By luck more than anything else I found the doe I had hit Friday evening on Sunday morning. Unfortunately it was after the coyotes found her. They made a mess of her rear end. The story starts on Friday evening. I had my video cam strapped to the tree overlooking my food plots. They had been seeing more action lately. Around 3:45 I see 2 does come out of the woods and start eating clover about 150 yards away. They move in and out of the corn slowly making their way closer to my stand. Once I have them where the camera can see them in the corn, I start the video. Deer are really hard to pick up in corn on that little bitty screen when you need reading glasses to begin with. So I get about 15 minutes of me trying to find them and then you can see one here and there. When the smaller one is about ready to exit the corn in front of me. I position the camera to capture the shot, if one comes about and get ready. The doe enters the turnips and heads straight for me. She even stared up at me a couple of times. She gets to 15 yards and starts eating and slowly turning sideways, I draw and wait till she is almost perfectly broadside. I release and watch my arrow hit her very high in the back above the shoulder. She takes off across the field and runs into the woods 170 yard away. Not a good sign!! I wait a few minutes and get down to check my arrow. It is sticking in the dirt right where she stood. Hardly any blood on the arrow, only a little meat and some fat. I check her trail for a little ways and find a few drops of blood. Time to back out and wait till morning. Mobow is coming up that night to hunt the weekend and has his laptop along. We look at the shot on the video and determine she dropped a ton at the shot and the hit is extremely high, maybe above the spine. I sat in my stand until 8:00 Saturday morning until the sun was up enough to take up the trail. There was very little blood to follow but one spot looked to have some bubbles in it, maybe I did get a lung. Then Don shows up to help and we trail her for probably 300 yards drop by drop. And this deer would not stay on a trail or walk a straight line. I don’t know how many times we lost the trail only to find it again going in a different direction. But she never did lay down the whole way. Finally we lost all blood. We were on the side of a big hollow so we walked it out and looked in the bottom and across it to see if we could see her laying there. With no more sign and no deer we gave up thinking I had hit her above the spine in the backstraps. Forward to Sunday morning. I had hunted out of my ground blind over a clover plot that was getting hit pretty hard until 8:15 and hadn’t seen a deer. I packed up and headed back to the trailer. While waiting for Don to return I decided to go for a walk in my CRP field to see if any deer were using it to bed in. On the way back I chose to walk the dry creek that is the property line behind the trailer and look for arrow heads. About half way back I came across a blood trail crossing the creek bed. At first I thought the neighbors had shot a deer, because they have a stand right behind there. But looking at the blood splatter the drops were pointing away from my property towards the neighbors. I thought, could this be my deer? Again once out of the creek the trail was very difficult to follow and the deer would not walk a straight line. Don finally came over to help and he saw some blood down in the creek. After another 70-80 yards He jumped down into it and said there is the deer. Upon examining her it definitely was the doe I hit on Friday evening. She had jumped down in the creek and crawled up under a root wad. The coyotes had found her and drug her out and chewed on her hams. Here is the root wad we found her under. Entrance,(it's been chewed on a bit too.) Exit, She ended up traveling between ½ and ¾ of a mile and died 60 yards away from my trailer. We didn’t do an autopsy but by looking at the entrance and exit wounds, I guess I went just under the spine and got the top of the offside lung. These deer are sure tuff critters. I think the angle of the shot got changed because of the way she dropped at the shot. I’ll send the video to Justin and have them do some editing on it and post it up when it’s ready. She’s not one of my bigger deer, but this story will rank right up there with the best of them.
Congrats on a tough trail John. From the picture, it looks like you didn't actually go 'under' the spine but through the processes and down through the offside lung. (1 lung hit)
Toughest track job I've been on, that's for sure. For the majority of the time, all we would find is a very small drop, and usually just a speck, of blood. I'm not sure how we even saw some of them. There was very, very little blood on the ground. Very little. I learned alot on this one, no doubt. Congrats again man. I'm just glad we found her.
Good deal jmb...at least you found her. I agree, they are tough no doubt. Its amazing how far they can go on one lung sometimes.
Unfortunately, I'm guessing no, since it was so warm and two days later. Also, it's not really a good idea to eat the meat after predators and rodents have found their way in. JM, congrats on the deer too bad it didn't work out better... I'm impressed that mobow actually found some blood. He must see deer blood better than pig blood! :D
Unfortunately, no it got up to 70* Saturday and the coyotes had chewed up the hams and entrance hole too. Didn't want to take any chances. But I called it in with one of my tags when I got home. She will be included in my harvest this year.
Hell of a story John!! You damn right these deer are tough. My dad shot a doe 2 weeks ago and drilled her In both lungs. He centered one lung and caught the edge of the other. This doe lived for 6 hours, he ended up putting 2 more arrows In her to kill her. One right beside the hole In this pic and the other In the ass. The holes here are where the arrows entered. They both exited right behind the opposite shoulder.
Awesome story, John... I know we all hate the results of instances like this, but it's these tracking jobs that make us better bowhunters in the end.
Much respect to you, John for tagging that deer!!! Too many guys would not have AAND they would have posed with it for a pic and then walked away .... RESPECT!!
Congrats on the doe John. Sounds like a tough tracking job but at least you know what happened to her
Dang John, tough break! Glad you found her though. Those one lungers can be tough man. It does look like you caught the top of the off side lung. Even though you most likely cant salvage any meat, Im still going to extend a congrats on a great looking Doe SO, Congrats
John, as much as it stinks having it end like that, you did a great job tracking,and certainly put in the effort. Congrats for both the kill and the effort...oh and 50 points for our team:D
