Most everyone knows the standard procedures for blood trailing a deer you shot but undoubtedly there will be times when you do everything correctly and find you're out of a blood trail, you waited more than long enough to begin trailing, the circles and grid searches havent worked and you are sure that deer is dead, but you're out of ideas where it could be. Tell us your oddest recovery that didnt follow the standard script....to give those some hope that have tried everything to find their deer. Maybe your experience could give them a new idea to lead them to their deer. Mine was during a gun season about 6 years ago. A member of our group shot a buck that had a very good blood trail, we followed it for a couple hundred yards as it moved directly down a heavily used deer trail. The blood simply stopped, and we started making circles and grid searching coming up with nothing, we were out of ideas and directions he could have gone. We started over at the first sign of blood thinking we could maybe find a clue to at least let us know where the deer may be hit. We followed the trail for 150 yards or so and blood was only on the right side of the trail the entire way. As we kept following we noticed blood started to appear on the left side of the trail as well. We looked in this spot a little closer and soon found a stray drop of blood a few feet off the deer trail. This stray spot led to a brand new blood trail and eventually our deer buried into a downfall not 20 yards from his original blood trail. The buck followed a deer trail about 200 yards, turned around a backtracked about 50 yards before getting off the trail, going 20 yards and dying. Noticing the appearance of blood on the opposite side of the trail led us to this deer we had almost given up on. This is the only time I've ever had a deer do this, but it gives me one more option to try if I ever get stuck!
Some of you have seen this story before, it's VERY long winded but I think it qualifies for what you are looking for!............ This is the story of my 2007 PA recurve buck, the very first time I ever hunted with a recurve bow. Opening Day PA bow season 2007 I got into my stand 40 yards down the slope from a cornfield well before first light. On my way in I got an unexpected surprise: The farmer had cut the first 30yards or so of corn all the way around the majority of the field and right past the entrance to my stand. I was expecting to have to wade through the corn to reach the same spot and this new found surprise really gave me a shot of hope for the morning to come. I managed to slip into the area without bumping any deer. When I reached my stand (one I hadn’t visited since last season) I had some difficulty because the skinny trail in had grown up considerably with briars AND a tree had fallen across the trail. YIKES. So a nice cool walk in started to get a touch sweaty. When I finally got to hunting height the stand had settled into the bark a bit and squeaked as I pushed my weight onto it everytime. CRAP! So now I had to reset it, undoing the straps in the dark (with the buckle on the wrong side of the tree of course), repositioning and setting it fast. Got it set and not a peep out of it, but I was warm now. Luckily I allowed myself plenty of time to get into the tree so I had time to hit myself with a field wipe and cool off well before first light. I can still remember the feeling of that wood riser in my hand, arrow nocked in the predawn light smiling a smile nobody but an owl was going to be able to see. Around 7:15 I noticed a doe in the lower green field about 80yards away slipping silently along, the entire time me wishing something would bring her my way. No such luck. Sometime after 8:00 I had turned around for the 20th time to see what that damn squirrel was doing, only to find out the "squirrel" had somehow turned into a little basket racked 6pt. DOH! Of course I’m rusty and moved too quickly and he happened to be in the only hole in the brush at that moment that gave him a clear view of my bumbling. Hard as I tried I couldn’t make myself invisible and a few headbobs later he walked away without much alarm (THANKFULLY) I still tell myself I would have shot him if presented the shot, after all I have never so much as shot a single arrow at a live animal with this bow. I was planning to get down around 9AM but a spike buck materialized on the upper trail 24 yards away heading the OPPOSITE direction that the other deer came from. He slipped through with me going unnoticed. Right about then it got windy and I told myself I would get down at 9:15, EXACTLY 9:15. I don’t know why I COMMITED to that time but I did to the second. So I lowered my bow to the ground , strapped on the CatQuiver and climbed down. I picked my way back up the slope to the cut corn snipping briars and widening the trail a bit on my way. In no hurry whatsoever just enjoying the morning. I don’t know WHY I didn’t have an arrow nocked as I entered the field but I didn’t. I expected to maybe catch a deer in the shadows still feeding but wasn’t prepared. I peeked left, and