After my morning sit I decided to walk around the property I hunt looking for sign and to put out a couple cameras. While walking on a logging road that cuts through a over grown field full of prickers/briars and all other types of tick habitat I noticed antlers, big antlers! I ducked down and tried to assess the situation. Is it a dead deer? Is it a bush that looks like antlers? Is it a buck bedded? I take out the binoculars and slowly get to my knees... its the biggest buck I have ever seen on the property! He is bedded down 30 yards from me facing the opposite direction and has no clue I am there.
I duck back down to decide what to do...1st thing I did was take the camcorder out and get some footage of the deer. Evidence/proof in case I never saw him again. Next I range him, 30 yards! My heart is racing at this point and I duck back down to plot my next move. I decided the best way to get a shot is to stand up and get his attention, and when he stands up I will shoot.
Here i go.... I stand up get the bow into position and I hear a deer blow and out of the corner of my eye a doe jumps up and bounds outta the field. The buck instantly stands up on full alert, broadside at 30 yards. I put the pin behind the shoulder and squeeze the release. The arrow takes off on perfect flight towards his vitals and then turns downward and left sharply and I hear Whack! My 1st thought was I must of hit something and deflected. The deer bounds through the field onto the bank of apple trees and stops. He is 80 yards and looking right at me. He stared at me for 2-3 mins then slowly limped off, following the trail of the doe.
I walk over to my arrow. The zebra nugent arrow is still black and white. My heart sinks, I missed... After closer inspection the rage broadhead has white/brown/black hair in it as well as some fat. And the blades were bent. On the wrap was a couple splatters of blood and what seemed to be a small scratch/chunk taken out of the shaft. I find hair at impact on the ground as well as a few spots of blood. I walk over to the bank and get on the deer run. Im following spots of blood the size of a dime until I get to where he stopped and looked at me, at that spot is a softball size pool of bright red blood. I back out.
After talking it over with my Uncle we decide that I hit him in the front of the brisket or in the leg. Considering no vitals are hit we decide to get on him ( 1 hr after shot), hoping to make him bleed out, Or if a leg shot have the bone that was hit cut him up some more. The blood trail is pretty easy to follow and when he stops there is a good pool of bright red blood. The blood is already dry on the leaves at this point. We get to a stonewall fence and there is a wet pool of blood, so we follow it for another 100 yards and yet another softball size pile of clotting blood. We found one more tiny drop of blood ten yards away and then nothing! We circled and circled and circled....nothing. All in all the we tracked 500-600 yards and had 5 of them softball sized pools of blood. When the arrow was shot it appears it deflected off a pricker bush stalk (right infront of the buck) that was about as wide as my index finger, causing the arrow to go low left at last second. And the whack I heard was the arrow hitting bone of some sort.
I guess I would like to know everyones opinion/advice....Im sick to my stomach over this and just need to hear something.