I have visions of English Longbowmen and hundreds of arrows arching 100 feet in the air...

I think when I posted that it MIGHT have been the beer talking!

The truth is that I don't bow hunt anymore. When I did, I think I would have taken a 25, MAYBE 30 yard, shot. I did a LOT of 3D shooting that year before the deer season, and I was very confident to 25 yards.

I only bowhunted for one season for a special doe-only control hunt in a local park. I shot two deer that year and didn't recover either. The first one I shot at 15 yards broadside on a calm doe. Watched the arrow go through the boiler room just where I aimed it. The arrow went through and was covered in blood. I waited 45 minutes and got down a went looking for her, but found very little blood to track in the waist high grass she'd run into. Grid searched all afternoon and never found her. Figured it was just bad luck and that everybody looses a deer sooner or later (I'd never lost one up until that day).

Went out the next day, and another doe came under my stand at 10 yards perfect broadside and again she didn't know I was up there so she was completely calm. I drew, put the 20 yard pin on her heart and fired. This time I hit her a little far forward in the shoulder and I'm not sure why, but I might have jerked it. The downward angle from my stand was pretty big at 10 yards and I remember having to lean way over to shoot. The arrow didn't pass through and I saw the arrows vanes sticking out of her side as she ran off, so I knew I hit her, too. This time I waited an hour figuring that the last time I went looking too soon and drove the deer off. Again, not a lot of blood, and the blood trail quickly tapered off to nothing about at the last point I actually saw her as she ran off. Again, I grid searched all day, and I had my wife out to help look for part of the afternoon. Didn't find her either. I can't describe how I felt, but it was somewhere between infuriated and sick to my stomach.

I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that if I'd made those shots with my muzzleloader I'd DEFINATELY had both deer hanging in the garage that evening. Especially the second one with the shoulder shot, which with a rifle/ML would have almost certainly dropped at the shot. So I decided right then that bowhunting wasn't for me. I sold my bow a month later and have been ML/CF rifle only since.

Mike