About 4:00 tonite, a big doe jumped out of nowhere right under my stand...another doe following. Right behind the was a nice enough 8 that I decided to take him. I saw another buck moving towards me, but couldn't see him clearly, so let the 8 pass. Eventually the other buck came close enough that I could see him, and he was another 8, and smaller. The stared at each other for awile, grunted and postured at each other awhile, and the bigger of the two finally gave me a nice almost broadside shot at about 15 yards. I'm up 20 feet. I heard the arrow hit, and it sounded good, and I saw my fletchings in him and they looked to be right where I wanted them for a lung shot. The buck jumped a little, and then walked off slowly with his tail down. About 10 feet from where I hit him, I saw my arrow. I watched him walk about 50 yards into the marsh before I lost sight of him. I waited 20 minutes to get out of my stand, and then went to the arrow. It had broken off RIGHT in front of the fletchings. I've never had this happen before, and I'm not sure what it means. I snuck out of the woods quietly and went home. Gave it 3 hours, and because it's both warm out, and rain is coming, decided to go out and try to recover my animal. I found just a little bright red blood where I hit him. Had just enough blood that I could follow a trail...every 15 yards or so would be a larger puddle of blood...like maybe pie plate sized...but not real heavy. It looks bright red, and it appeared to be in bubbles in places. Keep in mind this basically a swamp, so tracking was a NIGHTMARE. Anyway, about 100 yards from where I hit him, I found the rest of my arrow. Covered in blood. Nothing else on it. Followed the blood another 100 yards, to another of the "puddles", and the blood was just GONE. I spent awhile looking for the blood trail, and finally gave up. I'm thinking perhaps he doubled back on his trail at that point, and I missed where he went off his original course. I'm taking tomorrow off, and will be back there looking for him at first light of course. But I'm VERY confused. I'm not sure how the heck I could have hit him to get this situation..it looked and felt GOOD. I've been blessed to have never had to track a deer more than 50-75 yards until this one...I sure hate for this guy to die for nothing.