peeked right like a kid getting ready to cross the street in front of his house on orders from mom to look both ways. I stepped into the field. At that moment I looked up and to my right at the point where cut corn meets standing corn as the field sweeps out of sight and see a RACK running around the corner at me which quickly materializes into a giant buck. I hit the ground as fast as gravity would take me, straight down like I got hit by a sniper’s bullet. In one motion I leaned over as low as my tall frame would allow and grabbed an arrow from my back quiver quickly and securely. Not sure how I did it so smoothly as I have never practiced that. By now the deer had rounded the corner and was running parallel to the standing corn directly in front of me. As I was looking down nocking the arrow I became aware that he stopped. Things went immediately into that swimmy feeling of everything being in fast forward and slow motion at the same time. As I brought my eyes upward I started to draw at the same time only aware that I must stay low. I held the bow on a near parallel angle to the ground almost lying down and came to full draw. I hit anchor at the same exact time my eyes found the deer’s chest. I remember feeling the back of the broadhead blade brush my finger and I let the arrow fly. I never saw even a glimpse of the arrow in flight which tells me the arrow flew straight and true. I heard the impact but didn’t see the arrow until the deer bolted into motion again. There it was roughly 2/3 of the way in the deer’s chest about 1/3 of the way up and about 8” back from the pocket. As he ran I could see that the arrow appeared to be angled up and into the deer’s chest and I let out a celebratory fist pump as I concentrated as best as I could on his departure. I could watch him run for only 50-60 yards before he disappeared over the contour of the hill out of sight still hugging the standing corn. My immediate reaction was “I did it, I can’t believe I did it!” and I rolled on the ground in elation. Then I called my buddy Frank excited about what just happened and relayed the story. He was pumped and on his way for the 1/2hr drive in a blink. I then called my other buddy Dave who was hunting locally as well and he was on his way to my house as well. I laid in the cornfield for about 20 minutes and then quietly and slowly walked up to where the deer was standing when I shot. I could find NOTHING that indicated he’d ever been there. So I cautiously worked the cut corn row out to the left along the standing corn looking for blood. Stopping every few yards to scan the horizon for a glimpse of the deer I knew had to be laying ahead. I wanted to find that first blood badly but after 50 yards I found nothing and backed out a touch confused. The shot was approx 23 yards. So I started making phone calls telling everyone of my good fortune and that we were waiting to take up the track. I poured over anatomy diagrams and watched videos to get a better feel for what might be hit and how best to proceed. I made the executive decision to wait 4hrs. I knew it was a dead deer but not knowing for sure where the arrow exited kept me from rushing things. I was taking some flak about waiting so long but insisted that it was a must. I was in doubt and making myself ever more concerned. We passed the time, the 3 of us in my living room watching “Monster Bucks XV vol 2” munching on some chocolate covered walnuts and just trying to stay calm. I was becoming a basket case. The shot was 9:50 AM. The time was now 1:30 PM and we made our way back to the farm. We spread out across the cut corn in the direction of travel about 10 yards apart looking for first blood. Figuring the deer went over the rise and probably angled to the woods kept everyone in line on their toes and searching inch by inch. 75-80 yards later we were out of cut corn where the combine had stopped and still no blood. I became worried but still confident because I KNOW what I saw. So we began the systematic dissection of the entire area. We HAD to find his exit out of the area of cut corn. So stalk by stalk, blade of high grass by blade we searched for 2 hrs and found NOTHING. Not a single tiny drop and now I became panicked. BUT we were eliminating possibilities and putting the puzzle together. He wouldn’t have run here because, or he couldn’t have run THERE because and we came to just one conclusion……..he got off the field before he started to bleed at all and that only meant one thing, he’s in the woods. The corn rows were too narrow and the leaves overhung the rows so tightly you could eliminate them as a route of travel. So into the woods we went. When I say woods do NOT think open hardwoods. Think of a 300-400 yard long, 75-100 yard wide strip of the nastiest briar filled , vine choked jungle that you could possibly think of and it might be worse than that. (which is precisely why I have a few of these bucks running around as this is the predominant cover adjacent to these crop fields) Sometime after 3PM Dave finds the back half of the arrow and only 100 yards from the shot. It