Please don’t let this happen to YOU!

[lawnboy]

Well I know that some of you are going to work me over on this one. But I feel that there was a lesson to learn and maybe this will keep someone else from making the same mistake. I went out last week and sat all morning it was a nice day little wind and dry. Around 8 am I see this buck and man what a good-sized buck it was cross well over 50 yards away. It had gone behind me to a large oak. I had debated and decided not to grunt and had to really look hard to see if he was going to come my way. Well as luck would have it here he can. A nice slow speed about 20 yards out. Now I’m only 12 feet up and in this area I don’t have a lot of cover so I was using my tree as that cover. As he went behind a tree I pulled and as he came out I put the pin right behind his leg and bam. It was at the time I thought a great hit. About 2-3 inches further back but still in my mind a DOUBLE lung. I waited a good hour and went looking for the deer that I had decided I was going to have mounted. Well the area looked like a murder scene and I wasn’t even tracking do to all the blood. As a matter of fact in the end my boot were covered with blood well after a total of 8 hours and over a mile later he was lost. I freaked and couldn’t understand why such a thing could happen?

Well after a LOT of thinking and working the shot out in the stand I finally found what had happened. And now know why I have also lost deer in the past.

You see I shoot a LOT of 3-D and most of the shots are at 90 degrees to the deer and even the ones that aren’t you still aim at the same spot for that 10 spot. But one thing that I never factored in was that in a live deer you have to compensate for depth. So when the deer was heading towards me I was at a 45 so when I went 2-3 inches past I now know that I only had clipped the back of ONE lung. I should have compensated and had aimed in front of that heart shot and things would of worked out differently. So in the end it was a lesson learned and will no doubt be factored in next time. You see what I learn was that when I went into my “shooting mode” I was in the end aiming for a spot not acceptable for a live deer but was for a target deer, and have to wonder how many have made this same mistake over the years.

[William H Bonney]

So, basically the deer was quartering at you???

Thats a VERY low percentage shot,,, I know,,, I took the same shot last year.:rolleyes: Only difference is,,, I had NO BLOOD AT ALL. I believe the deer you shot is dead. I'd go back and look some more. I think you'll find that deer. From what you're saying, he's lost WAY too much blood, to be alive.

[jawbreaker]

Unfortunately 3-D shooting only helps with shot accuracy and not shot placement in a true hunting situation. I agree with WHB, that deer is dead some where. Continue looking and you should find it. Keep an eye on the sky where your hunting too the crows may give away the carcass. A buddy of mine found his wifes deer that a couple years ago, unfortunately it was in the early part of the season and the meat had gone bad.

Dan

[Bow Hunter Brandon]

Thanks for sharing what had to be a hard lesson to learn. After making some mistakes I almost get sick after I let a shot go now. This still happens after learning from my mistakes and making some very easy recoveries that went less then 40 yards.

On a side note if there was really that much blood it does seem like he would of beded down when you stopped pushing him.
Did the blood just end? How long did you track before stoping?
Im just trying to get a feel and maybe give you some idea's you didnt think of.

[stickandrock]

The one I always try and do is shoot for the oppisite side. I pick a spot that gives me a desired exit path. It's a hard lesson, but it is that - a lesson.

[Byron]

That deer is dead. Sounds like you would have caught the liver along with maybe one lung. Describe the blood you were finding, please. Was it pinkish, deep red, brownish. The liver has a tremendous amount of blood flowing through it. This sounds like what you described. Were there places where he bedded down along the trail? What did your arrow look like? Were there bubbles in the blood on the arrow and on the blood along the trail? Was the blood sprayed to the sides or dripping down along the buck's sides to the ground?

How did the buck react when he was hit? Did he kick out his hind legs? Did he hunch up at all as he left the area? Was he running hard, trotting, walking, tail up/down?

Never assume you made a good hit. It always must be proven with the evidence before you decide how to start tracking. I can just about guarantee you pushed that deer much further than it would have gone otherwise. Fatally wounded deer like you described almost always lay down within 150-200 yards, and will be there if left alone to die.

