" Good job" to your buddy on working so hard to find the buck. It must eat at one to know there' s a wounded or dead animal out there. He might have walked up on it two weeks later to find it still required a kill shot, which would have put an entirely different spin on this story, and would have made his level of commitment justified.

I' m new to bow hunting, been gun hunting all my life, but this story reinforces what I try to keep in my head all the time I' m in my stand (along with the dozens of things about shooting the bow properly) and that is this: bucks deserve the same quality of shot selection that you' d give a doe. Or stated another way, don' t take a riskier shot at a trophy just because it might be the only shot you get. I wonder if your freind would have looked this hard for a wonded doe, or if he was looking for the rack? Maybe the rack persuaded him to pick a bad shot too.

I don' t know any of the facts, I just run these things through my mind when I' m on my stand. I don' t want to end up in your freinds shoes, but I know I will some day.

Thanks for sharing the story.