was blind luck he found it on a skinny trail on his hands and knees. So at least we had SOMETHING. We marked the spot hard with ribbon and sat and discussed the sign and options. I also called rob and Greg and back and forth we all went trying to figure out what to do , where to go. You have to understand we had STILL not a drop of blood or a further direction of travel. We started a hands and knees circle of the arrow site looking for just ONE MORE drop of blood to show a direction but no direction made sense. The cover was so tight and thick you couldn’t imagine a doe running through there let alone a wide racked giant buck. So we went back to the only thing we could do, we started breaking the cover down into parts. In the process of finding next blood Frank badly twisted his ankle and was now out of commission........we left him to sit and mark the spot where the back 1/2 of the arrow was found. So Dave and I started grid searching the most likely direction of travel, down and down and away. We crawled into every nook and cranny, trail and briar bush we could until we were just flat out exhausted. With light fading we grudgingly backed out and helped Frank to the truck. I was CRUSHED. I sadly relayed the events to everyone, Rob, Greg, and friends but vowed to go at it again the next day, I just couldn’t fathom why I couldn’t find this deer. I have literally helped track probably 100 deer in my life for myself and friends and NEVER had a deer not bleed at all. Even gut shot deer would bleed better and I was sure this wasn’t a gut shot.
CONTINUED Day 2 Sunday: Dave and I head back to square one. Where we found the broken arrow. At home I had measured and there was still 15” of broadhead tipped arrow lodged in this deer. Plenty enough to be completely through the vitals and lodged somewhere. But why no blood!? So at 8AM a VERY long day begins. We start a little 2 man skirmish line 20 yards apart and literally kill ourselves through the cover in a line parallel to the field until we run out of cover at a lane bisecting the property and the private land to the west. 200 yards later we hit the end and nothing, so BACK to square one to orient ourselves correctly and we start out again but further down. We did this 3 times until the entire cover was walked, crawled and bled all over. It was brutal. Then we made the assumption that maybe the deer made it straight down and out of this cover and could possibly be in the large CRP field below or into the next strip of cover along the creek at the very bottom of the property on the OTHER side of the field. So off we go, line by line, piece by piece walking everything in the fields like 2 crazy pheasant hunters. NOTHING. We then tear apart the cover by the creek while it literally tears US apart with thorns and branches. I walked ¼ mile of creek over my boots searching the water for any sign of him floating or stuck in a log jam. I was miserable, beat up and exhausted. SO was Dave and we were at it for 9 hrs non stop. We decided to call it a night after one last trip over by my stand to check there and trim some more trails for a later date. That’s when it happened. I was just about to walk back into the cornfield to head home and decided to snap off one last treebranch about diameter or a little bigger than your thumb. I pushed it down and the flexible limb snapped at my hand. The free end then sprung forcefully into my left eye. Down I went. I don’t remember hitting the ground but was vaguely aware that I was blind in my left eye. I was in absolute panic mode sure my eye was hanging out. I couldn’t see a thing, but felt the socket to see if I could tell if it was ruptured or out of the socket. Everything felt ok but I was blind. About a minute later I started to regain sight but it was like looking through a peep sight. I was scared. I laid on the ground with Dave trying his best to keep me calm while my sight quickly recovered. I realized after a bit that I could see, and somehow thankfully clearly. I had got my eye closed at the impact because my contact was still there and my eyelid was badly bruised and WOW did it hurt. Of course since I could see and my eye seemed to still be moving around I didn’t go to the doctor. I was too tired, too beat up and was “Manning up”. So day two ended literally with a whimper and a beating. I was at the lowest of lows but I just could not give up even if it took all week (or never) to find some closure. Day 3. I’m on my own. I’m on vacation but everyone else I know has to work. I laid in bed that night after day 2 unable to sleep, guilt and what if’s racing through my mind. “Why did I even take the recurve?...... but dammit the shot didn’t look bad!” “If I had taken the compound would I have even got a shot off?” or “Would I have my hands on him already if I shot the compound?” I kept trying to beat these feelings down and also wrestle with the glaring “What the heck am I missing!!!?” So I sat there at 2 AM looking at the aerial photos of the property asking just that. I mentally crossed off everything we covered and searched based upon