my gut shot misadventure - story with pic
11-21-2008, 01:44 PM
#1
Fork Horn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Western NY
Posts: 148
my gut shot misadventure - story with pic
This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got around to posting things.
Right, so I have now officially become an unwilling member of the "bowhunters who have shot a deer in the guts" club.
Here is the full unaltered story. Feel free to comment.
My friend and I talked about hunting Sunday am, but the weather forecast wasn't good, lots of rain, so we decided to wait until morning and make a game time decision. About 5am, he reports to me that it is pouring rain where he lives, where I live just spotty, so we decide to skip morning, and try for the afternoon hunt instead. (our time was limited to either, but not both) Of course, the morning turned out not bad at all, a little rain but also some sunny periods as well, very huntable - the weatherman blew it yet again. Sunday throughout the day was spotty rain, but also times of no rain, so we decided to hit the evening run. I'm up in my stand, he is about 60 yds? away in his climber, and it is raining steadily. Not pouring, just a steady rain. I'm not happy about the rain, as it is hard enough to track a deer in sunny weather at noon, throw in some rain to wash away the blood trail and you really make it fun. But, the weather pattern thoughout the day seemed to indicate that the rain would just turn off after a while. (Ha!)
Now, understand that at this point in time I have no meat in the freezer, so "if its brown it's down!", not exactly but you get the idea. And about 30 minutes or so later, that is just what started walking my way, a yearling doe. Perfect! She walking at a steady pace, heading almost right at me - probably will walk right beside me. I can see her about 80 yds or so, and immediately get my bow ready to draw. She is completely unaware of me. I wait until she gets under 20 yards from me (close to 20), and draw back. She probably sees movement, and stops almost with a broadside stance to check things out. I have my pin on her vitals, but the shot is a little iffy - there is a small sapling over/near the front shoulder. I thought about taking the shot, but she wasn't acting that spooked really, and I figured I would have a better shot. Sure enough, she takes a couple of steps and stops again. I did notice that she was not looking at me when she stopped - not acting spooked, etc. I put the pin on her vitals, make sure left arm is straight, make sure trigger hand is at correct anchor point (my usual routine inotherwords that takes 0.1 seconds), and let the arrow fly! Now the story gets interesting. Now I am going to preface this by saying I practice a lot, especially during the season, with my gear on, and shooting practice broadheads. If only so that I'm confident that I didn't knock the sight pin out of whack climbing the stands...
I knew I hit the deer, I could hear it hit her. But, it sounded, for lack of a better description, exactly like an arrow that goes through a sack of guts. No rib snapping, no thwack, etc. She takes a few steps forward, and stops. I could see that I hit her back further than I wanted, in fact I thought I saw some blood, or my arrow fletching sticking out of her side. (I Have white and pink fletching) It was hard to tell really as I didn't have much time to see her side, but, the deer acted like she didn't even know she was hit. At that point I realized that as soon as I pulled the trigger, she took a step forward, and I hit back. Vertical placement the shot was perfect, just back.
She then starts walking, not real normal, but defintely not hunched up like I've read about. Basically a slow walk, and she is headed right towards my friend up in his stand, who has watched the whole thing. At this point he thinks I missed the deer... Now, please understand that my friend is still basically a rookie at bowhunting, who doesn't understand why you need to practice, especially with gear on etc. (Yes, the story gets even worse) He draws back, and shoots at a deer about 10 yards away and hits low as well, very low I think right along the bottom of the deer. The deer then starts walking, and proceeds to walk about 50 yards away from us, and beds down within site of my friend. After maybe a minute or 2, she struggles to get up, walks about 5-10 yards, and beds down again, this time within plain site of both of us about 50 yards from me, directly behind me. (I'm in a lock on stand) We are looking at her, and I'm thinking to myself this is a dead deer within the hour, she could barely get up and walk 10 yards before bedding down, lets just wait. So 30 minutes go by, and her head is up and alert and she is licking her wounds now and then, and she is definitely not anywhere close to expiring. Now keep in mind that it has been raining steadily the entire time here. It is beginning to get dark, and we are in a major dilemna. I felt confident of waiting until dark, sneaking down from my stand and then coming back much later. The problem is my friend is not going to come out of that tree quietly in his climber without alerting the deer. I'm thinking a gut shot deer might last hours, maybe even till morning or later, depending on how bad it was hit. What do we do? Sit up in the stand for X hours, and then spook the deer? How do we even know we spooked it, and if so, which direction does it run to? We sure as heck won't have any kind of blood trail to follow with this rain the way it is.
