I'm in mourning. I thought I was an alright bow hunter, but maybe I've just been lucky in the past. I think I made a really dumb shot this past weekend.
This past Saturday I had just gotten my climber settled in when a doe followed by three bucks came trotting a q quick pace towards my tree. The doe went directly underneath me. The secon buck was real nice, a shooter for sure..and was coming at me at a quick pace.
just as the buck was about to enter my shooting lane, I grunted to stop him. He stopped too quickly and was mostly behind a tree looking right up at me, he was only about 10 yards from the base of my tree so I was confident I could place an exact shot at that range.
he was so close I was shooting down about 45 degrees, so I thought above the right shoulder and behind the shoulder blade would put it through both lungs. I let the arrow and fly and it hit exactly where I was aiming...here is a sketch of where I shot. The sketch makes it look a little too far back, the deer was probably even more quartering towards me. I felt like I was shooting down through the lungs kind of...
Make a long story short, I waited until next morning and after 6 hours across a quarter mile of tracking never found the buck. After we lost the trail amongst the forest floor coated with maple leaves. I took a break, then walked all the way to the lake another 1/4 mile looked in every thicket and grass in case he was laying there...nothing. I felt sick to my stomach.
Here are the clues to my mystery.
1) Arrow did NOT pass through, about 6-8 inches was sticking out and this broke off on a tree as the buck ran. This means 20 inches of arrow was inside the deer.
2) didn't find blood for first 70 yards. Then only small drips on the ground, never rubbed on anything off the ground. Even ran down rows of corn and never any blood on the stalks just dripped on the ground small drop every 10 feet. A few places blood was smeared on a corn stalk if he ran it over...but never on stalks when he was going down a row.
3) Some blood seemed dark, other seemed bright and watery..but could've mixed with melted morning frost.
4) Ran towards a lake.
I feel horrible, now I'm wondering what I was thinking taking this shot...it happened so fast, about 5 seconds from first seeing deer to shot. Now I'm 2nd guessing everything..and have since read the stupidity of a quartering towards shot. I just feel terrible.
Any hypothesis what I ended up hitting in the deer? Where was he bleeding from?
Feeling horrible in Wisconsin.
Nate