assumptions. I then noticed about a 75X100yd block of cover on a line of direction heading directly BACK toward where the deer was shot. In other words the buck would have had to make a decision in flight to basically turn 180 degrees and head BACK the way he came after he left the corn and entered the woods. This would have taken him on a course right after the shot almost straight back to where I was standing when the arrow was released?? It didn’t make sense but it was all I had left. I tried to stay confident as I sat all alone once again at the ribbons marking the now dried single blood drop where the arrow had rested. Still the ONLY drop of blood that was found. Off I went and I did it all for the next hour or so on my hands and knees, torn and shredded from briars, sore and actually bleeding I couldn't stand up or leave until every inch of that last block was covered. As I reached the very bottom of the hill directly down from the arrow I went LEFT back the opposite direction from where he had run when. I was only 30 yards into the faintest trail you ever saw literally on my belly when I saw a football shaped lump of white jammed into a tangle of briars up ahead and through a screen of brush. I rolled to my side and focused my binos on the patch and saw a slender back leg and a hoof sticking straight out. Without moving I rolled onto my back and I honestly tried not to cry. I laid there staring up through the hole in the tree canopy at the blue sky and whispy clouds and thanked everything and everyone I could come up with. I have never felt such a flood of relief but also remorse at the same time because I felt like I had failed this animal. He was right here, maybe 60 yards from where we found the arrow but I had failed him. I was pretty emotional. He was just in the last place I would have guessed he would have gone. He had completely “J hooked” hard and his entire direction of travel when viewed from the air probably looked like a curved cane. A fairly straight line with an angle downhill as expected but he at some point curled off sharply and headed 180 degrees back in the direction where he was shot. They say “You’ll always find something in the last place you look” and I literally only had this last place to look no matter ho much it didn’t make sense. So I reached the deer and MY GOD he’s bigger than I thought. I was vaguely aware that I thought he might be a 12pt but tried to conservatively describe him to friends as maybe a 10 or 12 but the biggest buck I have ever seen in PA. I lifted his head and apologized to him. No joke. I told him I was sorry for letting him down but I wasn’t going to give up. I felt like I owed him everything I could possibly muster physically to bring him home. It almost sounds corny now but didn't at the time. I immediately called my circle of friends from the site leaving rambling message after rambling message. I called Dave at work and God love him he immediately told his staff, sorry I have to leave and he rushed the 50 miles home to help me. After 2 solid days of killing himself he came running without asking. I had other offers from Rob and Frank to come running as well but I didn’t need their generous offers. It was just a matter now of caping and and taking some pictures to record the moment. I had found him exactly to the minute 48 hrs from the time I shot him. It was 9:50 Monday AM. The arrow had entered exactly where I thought it did, in the ribs about 8” back from his front leg but rather than the arrow going straight through or angling forward into the vitals it had kicked UPWARD and backward and the tip of the broadhead tipped broken arrow was poking out up toward his spine and squarely in his stomach area. The arrow had broken a rib going in and kissed up and back on the impact sending it at an angle almost like he was shot from a treestand on the opposite side of his body. Very odd direction of travel. There was no blood anywhere, even where I found the deer. The entrance had plugged up and was squarely in the liver and the exit was too high and had the broadhead jammed in the hole. The arrow actually broke off INSIDE the deer and not flush with his side because the distance from tip of the broadhead to the entrance hole was much greater than the 15” of arrow that was still inside. I tagged the deer, and headed back to meet Dave. We headed in together to get him out the final time and was so happy that he was there at that moment because of how much effort and support he showed over those 3 days. I have so many mixed emotions over the whole thing, did I do everything I could and do it correctly? Why on earth didn’t I just look there first?......but in the end I guess I did what I could. I did pretty much EVERYTHING my body and mind could and would allow just short of sleeping in the woods waiting for first light to go at it again. I never gave up , I just couldn't.......and and took as systematic of an approach as a panicked and disheartened mind will permit. I trusted what I saw, and knew the deer was down..........somewhere.......it was just up to me to find it.
