Someday isle
5 year old buck +
My situation - I’m a small property owner, 36 acres, we’re just your average deer hunters. We’ll of course shoot a big deer given the opportunity and we sure get excited when we see them on camera. Mostly we enjoy hunting and the taste of venison. Last year we put three deer in the freezer. We’re down to six lbs of burger and one backstrap. So it’s time to refill. Only my third sit of the year and my intention was to take the first decent shot opportunity I got and put a deer in the freezer. Opportunity presented itself on an antlerless deer, turned out to be a button buck. I know some people have opinions on shooting button bucks but that’s a topic for another time.
Here’s my story and the purpose of the thread - what I thought was a solid shot turned into a tracking and trailing challenge. I’ll share what I did, how both experience and luck prevailed, and how I eventually recovered this deer. I know there are lots of very experienced hunters on here but also some new ones. I’m probably right in the middle. Share how your experience has helped you trail a wounded or fatally shot deer. Small tidbits of information or full stories are great and we can all learn from them.
Pretty mundane story to start with. I had just texted my wife that it’s been really dry. Our food plots were struggling and not showing much use. To top it off there was a storm in Springfield, about two hours drive from us, and headed our way. My previous sit had also been cut short by a pop up storm. I told her it might just be one of those years but you can’t shoot them if you’re not out there. I was going to stick it out until 6 p.m. and then get out before the storms hit.
Less than twenty minutes later along came this deer. I took what I thought was pretty close to a broadside shot right at 20 yards. Seemed like a good hit but maybe just a tiny bit high and a little further back than a heart shot. I for sure thought double lung. Great impact sound, the arrow passed through and both the deer and the arrow actually spun around 180 degrees after the pass through.
Normally I’d wait a half hour after a shot like that but knowing there was a storm coming within an hour or an hour and a half I gave it twenty minutes. I climbed down, went to the truck and dropped off some stuff I didn’t need and went back to the spot where I knew the arrow was laying. Picked up my arrow and it was covered in good blood. So far so good. Only a couple drops of blood initially. Not too unusual for a shot that might have been a little high. I figured once the chest cavity filled with blood I’d eventually start seeing more blood. I never did. Tracking was slow. I knew from past experience that an arrow shot deer will often travel initially in the direction that the arrow was headed. That was the case with this deer. A few drops here and there. Being dry and dusty was a benefit for a while because the deer followed one of my food plot trails for about fifty yards and where I couldn’t see blood I could see where dust was kicked up and could slowly follow those spots until I’d find another small drop of blood. After about fifty yards the deer turned into the woods. By now the sky was becoming overcast and I really started to worry about rain. It was still an hour before sunset but I already had my flashlight out looking for blood and other sign. After about 100 yards I quit seeing any blood. I had some pink survey tape that I was using to mark my last blood every time I lost the track. I looked back at the direction of the trail then began slowly walking in semi circles out in front of the path hoping to see something. I found a pile of fresh deer droppings. I’ve seen this before in a deer that was fatally hit. I made the calculated assumption that it was from my deer and proceeded again from that spot. Then the rains came. I probably should have left the woods until the storm passed but I kept going. By this time I knew it was raining too hard to find any blood since it was so sparse anyway.
I kept replaying the shot in my head and still was very confident that it had been a good shot. I was getting frustrated by the lack of blood but still believed it too be a good shot. I now decided to,change my approach. I knew I wouldn’t find any blood so I started circling around the last sign and instead of looking down for blood I looked outward hoping to see a deer instead. That finally paid off. I found him laying at the bottom of a small hill right behind a wet weather creek. He had only gone about 200 yards. My entrance hole was right where I thought it would be. Just a little high but still in the lung area. He must’ve been quartered towards me at a sharper angle than I thought though because the exit was low in front of the rear hind quarter. I had only hit one lung. I was mostly lucky to find him, and I should have waited out the storm and not been in the woods with lighting around me, but I also think that past experience had told me it was a dead deer and that I was confident in how I was trailing him because I had an idea of where to go and how to go about it. What seemed like a long and arduous task ended with a deer in the back of the truck almost two hours after the shot.
Please share your tracking experience.
Here’s my story and the purpose of the thread - what I thought was a solid shot turned into a tracking and trailing challenge. I’ll share what I did, how both experience and luck prevailed, and how I eventually recovered this deer. I know there are lots of very experienced hunters on here but also some new ones. I’m probably right in the middle. Share how your experience has helped you trail a wounded or fatally shot deer. Small tidbits of information or full stories are great and we can all learn from them.
Pretty mundane story to start with. I had just texted my wife that it’s been really dry. Our food plots were struggling and not showing much use. To top it off there was a storm in Springfield, about two hours drive from us, and headed our way. My previous sit had also been cut short by a pop up storm. I told her it might just be one of those years but you can’t shoot them if you’re not out there. I was going to stick it out until 6 p.m. and then get out before the storms hit.
Less than twenty minutes later along came this deer. I took what I thought was pretty close to a broadside shot right at 20 yards. Seemed like a good hit but maybe just a tiny bit high and a little further back than a heart shot. I for sure thought double lung. Great impact sound, the arrow passed through and both the deer and the arrow actually spun around 180 degrees after the pass through.
Normally I’d wait a half hour after a shot like that but knowing there was a storm coming within an hour or an hour and a half I gave it twenty minutes. I climbed down, went to the truck and dropped off some stuff I didn’t need and went back to the spot where I knew the arrow was laying. Picked up my arrow and it was covered in good blood. So far so good. Only a couple drops of blood initially. Not too unusual for a shot that might have been a little high. I figured once the chest cavity filled with blood I’d eventually start seeing more blood. I never did. Tracking was slow. I knew from past experience that an arrow shot deer will often travel initially in the direction that the arrow was headed. That was the case with this deer. A few drops here and there. Being dry and dusty was a benefit for a while because the deer followed one of my food plot trails for about fifty yards and where I couldn’t see blood I could see where dust was kicked up and could slowly follow those spots until I’d find another small drop of blood. After about fifty yards the deer turned into the woods. By now the sky was becoming overcast and I really started to worry about rain. It was still an hour before sunset but I already had my flashlight out looking for blood and other sign. After about 100 yards I quit seeing any blood. I had some pink survey tape that I was using to mark my last blood every time I lost the track. I looked back at the direction of the trail then began slowly walking in semi circles out in front of the path hoping to see something. I found a pile of fresh deer droppings. I’ve seen this before in a deer that was fatally hit. I made the calculated assumption that it was from my deer and proceeded again from that spot. Then the rains came. I probably should have left the woods until the storm passed but I kept going. By this time I knew it was raining too hard to find any blood since it was so sparse anyway.
I kept replaying the shot in my head and still was very confident that it had been a good shot. I was getting frustrated by the lack of blood but still believed it too be a good shot. I now decided to,change my approach. I knew I wouldn’t find any blood so I started circling around the last sign and instead of looking down for blood I looked outward hoping to see a deer instead. That finally paid off. I found him laying at the bottom of a small hill right behind a wet weather creek. He had only gone about 200 yards. My entrance hole was right where I thought it would be. Just a little high but still in the lung area. He must’ve been quartered towards me at a sharper angle than I thought though because the exit was low in front of the rear hind quarter. I had only hit one lung. I was mostly lucky to find him, and I should have waited out the storm and not been in the woods with lighting around me, but I also think that past experience had told me it was a dead deer and that I was confident in how I was trailing him because I had an idea of where to go and how to go about it. What seemed like a long and arduous task ended with a deer in the back of the truck almost two hours after the shot.
Please share your tracking experience.