ok so today i was siiting ina bunker i had made out of branches and stuff, and after about 1 and 1/2 hours a monster buck finally walks up. and when i decide he is close as he is gunna get, i shoot. i hit him right behind the vitals probably about 3 inches off. it was a 60 foot shot. we were so happy that i had finally shot my first buck and also its on bow, so we only waited about 30 minutes and we were following the blood trail. every 5 or 10 minutes to give him a little more time. and about 55 minutes after my shot we see him bedded down and then he see's us and he jumps up and runs off. we follow the trail and every once and a while we find a drop or too about every 20 feet. also when we were first trailing him i found a big pile of seimen. we seriously were out there all day. i shot him at 8:20 and we stopped trying around 4:00. the overall blood trail off what we could find was about 50 yards long.


we never found the deer again. i just want to know how long he will live and if he lives that would be the best.

i would go back adn look for him tommorrow

He's dead.

If you hit three inches behind the vitals (the vitals being the heart/lung area) then you likely hit the liver.

He won't survive, I suggest you go back out tomorrow and search until you find your buck. Take some friends, family, etc and do a grid search starting at where you last jumped him.

The first mistake you made was only waiting 30 minutes because you didn't see him go down and that led into your next mistake, jumping him and pushing him. Good luck. Might I suggest some reading pinned to the top of this forum.

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=1665984

Youll be lucky if you ever see that deer again. I hope you do but like Rob mentioned if you don't see it die than don't even think about pushing it. If you see one bedded you shot, back out and come back several hours later. Good luck, hope you find him.

It amazes me how many people are out in the woods hunting live animals and really have no idea what they are doing.

Nothing short of embarrassing.


Do everyone a favor (mostly the animals) and take a day or 2 to actually read and learn all the stuff you should already know considering you are out there hunting.

This site has enough information at the top of page 1 to help people not be clueless............my advice would be to use it so you can start finding some of the deer you kill.

Lost deer happen in hunting............when it is due to COMPLETE hunter ignorance it is a lot harder to stomach.

Give the guy a break, it was his first buck, dont tell me you werent itching to find your FIRST buck after thinking you made a good shot. Childers, I feel your pain, I actually lost my first buck I ever got a shot on, the shot was too high and my dad and I searched hell and high water but no luck, sometimes things just dont go as planned. I hope you find your buck, and dont get discouraged.

Yep agreed, hope you find it too!

First or 100th.........that's not the issue. Not having the first clue about what to do after the shot is the issue. Excitement didn't cause this mess......ignorance did. There is no reason why anyone should be in the woods without the BASIC knowledge of what to do after a shot.


I was.......I was so fired up I could barely sit still. Then I calmed myself down, looked at my watch, went over the whole thing one more time and then called my brother and we went and had lunch because I knew I needed something to pass the time...........that was the longest hour and a half I can ever remember........but I KNEW it was the right thing to do so I did it. If I had not known what to do I may have never recovered him.

I feel the deer's pain........this guy will get over it soon enough........the deer is the one suffering a slow painful meaningless death. How about a little perspective huh??

Don't go as planned?..........this was not a deflected shot or poor penetration or rain or any other unavoidable variable.........this was 100% pure ignorance. He knew the shot was bad and STILL chased the deer.......then kept on chasing it even after he jumped it. The sadest part of all is that he uses the terms "we" indicating he was not alone. Trying to contemplate that their was more then one person there during this nightmare and neither one knew what to do is too nauseating to even think about.


One good thing is that the entire post may be a hoax...........just a feeling I get by reading it.........I hope I am right about that.

No S&@# atlasman.. y do u get on here and provide negativeness.. u should give him tips on how to get that deer, not critique him on his (wanting to find his first buck)