ORIGINAL: mauser06
definently went against all the rules on that one! the others beat you up enough...but to learn from your mistakes, you must realize that you did indeed make one.
everything about the scenario screams WAIT. im pretty sure this is your first season bowhunting??
hard to learn to WAIT when in doubt.....we all understand meat can spoil, yotes, wolves etc etc can beat you to the deer....but finding a spoiled DEAD deer is better than jumping and chasing a wounded one and never finding it. you cannot tell me you did not jump the deer...whether or not you know you did or not, YOU DID. a deer wounded even in the guts is almost always going to bed within a couple hundred yards...not well over a mile away.
and giving up because its thick and your getting scratched up? thats another pooooor excuse. sorry, but to learn from your mistakes you gotta realize there was a mistake made. i dont care how thick it is...where theres a will, theres a way. and to find downed game, the will should be VERY strong! that would be like me saying "oh the coonhound is treed deep in the briars im not gunna walk in there to get him" (had a dog that would die before he ever left a tree no matter what..if we didnt go in and get him he wasnt leaving)
not trying to beat you up....just trying to help you learn. hope you take these posts and realize there were mistakes made and you need to learn from it. im pretty sure dang near everyone makes similar mistakes the first time or 2 around before they wise up...some never wise up...thats the beauty of the internet and particularly forums like these...GREAT way to learn QUICKLY because 10000 other guys likely been there and done that...no matter what it is...
good luck in the future....going back out where you lost blood in the morning would be a GREAT thing to do...though she could be a good ways away since you guys were beating brush and spooking her and then were lost and beating more brush....
just the length of the trail should sent ques that maybe it wasnt such a great shot....after 100 or 200yds you should have realized that...
people often talk about bubbles in blood...i bet most of them never seen true lung blood....its not bubbles...its FROTHY...hard to describe...but its frothy..think large foamy bubbles...little air bubbles in blood isnt lung blood...by the time most lung shot deer start showing frothy blood, you can see them dead...
Hey a couple things to this post. First he said his friend shot her, not him. Yeah they probably went into find her a little to soon, but I bet you've made that mistake before too. At lest he went in after it and tried to find it. Sounds like he went aways too over a mile I think he said. I don't know about you but going into thick sh*t and getting way in there can really get you lost. I would really like to find the thing I killed but if I'm getting along ways in there and just pushing her. I think I'd say ok its not worth getting lost, and I'll leave her. Yeah I guess I'm a bad hunter. And I guess that something else is going to have to eat her sense I can't find her.
The guy messed up bad shot, didn't wait long enough, didn't track all through the night. Maybe he should quit hunting. Never hunt again. Never shoot at a deer that might move.
Sorry I'll stop I'm sounding like a Da.