and lungs sit and what your gear can and can't handle. If you're consistently losing animals, that's a signal to rethink your approach. Join a club, hunt with someone more experienced, change your gear, or take a break and go back to getting closer when stalking or photographing animals for a while.
We've made plenty of mistakes over twenty-five years of hunting between James and I. If sharing them here and being honest helps even one person find one animal they might otherwise have lost, then this short read has done its job.
Down In Sight
Closing the loop.
Some shots dont require a blood trail. If we do everything perfect and the factors allighn, we can see the animal fall down within sight!
FAQ: Is Gassy Meat Still Safe to Eat?
A listener of the Twin Elements Podcast recently wrote in after hitting a deer a little further back than planned, and by the time he found it, the carcass had already started to bloat.
They asked if the meat was safe to consume.
The honest yet unfortunate answer:
Its case by case, and if in doubt, don't take the risk.
It's normal for the gastrointestinal tract to expand and turn gaseous fairly quickly. My rule of thumb is to avoid anything that was in direct contact with the guts or had high blood flow near the internal organs. I'd personally go straight for the back legs. Avoiding the chest cavity completely.
I would also remove the back straps, and honestly, that's probably all I'd take.
Work fast; if you are capable to quickly breakdown the muscle groups off the hindquarters, let them air-dry, and remove the bone so the meat cools faster. If at this point anything smells or looks off, leave it.
Its not worth getting sick over, instead, however unfortunate, use the experience as a useful lesson for next time.
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The Adventure Continues
Join the Twin Elements team as they head back into the Australian bush.
Want the full story behind this episode, in Ayden and James's own words? Listen here.
Prefer to see it play out on camera? Watch the next adventure on the Twin Elements YouTube channel.