You can still find that deer, I believe. I think you could have found it before the meat went bad if you posted this right away. One great resource for info on tracking deer is a book by Richard P. Smith called Tracking Wounded Deer (Amazon, about $11).

Please don't take this post as holier than thou criticism. I have made the same mistakes, pushed deer and lost them, made bad shots that I thought were good. I've learned a lot from my mistakes and through research, though. I've been on a lot of blood trails, and have gotten pretty good at reading the evidence, despite being somewhat red/green colorblind.

I'll post more if you'd post some more details. I'd like to help you make sure it doesn't happen again, if I can.

Best Regards,
Byron

[William H Bonney]

Hey Byron,
Is the "hunch", typically a gut or muscle shot??
It seems like the "jump" or the "bucking bronco kick" are pretty good signs of a good hit.

[Byron]

The hunching is usually a liver or gut shot.

Kicking out is usually a sign of a good hit, but could happen with a liver hit, also.

Best Regards,
Byron

[buck37]

I used to get mad at 3d shoots because on the quartered deer, a well placed shot did not score well. I'm used to shooting for the opposite shoulder. When I was younger, I had a bad habit of aiming to close to the shoulder. I was used to shooting deer with a rifle or shotgun. I lost a nice buck when I hit it in the shoulder, and switched my thoughts on were to aim with a bow. The angle of a shot is a hard concept to understand for people. I know when my son and I were hunting together during the youth season we discussed the shot angle quite extensively. I was proud when he waited for a good shot angle when a doe presented a shot. So be careful of the shot angles exspecially in low light.

[Captain]

Lawnboy sorry about your misfortune and without sounding too critical this thread seemed very familiar... What did you learn on these past hunts of yours?

http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10288

[jasnake65]

On the 19 i ended up losing a deer to. I shot and it hit a @@@@ twig and i ended up hitting the stomach area. It hunched up and took off. Waited around 3 hours and we found the blood trail and and we followed it and we ened up jumping it,my heart sank.It took off so we waited till the next day and we couldn't find nothing.found some traces of blood but nothing else indicating what way it went,spent 5 hours looking for it,3 of us was out there.Now i dont even feel like hunting anymore,lost that passion that i had at the begining of the year.

[eye1zLotto]

with that much blood as you described, and over a long trail, sounds like the deer was pushed. While the meat is spoiled by now, you probably would still like to have the knowledge that you indeed killed it. Here's a suggestion:

To me, it appears to be a gut shot and, 99% of the time, in my experience, gut shot deer go to a water source, creek, pond, whatever, in order to cool down their now torridly hot insides. When they do that, they simply fall asleep and die right there in the water.

If you're still interested in finding it, go back to the last blood and follow it until you intersect some water. There's a good chance you see a dead deer there with only it's head above the water line.

Good luck

[deepwoods]

Lawnboy,

There's not a lot of info to go on but that deer is dead if you had blood like you say. I also will say that you pushed that deer which allowed the trail to be lost. You did not have blood like a murder scene for the whole trail or it wouldn't have taken 8 hours to go over a mile. Somewhere it dwindled to nothing and that should have been your clue to back off and come back in several hours to resume the tracking. I hope you learn from this lesson and its a shame that a deer was lost in the process.

You can hardly wait to long to trail a hit animal. I know weather permitting (rain, temp's, etc...) That deer is not going to become any less dead by waiting but I feel you have found out what can happen by not waiting long enough. Please don't take this as harping on you I am just trying to convey what I believe happened and hopefully help you in not having it happen again.

Good luck.