Exactly what I am talking about Matt. I remember this story. Another backtracking buck. Its been 5 years but you still get an atta boy!
Wow what an amazing story and good read!! Thx for sharing that. Amazing beautiful buck aswell congrats.
I was hunting on a huge hill directly above my truck. The lower 600 yards or so was a steep pasture which became woods and continued uphill. I was hunting about 500 yards uphill into the woods. I shot a doe and she dropped immediately and began to slide, on the hard packed snow, down the hill until she was out of my sight. I climbed down from the tree started to follow the blood. Down and down she slid, through the woods and out into the field. I stopped and looked down the hill, but there was no deer anywhere that I could see, and now the streaks of blood I was following stopped. So not knowing what to do I just kept heading downhill to see if maybe she stopped sliding and got up and walked off. No such luck. I got to the bottom of the hill and just started walking around to see if maybe she slid all the way down and stopped where it leveled off, but again no luck. I went back to the truck to regroup and decide what to do next. Then it dawned on me, I got to my knees and there she was, under my truck! She had slid straight down the hill almost half a mile and stopped directly under my truck. What are the odds!
My very oddest recovery is a bummer one. I shot at a buck who was 900x more on edge than I gave him credit for. He was at the very edge of my shooting range standing slightly quartering away. By time my arrow made it the 25 yards to his location he had lunged and spun and my arrow hit right him in the hip... sticking straight out behind him. (hit in the ilium bone) The arrow penetrated only a few inches and as I watched running off like a rocket, I knew that there was almost no way that shot could be fatal. Deb helped me trail him and we followed him by his hoof prints in the soft mud of the riverbottoms. We followed him for 400 yards. In that time he never stopped running and the amount of blood we found wouldn't have filled a thimble. Then next day I looked all over for him, it rained in the morning and then dipped into sub zero temps. Ice filled the bottoms and tracking was impossible and just walking was dangerous. After two days, I gave up. About a week later I got a call from the site manager who had found a dead buck with my arrow sticking out of him. (we mark our arrows) I was shocked, I figured the buck was still alive. When we loaded up the deer, it was obvious he had been dead for awhile. My arrow was now sunk into his body cavity almost to the fletch. That was weird because it most definitely had little penetration at the shot. I carefully pulled the arrow out... there was no point on it, it had broken off right behind the insert. I felt around the hole and there was my broadhead, still firmly buried in the ilium bone. So, as best I can understand... the buck somehow fell or otherwise broke the shaft... and in the process... jammed the headless shaft up under his hip bone and into his kidney area, causing a fatal hemorrhage. Perhaps he fell on all that ice in the bottom. I have no idea. He was also almost a mile from where I shot him. This is not useful for anyone else's tracking... but you gotta admit... it's pretty odd.
