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

Some will and some won't. If they are hit so they don't die immediately they will have a physiologic induced thirst. As the blood volume drops the body starts to pull fluid into the vascular system to try to restore voulume and pressure, this fluid shift causes dehydration and hence thirst.

The deer may or may not act on the urge but it will be there. Some may be too sick/weak to get up and try to get to water. Some may think hiding and staying put are in their best interest.

Some go to water some don't. There is a physiological mechanism to send them there. They like most creatures with higher level brain function can overridel it.

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

x3 I guess...and just to set the record strait, I personally have had to track many many more deer hit by people I know, that required tracking, than those I myself made a bad shot on . After following 6-12 a season for others it gets easier to tell where deer are going in any particular instance....most of the time. Still, never whitnessed deer going to water only because they were thirsty

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

Everyone has a right to their own opinion. I can respect that. I can only relate the experiences I have had and makereasonable conclusionsfrom thoseevents.

A friend of mine owned some land that had an old railroad bridge on it. Yearsago he was hunting with a rifle and shot at a buck standing on the bridge. To his surprise at the shotthe buck jumped over the side of the bridge into the water below. When he got up to where the deer was standing, he looked over the edge of the bridgeand sure enough on the river bank lay his dead buck. He thought he made a good shot. When he skinned that deer out there wasn't a bullet hole to be found, but the deer did have a broken neck. Using the same reasoning I see in some of the posts on this thread I would conclude this deer was seeking water after he was shot if I didn't know the truth behind the story.

Again if one looks at it objectively in most cases, good cover is often in areas that arein near proximity tocreeks or rivers. The fact that water is close by in my experience is more coincidental than it is a factor in deer recovery.

My experiences, all be it not as many, also include elk. If any animal loves water it is an elk. They definitely seek water to cool themselves. A few years ago I hit a decent 5x5 too far back. Don't believe for a minute that fatally wounded animals won't go up hill. He went up the mountain side before going down in a valley (where there were creeks and ponds), then up the side of the adjacent mountain almost to the topwhere he expired. He was approximately a mile from where I shot him; not really close to any water although there was plenty of water to be had.

While we are on the subject of fever I will give one more example. I do believe that septic shock from a wound in an animal causes their body temperature to go up. A few years back I had a horse that for no good reason went terminally ill with a "twisted gut". Try as we might we did everything over the course of four days to try and save her. She was feverish AND badly dehydrated. You could not get that horse to drink a drop. I realize it is not a deer but the principle is still the same; feverish, dehydrated, and still wouldn't drink or seek out water.

I think as a human we often times are held captive by our powers of reason (if that makes any sense). We create a paradigm that keeps us from accepting an idea that is unreasonable to our way of thinking.

Our strengths for the most part are intellectual in comparison to the rest of theanimal kingdom. Deer on the other hand don't reason things out, they survive on their instincts; almost agalaxy away from our thought process. It is obvious to us that when we get dehydrated we drink to replentish lost fluids; that is sensible, logical, and we know it is medically correct. As illustratedin the above example with the horse, animals don't respond the same way we do.

Would they purposefully seek out water when wounded? My feelings are it iscertainly a reasonable place to check if you have lost the blood trail but my experience has been that cover plays a bigger role than water.

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

So there's two that really didn't GO TO WATER because they were wounded. They were just like the chicken, trying to get to the other side. My point is made. The water was just there.

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

I havent read hardly any of this thread, but i can say my uncle shot a decent sized 8-pointer a few years ago, deer went to the river, and he never found it.... BUT i was found a few days later by someone he knows(small town) at the rivers Dam. I thought that was pretty wild.

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

I can think of 5 different deer that I did not shoot but I was with on the tracking jobs that ended up in small lakes or sloughs when we found them. All 5 were gut shots just like we figured and in each case we let them go till morning. They had all the land around the lake or slough to run but instead they choose the body of water. They do it for a reason I believe. My dads Canada Moose he shot died in 10' of water. That moose could of stayed in the huge woods but instead tried swimming across the lake. They don't do it by accident I don't think.

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

The reason I started this thread is I have been told this all my hunting life. I personally have had mixed results. I was interested what others have seen. I gut shot a buck that crossed thru a lot of knee deep water and died on a piece of high ground. He didnt die quick so he had options. I had one go in a stream he was still alive but unable to get out on his own. So did he want to be there? was he just crossing and got stuck? I shot another buck a little far back and let him go over night. it rained. we searched the swamps for 1/2 day. everyone gave up but me. I ended up finding him in one of the dryest parts of the woods. I guess my answer is they seem to have a tendency to go to water but why I still dont know. I think it might be part medical and part the cover that wet areas tend to offer. maybe it has something to do with the cooling effects of water. thanks for all the input. I never expected so many replies.

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

I believe this is a big reason. My very first buck that I got Died in a small little creek with about 6" of water in it. He was also gut shot and I can guarantee he didn't get hung up in there. I should of mentioned this in my last post, I totally forgot about this one! A few bear that I've gut shot have always picked out low wet area's to lay down in. I think the reason was to cool down, I really believe that.

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

Dang that's a lot of gut shooting. Don't these people ever just plain miss?

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

It's hard to say how many Deer I've tracked and helped track in 40 years of Bowhunting.

Guys never call me if it's a great shot and a short easy trail to a dead deer.[8D]I get the hard ones. The first thing I tell them is let's Wait a while because I already know it's not a great shot. It's funny when you ask them where the deer was hit most of the time it was a near perfect shot, but we must be finding someone else's deer because most of those hard Tracks are quite a bit less than perfect;)

I could tell you some stories that would give you a good laugh.

Dan