Well sharing this as good lessons learned. First is so many times and even this year we hear horror stories or bad shots taken...well I was fully drawn on the group of 4 does but they trotted through my shot lane at 30-35 yards...didn't shoot. Had one than stand at 45 yards full broadside feeding on alfalfa....I thought about the shot but had one small branch that "could" have played a factor so didn't shoot. Then when it seemed they were gonna feed on and out of sight something got to them and they trotted right back down the line and all 4 stopped broadside or quartering away at 15 yards...chose the biggest and he was quartering away and I slipped the arrow right where I wanted to. Aimed for exit to be offside just below should and just on the front of opposite leg. She did the tucked butt and tail run off and into the woods....I instantly new dead deer...but stayed in the tree till dark (DON'T RUSH RECOVERY). The arrow we later would find out hit entrance side lung, sliced heart and caught touch of opposite lung...busting a rib to pieces on it's way. Arrow did all that and still ended up sticking 3 inches in the ground. So knowing I put a good hit I waited for pops to come with his bloodhound eyes and we took up the trail. Arrow was soaked in blood, I mean loaded more than any I've seen. However, we immediately found nothing in the alfalfa...knowing about where she entered the tree line we walked it till we found blood...a spec about the size of half a dime. For the nearly next hour we moved at a snail's pace at times finding serious mustard seed sized blood...she was on a death run and not pumping any blood. Welp that's because the exit didn't allow much to escape as broken bone and muscle filled the hole immediately... Crazy and just a reminder despite knowing I put a good hit on her I gave her 1 hour before we took up the tracking job...something I strive to do always if I don't see the deer go down. Just crazy to think that sometimes those deer on their death run without a functioning heart can make it as far as they do sometimes. I wouldn't have shared the story of a doe if it wasn't for the unusual blood trail and lessons learned/shown about knowing exactly where you hit the deer, not to take a less than good shot, and giving the deer time...also if legal get lumenoks because without it I wouldn't have been as 100% about the shot probably. Good luck to all and I pray this year we get less "lost deer" or "rushed shots" threads and more "Got him" or "She down" ones.
I will add and stress...no broadhead could have done any more...if anything some would have done worse...like not making it through rib or shoulder bone I hit....Slick Tricks busted through it all stuck in the ground and will live to kill another. Just wanted to throw that out there.
Great job finding the deer and not giving up. I had a very similar experience this year, great shot and very little blood. Exit hole was clogged heart and 1 lung cut but the doe ran 300+ yards. I waited an hour before beginning to track and I would have never found this deer without a dog.
Slick Tricks are awesome heads. Ty I know you hunt small tracts too it is so unnerving when a tracking job starts like that, I had a doe do the same thing last year except I didn't get 2 holes in her. I got lucky I found her in the area where they usually bed. Sometimes you have to take a minute to gather yourself to think clearly, I always have to tell myself to relax and slow down when I track
Yup...if we'd had better light the crazy thing is after entering the woodline we'd probably seen her after 20 yards or so...the darkness really kicked us hard.
A dark night makes it harder, tracked a buck till midnight even had 5 gridders on 25 acres searching for any blood, the trail stopped. The search party pulled out to regather at the garage and give up the buck was laying in the yard on the back fence line. Talk about going from a sleepless night to a sleepless night because of gutting, what a feeling
similar experience with my cow elk this year. Very slight quartering to (maybe 100-105* angle) and I slipped my G5 Striker right into her heart and near side lung behind her elbow at about 25 yards. Hit a rib on entry (sounded like a .22 going off) which ended up bending a blade and sent my arrow veering into her at an extreme angle toward her back offside hip. Tip of the head ended up barely poking out of her offside paunch- I mean barely...upon recovery could hear/feel gas hissing out of it like an inner tube but no blood coming out. There was very little blood on the trail which we later found to have mostly come from her nostrils. Mostly we were following her tracks for about 150-175 yards. She was dead w/in seconds of the shot but barely bled externally at all. This was on a heart and one lung shot! Don't want to hijack this thread so more details in my DIY Idaho Elk thread later today...
Patience was the virtue in this situation. Had you rushed anything, this story might have had a different outcome. Congrats again. Blessings........Pastorjim
I took the exact same shot last December, the arrow entered behind the ribs and punctured the diaphragm before it sliced both lungs and exited the far side cutting thru 2 ribs. Because the diaphragm was punctured, the deer could not draw breath and pump blood out of the hole, so we found no blood, it was just pouring out into the chest cavity. Had to do a grid search to find it 50 yards away.
I double lunged a doe in December once and she never bled other than the mist that came from her nose as she ran. There was snow on the ground so the mist was easy to see but I couldn't believe there was no blood from the shot. It looked like she was very fat and had long hair and it just plugged it up. She only went about 60 yards but it does happen.
Wanted to post to this earlier... Can't from work. I have gotten on very thin trails like that and followed them... only to realize once I finally found my deer that there was a massive trail 8-10 feet away and I had been following splashes of blood tossed by the deer running down the real trail. I heart shot a 6 point once that took my friend and me an hour to find the blood trail. We found a few specks where I thought he went... then we realized he had gone a different way than I thought. Same thing happened on a doe I shot last year. She started down a trail... there was copious blood then it appeared she turned down a trail... which I followed with only an occasional droplet. She ran parallel to this trail... but I turned down it because I saw the one or two drops... nothing after that. Once I found her... I backtracked to figure it out and my boots were literally covered in blood when I walked down the correct trail which was actually a few yards away from the wrong trail I followed. I always feel so stupid when I miss an obvious clue. Lesson to learn... Heart shot deer don't often make abrupt changes in direction... be careful when it appears that one did.
Shot an 8 point last year... perfect shot but a wad of fat stopped up the exit wound... Zero blood... zero. I found him a 100 yards away... I used my Cherokee/Choctaw sniffer.
