RE: Funniest moment
Last year I shot a nice 8 point at 6 yards. It was at first light and I couldn't get him to stop. I had a slight front angle shot, but one most any of us could make 10 times out of 10 on a standing 3 D target.
At the shot he changed directions and run out of sight. At about 80 yards I heard limbs break and hoofs or antlers crashing. However 25 minutes later when pulled my arrow from the ground and examined it I could see it was a liver hit and there was only a very small speck of blood on the ground and over the next 80 yards there was only one other speck of blood and no deer.
I was hunting about 200 yards from my jeep, so I decided to take my stand to the jeep and wait for 4-5 hours. About 80 yards from my jeep I picked up a heavy blood trail which led 30 yards behind my jeep and over a very steep hill. The deer left a heavy blood trail on the blacktop in the state park which is heavily traveled by vehicles, hikers and dog walkers.
My fear was that if I, one of the hikers or a dog even looked over the edge of the hill the buck would go farther down the steep hill making recover a night mare and/or perhaps once again leave little to no blood trail.
So I cover the blood on the black top with leaves and tree bark; however, every time a car would pass the leaves would be blown out of place and I would have to replace them to cover the blood. On two occasions people walked dogs by and thank goodness both times they were on leases. Both times the dogs did pick up the blood trail and start to follow it...my heart would stop but the owners would pull the dogs back under control.
After 4 ½ hours of this which seemed like a week. I got up enough nerve to peek over the edge to see my buck laying 20 yards over the bank, he expired while watching his back trail. He scored 140 and gave me only a 20 yard drag to the road. It couldn't have worked out an better.