Thanks GV,

The whole point that Ground is refusing to see is that you have to learn from your mistakes and improve on them. Granted, this could have been a fluke accident on Grounds part, and he may be able to kill deer in this same situation for the rest of his life and never loose one, but lets face it, that probablly won't happen. To continue saying that you would take the shot again isn't right. Why? Well, for a number of reasons. I am sure Ground feels bad, but to say that he would do it over again isn't something to brag about. It shows a lack of compassion about the deer. I'll kill any deer that I want to (as long as it is legal and I have a tag), but that doesn't mean that I dislike deer. I love them and I always feel bad when I see deer hit by cars and such, but I am a hunter, I know the importance of hunting, so I will go out and whack one or two a year. Also, like I everyone has been trying to say, you have to learn from your mistakes and IMPROVE them. To say that you would do it over again shows that you aren't willing to change your attitude. What is gonna happen next year when a small buck is standing at 40 yards with 10 minutes of light left? Anyone who really cared would remember what happend with the doe, and they wouldn't take the shot because they didn't want to risk it.

Look Ground, wounding deer isn't something that anybody wants to see happen. You HAVE TO minimize the chance of this happening by improving yourself and your shot selection. If you aren't going to reflect back on this and try and learn, well, that just reflects poorly on you. Don't look at like you wounded a deer, actually think about that deer for a minute. It was a living, breathing creature, not just a target. You shouldn't have any attitude like "crap, I lost it, o well" you should be kicking yourself in the butt, getting ticked off at YOURSELF. That is something everyone here has gone through. If you didn't feel that and you aren't willing to try and prevent that, well, then you need to lay that bow down and use a rifle. If you are willing to change your techniques and shot selection from here on out, in hopes of preventing this from happening, then I wish you many years of good luck.

GV,

The main reasons I have been incredibly picky about my shot selection are because I realize that I am not just shooting a target, I am shooting at a living creature and I OWE it to that deer to make it as fast and painless of a death as possible. Also, I just don't want to feel that feeling ever again. Knowing that you lost a deer is one of the worst feelings in the world. I actually made myself sick last year with the doe that got away. I threw up a few times that night, not to mention that I didn't get any sleep.

One other thing is that this year, I had little voices popping in my head when I had that doe at 15 yards quartering towards me. These voices were all comments from the guys that ripped into me. I remember standing there thinking about everything they had said. Actually, another reason for my patience is that I didn't want to let those guys down who had helped me.