RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

There was this one time me and a buddy of mine were hunting a bluff on my farm that over looks the Mohican River. There is a large white oak stand right on top of the bluff and when the iwnd is right it blows your scent off the bluff and out over the river. Well the wind was right one night so we trekked up the bluff in the Mid-afternoon and climbed into the stands that we had set prior to season. At about 5 o'clock a young 1.5 year old doe came into our set-up and with video camera rolling my buddy smoked the doe and she took four big leaps and off the bluff she went!!! We couldn't believe our eyes!!! She went right off over a rock face for about a 150 ft. fall to the river. We took the canoe down the river that night but we nver found her.

Yeah I would say deer want water badly after they have been shot!!!;):D

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

I have found that if the deer has been gutshot and there is water near they will find it. however I have never had a deer that was shot heart or lungs that went to water.

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

With all of this talk about research and biology books and Dr.'s names being droppedI'm beginning to get a inferiority complex.;)

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

Last November I shot my deer on some river bottom land and he headed straight to the river, swam across, and stumbled his way into the next property. Since the people I hunt with aren't on good terms with the neighbors we could not get my deer. I was pissed. I learned they later found it fifteen yards from the tree line across the river. Its ashame but it fed the coyotes.


Adam Bowman
Southwest Ohio

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

Crossing a river to escape isn't exactly going to water. I personnally have never had a deer die in water other than one that ran down hill 75 yards and piled up in a little stream he had to cross to get a way. He made it across but couldn't climb the hill. I watched it all from my stand.

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

Ya'll are missing the point...There are multiple wounds and arrow can inflict on an animal. An animal hit through both lungs will surely die from a combination of pneumothorax (collapsed lungs/can't breathe) and hemorrhage. In the case of major hemorrhaging...*The animal usually will not have time to make it to water, nor will it find the need to (Its not sick, its dead on its feet and it knows it)* Now, lets say you made a gut shot...This is more likely to cause hypovolemic shock, thus stimulating the deer's survival mode, and causing it to head towards water. Hypovolemia can take hours to kill, whereas exanguination (bleeding out) might only take seconds...with a heart hit, for example. See what Im saying? In one case the animal has time to go to water, and in the other it doesnt have time to think (*in my opinion - the animal's heart cannot pump enough blood to the brain to fully function...*when there is a hole in it*). For bear hunter's, you have seen this first hand when the bear makes a "death moan"; this is the noise that comes from "end stage" vocalization by a semi-conscious bear that can't inflate his lungs fully.

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

Again, many times, I have seen deer that have been gut shot that had ample opportunity to make their way to nearby ponds, creeks, and/or river and never go to water.

I would never rule out looking there if I was searching for a wounded animal but it is not automatic by any means in my opinion.

As I stated before way more often than not, they didn't head to water. I found one that was alive more than twenty-four hours later and he didn't go to water when all he had to do was continue down hill for about a half mile.

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

I can honestly say, I've never gut shot a deer with a bow. I've hit shoulder blades and skinned the brisket behind the leg, but I never had a green arrow. Maybe I'm just lucky. But with over 80 bow kills I think all this running to water talk is a like saying, "Suppose Cameron Diaz ask you out".

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

Magic MANNN...

Bears love water too....I pulled a Quebc bruin out of water that my father-in law shot....must be a sooth the wound instinct...

RE: do deer really go to water when they are wounded?
 

exactly. . .the wound burns, the water cools