What is everyones experience with gut shots?
- Were they trackable?
- How long til you started looking?
- Successful?

This isn't a good topic, but it happens. Thanks.....

Jetblast, YES, they are very trackable if you know what you are doing. This is where it becomes necessary to know where your shot went and what to do following the shot.

HOW LONG, if you definately know it's a gut shot, a minimum of 5 hours, more if it's possible and even better, the next day if it's late in the eveing.

Last year I took my best buck to date. Through the excitement, I didn't stop him and at the shot, he shot forward which resulted in a gut shot. I recovered him 50 yards into the thicket I watched him enter because I left him go. I glassed him while he ran to verify the shot, I stayed in my tree for 3 hours, got down and left and came back 4 hours later.

I'm going to post a link here to a post in the past and I'm going to bump it forward, I think it's important and everyone gave such great advice.

http://forum.hunting.net/bbs/topic.a...age=2&ARCHIVE=



<font color=blue>Good Luck and Good Shooting</font id=blue>

<font color=red>Rob</font id=red>

Edited by - Rob/PA Bowyer on 10/01/2002 21:56:51

1 experience
Trackable pretty much only by leaves scuffed up, maybe one or 2 drops of wet stuff, not blood.
4 hours from initial hit= not long enough, but it was an 80 degree day. Eventually found the deer, but way too late to salvage meat.
If given the whole situation again, I now know I would have done a couple things different and found the deer.
The whole ordeal was the worst experience of my hunting life.

Some things are true whether you believe them or not.

I have had two deer that were complete gut shots (through the guts and not angling into the vitals). I didn't find either one. The first I found out died almost 1000 yards from where I shot him in back of someone's house and a game warden was called to pick it up. We found some stomach matter that stopped about 50 yards from the shot and then did a grid search for several days over the weekend. I found out from a friend what had happened the following Monday.

The second one left no trace of being hit. I had decided the buck was too small after drawing back and was letting down. Since I had been holding for a little while in an awkward position when the let off of my single cam kicked in it jerked my arm forward unexpectedly and I hit my release. I thought I had completely missed the deer since he only ran 20 yards and then stood there. It was getting dark and I looked away to get my binoculars and when I looked back to where he was the deer was gone. I waited until dark and got out of the tree and my heart sank and my stomach churned when I saw my arrow coated with green material. There was nothing else indicating a hit and no sign to follow. My friend and I spent the next day doing a grid search in every wooded place within a 1/2 mile radius. Even after knowing the deer would have spoiled from the heat we searched through the blisters on our feet and never found him. I will never forgive myself for that one.

I have found a gut shot deer for my friend's father, but there was blood to follow and despite travelling a distance of about 500 yards we found him.

In all my years of hunting, I've only had one gut shot. Fortunately, the deer was walking along a fence line and when the arrow hit her, the sound of the arrow hitting the fence just beyond her made the deer turn and run within maybe 5 to 7 yards from my stand. I could see the entry point og the arrow and knew I had hit too far back. While the deer was looking to see what was going on, I nocked another arrow and was able to get off a double lung shot. She traveled maybe 40 yards before going down.

what got me was the fact that even after the gut shot, she just stood there and didn't even act as though she was hit. I'm just glad I was able to get a quick killing shot and recover her. I'd rather completely miss than to hit in the guts. Just my opinion.

Unfortunately I've gut shot two deer...fortunately, I found both. Rob made great points in his post. Whatever you do, be patient!!! Don't push them or they will go for hundreds of yards. Left alone for 6 hours or so, they will lay up within a few hundred yards and die. Both deer left good sign initially but then it faded to dime-sized drops after 75-100 yards. One was pushed by buddies who thought themselves master trackers and who wanted to push the deer to it's demise...eventually we ran out of sign on that deer but luckily upon doing a grid type search we found it several hundred yards away. I will NEVER push a gut shot deer again. The second I waited for about 5 hours and found it about 300 yards away. You're right, it's not a fun topic to talk about and nobody I know is ever proud of a gut shot but it does happen and we must know how to deal with it if we are ever involved in the tracking of a gut shot deer.

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