This is old but someone might learn from this. (lesson... don't assume much about hits... and if you have blood... keep following it.) I had a doe fawn come in (I hunt earn-a-buck property so doe fawns are on the menu) that I shot at. I was up pretty high and she was in a creek bed so the angle was pretty steep. My range finder said it was 11 yards to the creek but that was mostly due to the angle. Anyhow, this fawn comes in and stops, angled toward me a bit but not enough to worry about. I shot and watched the arrow go too high. It looked like it zipped right over her back. She dropped and/or I held too high. She did the typical 'you missed me' bounding off, tail held high. She stopped about 50 yards away, snorted at me and then put her head down and charged off into the brambles. The charging off was a bit weird, that was more the reaction of hit deer. The high bounces and snorting were more like a missed deer. I was sure I saw my arrow go over her back, so I must have missed. Well, I climb down and look at my arrow and it looks like this: Small amounts of meat and fat on the shaft, almost no blood on the feathers and just a smear of blood near the nock. So, I think... I must have just grazed her. A non-fatal meat hit. .... but I go look for blood where I last saw her. To my surprise, there's quite a bit of blood. I go back to the truck, recruit my tracker helpers Deb and Kendall and we go look for her. She had run off into stuff that would trip up a rabbit it was so thick. But the blood gets better as we go, not like a meat hit where it peters out. Deb finds her while I'm busting giant ragweed stalks with my face and trying to crawl through brambles. (Deb was smart and walked around the thicket) The deer had made it about 150 yards. Turns out, I did sorta shoot over her back. The arrow entered on her far side, right next to the spine and went down through her one lung before exiting. I'm not sure why the arrow didn't pick up more blood... but it didn't. I was completely ready to write this deer off as a meat hit......
.....I will never forget that day. What an emotional roller coaster. All it took was a few things to happen a little different during that search and we would have found him that night....DANG it. but perseverance paid off and now its a hell of a story and great memories!!!
The buck in my avatar did something similar to rucks story. He ran bout 80 yards from my stand straight at my car he made it just out of the woods into the property owners back yard befor he crashed. I actually wasn't even trying to track him I was going up to the house to get my buddy to help and I almost tripped over him. Only way it coulda been better is if he made it the extra 60 yards to my vehicle and managed to gut himself lol
I have been told that when a Deer is wounded they will try to make it to their safe place/bedding area if possible. This was a big help to me after I made a less than spectacular shot on a Doe two years ago.I saw her circle around through the thick stuff she had just come out of where I shot her,she crossed an open loging trail for just a moment. This is why you should never take your eyes off the direction they run until your sure they have gone down or cleared the area. Anyway I gave her 30 minutes but she was still not dead, bleeding real bad,but able to move,I bumped her.I backed out and gave her 30 more minutes then picked up where I bumped her. All was well until the blood trail stoped,now what I thought. I decided to go to a bedding area in the direction she was headed another 50 or 60 yards to the left. I saw a spike Buck she was with just before I shot her standing in front of me,I looked below him and there she was dead. I was relieved and somewhat sad as well,I thought for a moment,I killed his sister or girlfriend or something like that. Well the spike took off and I walked up to her and it dawned on me that she had died about 10 feet or so from where the first deer I ever killed had died a 7 point Buck. I drug her up the same bank I had drug my Buck a year earlier.I have shot a few Does since then and several times I have headed for the bedding area where I thought they had come from and to my surprise that is where they have headed at times. Hope this helps and that you enjoyed the story. And by the way I killed my first Turkey in the same spot I shot my first Deer. I named it Dead Game Lane. Missed a Coyote in the same spot one day shot right over his head at 12 yards with my ML. bet he had powder burns on him.
The first deer I killed with my bow was a small 7 point. Well I was a moron and shot straight down through that deer and took up the blood trail only 20 minutes after the shot. I pushed the gut shot deer and I had heck to pay. I had a blood trail for maybe 40 yards then it just stopped. I tracked for 3 hours the first day, down on my hands and knees marking every hoof print and speck of blood til it just stopped. I took off work the following day and began to track again at sun-up. I tracked for another 5-6 hours up and down big hills until I was done. I could barely walk anymore and I didn't bring half the amount of water I needed to keep hydrated. I walked many miles that day. I only had one hunting buddy at the time and he was a teacher who could not take off work to help me track. As I was about ready to leave and was a mental and physical wreck, something came over me from some of the suggestions I received from the old huntingnet.whatever and got on a big creek and began walking it back to my truck. After ten hours of tracking I look up not 40 yards from where I shot that deer the previous day and saw a rack sticking out from under a tree hanging over the creek. The buck had crawled up underneath that tree and the only thing visible was the rack. I was as happy as a man could be as I had been bowhunting three years and had not killed anything. The intestines had plugged the wound and there was no blood at all coming out from that deer.