[Joe Archer]

I agree with Stickandrock. ALWAYS aim for your exit hole. If quartering away, aim to exit BEHIND the far shoulder, and don;t shoot unless you can do so by hitting in front of the liver. If quartering toward you, shoot only if you can hit behind the near shoulder and exit in front of the liver. In any case, I learned this lesson the hard way. Many years ago I had the exact blood trail you described. I could see it as if painted for 50 yards at a time through the woods. I hit a mature buck quartering away. It looked like a heart hit, but I stuck the opposite shoulder. I saw all the blood and figured he couldn;t have gone more than 50 yards. WRONG! I did the same thing, I must have pushed him and tracked for miles, and never found the deer. This was a decade ago. Now, I would say that if you don't get a pass through, or believe you may have hit only one lung... wait 2-3 hours before you track. A one-lung hit deer can run for miles when pushed. <----<<<

[Krankem]

I made a similar mistake this past Saturday morning on an 8 point buck. There was a decent rain, my stand was about 25' up, 10 minutes after shootable light, I saw the buck come out of some thick brush heading directly toward my tree, before it turned at about 15 yards to an angle which at the time seemed broadside. When he stopped for a moment, I let an arrow fly and saw it enter just behind the left shoulder, and I could hear the ribs crack on the entry - everything felt right, but the deer didn't bolt the way most of the deer I have killed in the past. He took 4 or 5 bounds and then stopped in some thick brush about 45 yards out. I could only see the back half of the deer, and I watched him standing there completely still, unhunched, with tail down tight for about 15 minutes or so. Then he started to sway a bit, and it looked like his rear legs were about to collapse under him - I thought he was about to pass out from blood loss right there, but before he collapsed, he jumped out of the thicket and I watched him take another 5-6 bounds before stopping about 90 yards out - then he lay down. He did a few "death sways" of the head/neck, then put his head down and lay still. I checked my watch and waited a full hour before coming down from my stand. Once I was on the ground, I couldn't see the deer from where I was standing, and started a slow, quiet approach. Well, before I got to the spot I thought I remembered him laying in, I looked over to see the buck lying about 10 yards to my left with his head up and looking right at me - Before I could think about getting another arrow off, the deer jumped up and took off heading toward a paved road about 150 yards away.

I had the sick feeling that many of us are familar with. That was when I began to second guess the angle of the shot, and decided I better wait a few more hours before trying to track him further - The blood trail was light, and since it was raining fairly hard, I got nervous I wouldn't be able to pick up the trail later in the day. So I backed out the other direction, and decided to take a walk down the road to see if I could find a drop of blood where he might have crossed - that would make it easier to know which area to focus on later in the day. Well, as I neared the area he would have crossed, I looked over to see a dead deer floating about 10 yards out in the lake accross the road. Seems he tried to make a swim for it and didn't get very far.

When I recovered the deer from the water, I found that the "broadside shot" I thought I had taken was more of a "quartering toward" shot. The arrow had entered high and just behind the left shoulder, like I thought, but the exit was low and just behind the second-from last rib where the exit hole was plugged up tight with stomach. When I gutted the deer, I found that the arrow had passed through the left lung before angling out through the stomach.

I learned several lessons here, most of which I already knew, but had never experienced first hand. One that particularly stands out in my mind is that a deer's angle can be deceiving - especially when it has just turned after heading toward you. Most of my past shots, have been quartering away, and I have yet to run into trouble on a quartering away shot. If in doubt, I will wait for a slight quartering away shot in the future, just to make sure that the "broadside" angle is not really a "quartering towards". Reading through the posts on this forum, I find many people saying exactly the same thing - "it was a broadside shot, and the arrow was right on target...I don't know what went wrong - never found the deer". I'd venture to guess that in a large percentage of those cases, the error was the same as one I made: the assumption that the deer was broadside.

[Burksee]

Sounds like what you all need is a refresher course in geometry! Your up in the air, your shooting down at a target, your unsure of the deers postion? At any angle its definetly going to effect where you choose your point of entry! ;)

Its a shame you didnt get the deer but I think that kind of shooting shows lack of of good judgment and the definate need for more "real situation" practice, especially from an elevated stand! And oh yeah, get over the "Buck Fever" :eek:

One more thing, quit shootin up the woods! Your giving bow hunting a black eye! :p