jeff,

sorry to here that man, it happens, I need to keep this short, I am sitting in my stand right now using my phone..to check our team thread. keep your head up, after this hunt tonight I will chat with ya some more. sorry again.

the wind here is perfect and its beautiful out, I gotta go...two and a half hours till dark...

troy

The bottom line is, you didn't give up the search! Even with a good shot, sometimes they just keep going. She won't go to waste. She will feed others in the woods.

Jeff, you did NOTHING wrong ..... you even found her ..... in the north, the weather would have you feasting on her backstraps this very night ..... it happens ......

Good luck, Troy.

Thanks early and troy......it sucks.

Sorry to hear it man.......truly. Sounds like you did it right, actually. If the hit was a tad high, and the exit a tad high, all the blood could have stayed in her chest cavity, and not escaped. Hitting an artery is what causes the "spray" that is so easily visible when tracking..... I'm not sure what else you could have done......

And yeah, I guess the meat was probably bad after that long......I will say, though......It's a very POSITIVE thing that you found her. What's even more sickening is when you don't....

If you hit her back a little, like you should for a quartering away shot, she might have had a full stomach from the night feed and the contents can plug up the entrance and exit holes. I have had that happen. When their stomach is full it can push up into the lung area pretty good. If you get that chewed up vegetation floating around in there you might not get a blood trail.

I made what looked like a perfect quartering away shot on a buck once. When I got down and found my arrow, it had green goo all over it and some blood.I left and came back a few hours later and found him within 75 yards. It was a perfect shot but his stomach was so full that it was well up in his ribcage. My arrow had entered between the 2nd and third last ribs and came out by his front shoulder. Passed thru both lungs, but not much of a blood trail either from the chewed up vegetation plugging the holes.

Hang in there man. This happens to us all if we hunt longenough. You didn't do anything wrong, the weather was just your enemy on this one. You made every effort to recover her. Something you learned from this hunt may help you recover the next one.

its a crappy feeling, but if you hit her high, and diddnt hit her arteires, then you wont get any good blood trailing, did you gut her? if you did you would have been able to tell what happened, Her chest filled with the blood, and until the blood got to the hole she wont loose any... SO, its not your fault.

I shot a doe 2 years ago in rifle season with a 180grain 30-06 at 90 yards broadside, hit her high, went to the spot found some fur and a drop of blood no bigger than the end of a pencap, and that was it, she ran maybe 800 yards before she piled up, i gutted her out and as soon as i punctured the diaphram, blood was EVERYWHERE i mean that in every sence of the word, it was insaine how it worked out, Dont feel bad she will feed many other creatures, nothing you could do.

Dont feel bad it'll happen to everyone every once in a while.
Ryan.

Get back at it in the morning and learn from it. Lack of blood trail is very common for the first 40 to 50 yards. You always have to watch them until they are out of site, mark that spot in your mind with many references. Dont be to hard on yourself. Sometimes nature will humble you for all the right reasons. your friend Chris

I think John gave a pretty good scenerio Jeff. I have had this happen but got lucky with the weather being cold and found the deer to salvage the meat. You have been hearing this for awhile im sure. It happens to all of us. I have had them fill up and then blow massive blood through there nose right before they go down and no blood in between. My doe last season, on a perfect double lung pass thru, went around 500-600 hundred yards with a blood trail 2 feet wide, up and down hills, and half ways across a pond before i found her floating. Deer can be tough, keep your chin up and keep pushing on This can bring up the question of, is hot weather hunting a good thing.

Gmmat,

I don't see how anyone could be overly critical from what you described.

The one comment I would make would be to do an autopsy on her. It is such a learning experience to look insidewhen something like this happens,especially when there are so many questions in your head. I wouldn't pass up the chance to see what happened on the inside of her.

I could show you pictures of a buck where the entrance and exit woundsindicated itwas a perfect double lung/heart shot, just behind the shoulder. Reality told meit couldn't have been. When I opened him up, he was liver shot...strange but true. Lastyears buck was still alive fifteen minutes (timed) afterbeing shot through the lungs and heart...strange but true.

Keep your chin up. If a guy hunts long enough, there are going to be some disappointments in recovery. Of course we don't like it and doeverything we can to prevent it, but we don't live and operate in a perfect world.