Okay it is not entirely true that it is my first bow kill. I did shoot a small buck years ago when I was in High School with a bow that my parents had bought me, but I was unable to recover the deer until I saw the buzzards on him.

This week, however, I was able to harvest and successfully recover my first deer with a bow! It is the archery only season in Texas right now and a friend invited me to his ranch to hunt. The first evening we were there I had this doe come in with her two “button-buck” yearlings. When I first went to draw on her the dove that were around me scattered and it spooked her back into the brush, but her yearlings remained. She bleated at them a few times to get them to follow her but they were unwilling, so she finally came back into the clearing (see if you let the kids make the rules it always ends badly)! She was at 18 yards quartering away when I let the arrow fly. I could tell that it was a good hit and she ran directly away from me and I thought that I heard her fall. I gave it some time and then went to try to find her.

I immediately found my arrow which had been a complete pass-through and was covered in blood! But, there was no blood on the ground. I looked and looked for even one spot of blood but could not find any! So I started walking the direction that she had run. After about 15 minutes of looking I heard her yearlings spook from behind some trees in front of me. When I went around behind them she was laying there! She had only run about 50 yards (the arrow entered near the rear of her ribcage and exited right behind the front shoulder taking out at least one lung – the picture shows the exit wound). I guess that because I hit her a little back and about half way up her body she did not bleed out much (even the ground around where shewas layingonly had about half a cup of blood on the ground). Her body cavity, however, was FULL of blood.

I guess the lesson of this hunt is to aim a little lower so that they start to bleed outside of their body quicker. Even though the blood trail was disappointing I am THRILLED to have my first recovered whitetail with a bow!!!