I was in the stand for a total of 15 minutes when I could hear a deer scraping along the mock scrape line I had just refreshed. He started toward my tree and I could see his right side beam through the bushes. I thought for sure he was a buck that I had gotten pictures of a few days earlier. It was an eight point about 16" wide. He began to move into my shooting lane and I drew back. As I came to full draw he started to trot and I gave out a "Meehh" and stopped him in his tracks. I released my arrow, sure that he was one of the target bucks I was after, and the shot was a little high dropping him where he stood. I nocked another arrow to finish the deal when I noticed he was not the deer I was after. My heart sank as i finished him off with the second arrow. I couldn't believe that I let all the excitement and adrenaline get to me and I didn't even look at his head after I was at full draw. I got down from my tree and was surprised to see he had some green puss running from behind his right shoulder. Someone had tried to take a spine shot on him between the shoulder blades and had missed. The arrow had traveled behind the right shoulder blade and out low behind the shoulder. It had not been affecting his movement but I could tell that there was definitely a lot of infection and I was sad to realize another hunter was so careless to take that shot. I field dressed him and drug him to my truck to get checked in with the DNR. When I arrived home I skinned him to find that there was indeed a lot of infection, it ran down his backstrap and the entire right shoulder was disgusting. I certainly do not plan to eat this deer now because with the amount distance the infection had spread. I'm sure it is through the entire deer and it is just not worth taking the chance with my family.... All in all it was a pretty bad experience, but he should make a pretty interesting European mount....
Sounds like he was done for and you ended his suffering. Sad the meat was wasted but I absolulutely would not even consider eating it.
Sucks you can't use the meat, but he's still a nice trophy. You also prevented him from getting worse, too, so don't be too hard on yourself. A Euro mount will do quite nicely. Congrats!
You could always call the DNR and they can give you a new tag since the meat was ruined. They will take the whole deer away for you.