Buddy arrows a small deer and texts me for help on the recovery. Get there and ask him where did you hit it he says ligned up for a double lung. Could smell the funk as soon as I picked up the arrow. I said, dude, you gut shot that critter. So we head off in the direction she ran, but he lost sight after only 40 yards. So we started outside the stand of pines and worked the break between the pines and a narrow stand of corn...no bood and no joy. We keep sweeping the same area and every time we return he says "I can smell it". Sure enough, as we looped out it was exactly upwind of where he kept smelling the critter. We ended up nearly tripping over it in some high switch grass. It turned out that he made a decent shoy, but the Rage broadhead deflected through the entire gut and exited near the rear end. My buddy can smell sniff em out.
Some outstanding story's here, wow!!! I don't have any real crazy blood trails but my brothers one doe was a long but successful one. He had shot a doe but made a terrible shot on her. He was on the ground and the doe was 20 yards away. When he shot the bottom limb on his longbow accidentally caught the frozen ground and his arrow shot way low and hit the front leg with one blade of his 2 blade broadhead. Just a graze Is all he did but like anything you have to track your animal. We started trailing her 1/2 hour later and we were surprised by the amount of blood. We trailed her for almost a mile and could see that we were pushing her. We also then started to tell she was dragging her right front leg by the way It looked. We stopped there and made some phone calls to some bowhunting buddies to help with the track. I took 4 guys with me and we set up ahead of the blood trail (the direction she was going) and my brother and dad stayed on the blood trail. I set us up perfect as here she came through exactly where I figured she would. I could see something dangling on her front right leg. She came by perfect at 20 yards but one of the guys missed so off she went. Too make a long story short we caught up to this deer again 7 hours later as she was running out of gas on just 3 wheels. A couple arrows In the boiler room and the track was finally done. This blood trail/recovery was by far our best track job. We took a ton of pride In getting her. I don't know of anyone that would've got this deer after seeing where they hit It. I think 99% of the hunters out there would've said nope we aren't tracking her. The black line Is where the one blade of the broadhead cut the outside of the doe's front leg. There was absalutly zero blood on the arrow shaft. Just the blade entered the outside of the leg. Her ankle ended up breaking because the tendon was cut from the one blade on the broadhead. If her ankle never would've broke we never would have gotten this deer. We got her because we pushed her hard.
Hunting over a swail/bedding area one afternoon. Right around clobbering time a nice big doe gives me a 20 yard shot. Let it fly and was sure I drilled her. She took off straight away from me towards a little hillside where it opens up and I can see if she crossed. All of the sudden she disappears. Sweet! She is down. Looked for arrow... nothing. Looked for blood/hair...nothing! This stuff is about 6-7 feet tall in most places. I couldnt' find NOTHING that night. Figured I had to be missing it because it was dark and decided to go out first thing in the morning. Went back to the scene and same as night before. No arrow... no blood...no hair ... not a thing. Start playing mind games with myself but was still sure I hit her good. After dinking around for awhile trying to find any sort of anything to point me in the right direction I decided to head towards where I saw her run and that hill. Make a long story short there wasn't a sign of a single thing to make me believe I hit this thing. Perplexed and pissed I started grid searching this 5 acre field myself looking for carcass. Hours later and sweating my rear off, I'm at my wits end. Decided I was going to call a couple buddies to help me do a body search. I dialed a number and went to lay down in the swail to take a break (i was WHOOPED!). Rest my head on my backpack and the phone rings for my buddy. I say..nevermind I found her lol. I laid my head down and looked to my right and was nose to nose with her laying there dead. I just hung up and shook my head lol. Still never found arrow and it was a high lung hit with nothing for blood except for where she was.
