Good hit, no recovery
I was out last weekend with a couple hunting buddies. One of them shot a 6-pointer and here's what happened:
The deer was 10 yards out from his stand- he was in a 15ft. ladder stand. He says he shot when the deer was standing broadside, and saw the arrow hit right where he was aiming- right behind the shoulder, halfway up. The deer trotted off and stood for a minute or two, looking wobbly like it would fall down. It then slowly walked towards the marsh. One of the other hunters in a stand nearby watched it walking towards the marsh and said it looked like it fell down. 20 minutes later, my friend recovers his arrow- a complete pass-through. The arrow and fletching were covered with blood (bright red w/bubbles in it). After talking to the other hunter (who thought he saw it go down), they decided it was probably down and dead and went to recover it. As they walked towards the area it was in, the deer got up and took off. It walked down the township road where another member of our hunting party who was still in his stand saw it enter another swamp/cattail area. The 3 of them proceeded to track it into the swamp. There was a good blood trail virtually the whole way. (I joined them at this point) It was getting dark and we had lanterns and flashlights, but still had no trouble following the trail. The blood looked like lung blood- bright reddish-pink with bubbles in it. We tracked it for almost1 hour in which the deer travelled a distance of 600-700 yards! The other thing is, apart from the initial time it had bedded down, the deer did not bed down at all after this- it was moving the whole time. We eventually lost the trail and never did recover the deer. My hunting buddy was really distraught about the whole thing. He was shooting a 60lb bow w/ a Thunderhead 100 grain.
First of all, it was a lesson to me to ALWAYS wait and give a deer sufficient time to expire, unless you are 100% sure that it is dead- i.e. clearly seeing it collapse and watch it lying on the ground for a period of time.
I wanted everyone's opinion on what could have happened. It obviously was not a double-lung hit- I've never seen a double-lung hit deer run more than 70 yards. It's probable that even though the shot looked perfect, that it only hit 1 lung. The blood trail certainly looked like a lung had been puntcured. If that was the case, is it possible for a deer to travel 700+ yards after a 1 lung hit??? I've never seen that, and never even heard of that before. I've heard of 1-lunged animals travelling 400-500 yards, and have personally tracked a couple that went 200+ yards, but nothing that even comes close to the distance this deer covered. I'd love to hear your opinions....