On the other hand, that deer wanted to bed down right away, and in addition struggled to get up, and then wanted to bed right back down again. And, its getting dark - we need to decide now what to do. So after some cell phone discussion, we decided that I would attempt to get down from my stand, and stalk the deer to finish it off. It was a risk I know, but I think we were screwed no matter what. So, I get myself unstrapped from my tree belt, get my bow, and start descending the climbing steps very slowly. On the first step, I managed to somehow wedge my boot in the step, and that was a real pain getting unstuck in slow motion, almost got a cramp, and it hurt. I'm probably lucky I didn't fall in all honesty. Remember it is still a steady rain, and cold as well. Anyway, I managed to climb down without spooking the deer, who is still bedded down. I slowly move to have a tree in between me and the deer, and start my stalk. By the way it's getting pretty dark at this point. So I stalk to what I figure is about 20 yards, and then ease my way to the right of the tree. I probably didn't even show 1/4 of my body before the deer realizes something isn't right, jumps up like it has coil springs under it's feet, and bounds off. ^%$$#@!!!!
So we now have a gut shot deer that has been spooked. However, in looking back, I don't think the deer thought it was being hunted, something startled it and it ran. I of course could be wrong. So it is dark by now, my friend starts climbing down, and I go back to my spot to retrieve my gear and see if I can find my arrow that I shot. I look around with a flashlight and realize I have no idea where I shot, with all the climbing and stalking. So I climb back up the stand, get my bearings, climb back down and find my arrow in about 30 seconds sticking in the ground. After an hour of steady rain, the arrow is still completely covered in hair (brown/white), some intestinal matter, and blood. The fletching is very bloody - not dark red, but more like arterial red blood. I smell the arrow - smells like deer guts. The arrow had passed through the deer, and embedded into the ground. By the way I'm shooting 125grain muzzies. My friend finds his arrow, which is completely covered in a fatty material, white hair, and some blood on the fletching. So, we pack up and head out, my plan is to return in the morning to attempt to find a gut shot deer that has been jumped, and has the possibility of running a mile. Needless to say I'm feeling discouraged. So we go home, I make plans to take day off of work to look for this deer. Please understand that in my early bowhunting years, I almost gave up bowhunting because I made a poor shot and was horrified that a deer was out there suffering because of my actions. This time it was different though. I mean, I felt very bad that there was a gut shot deer out there, but I didn't feel that I had done anything wrong (other than hunting during the rain). Broadside shot, under 20 yards, bow was only pulled back 30 seconds at the most, pin on vitals, clear shot, did my technique etc. The only thing that went wrong was the deer took a step forward. I can only imagine how many people will tell me what i did wrong on the forum. Anyway, fastforward to the morning. We now have about 3-4 inches of fresh snow on the ground, this is just great! Not! Now the deer can bed down, expire, and get covered by snow!!! As if I weren't depressed enough in pursuing a gut shot deer, this just adds to my misery. Right, so first stop is mcdonalds, get a big breakfast in anticipation of walking in the woods all day long to find this deer. Head out to my spot, get in the woods and start searching. There is fresh snow even in the woods about 3 inches or so. Every single snow covered log looks like a dead deer, and some large rocks as well. I realize that I am about to spend all day in an exercise of futility, but feel obligated to do this, plus you never know. My first buck with a bow only went 100 yards, but it took me 3 hours to track him, he took two 90 degree turns (ended up going exactly opposite), bled very little because arrow had stayed in the deer, leaves were falling like crazy, but I found him. Anyway, back to this doe. I first start looking in likely areas, down trails, etc in the hope of seeing a dead deer that died on the run. Nope. I then start looking around some thick brushy areas, which by the way, since the snow is fresh, I am constantly getting snow dumped down the back of my neck, my face, etc. I am having the time of my life... Now, after about 1/2 hour, I realize that I am hearing crows - a group of them. So, I head over that way to investigate, go through the woods, and hit a large field, with more woods on the other side of it. The crows have shut up, I don't see anything, but I head across the field to poke around the woods on the other side. Nothing. OK, it is now time to grid/circle search. I head back to the spot where the deer was bedded down, and clear out the tracking on my gps. By the way, I used my gps for this, and it is really a tremendous help. I did a grid search, watching my tracking on the gps while in heavy snow covered brush, and really felt like I was covering every square inch. I did a half circle grid search, progressively moving out away. After about 2 hours of getting snow dumped on my neck, I ended up getting into a clearer section of the woods, and stood there a few minutes. Again, I am hearing the crows from the same area. So just as a break from grid searching, I decide to head back over there. I'm still thinking at this point I am in for a day long woods walk and nothing to show for it. I come again to the field. I stop just before getting into the field and look for the crows, who have shut up again. There, accross the field, I see 2 crows in the tree tops, not too far from each other. I decide that maybe something in the woods over there has got their attention - maybe my deer? So I start crossing the field, and there 30 yards out in the field I see my deer. I was probably within 50 yards of it the first time I crossed the field but could not see it because the grass was too high. The pic below is from my cell phone, not very high quality, but the damage is bad enough I'm sure you get the idea:
Apparently the coyotes got pretty hungry last night - not exactly what I wanted to find. I flipped the deer over - the other side was untouched, so I actually was able to salvage some meat from this deer. ( 1 and 1/2 back straps, some rear haunch and some front shoulder) I probably could have taken more meat, but really wanted to be absolutely sure that nothing a coyote touched, or gut matter, had touched the meat I was taking. The meat itself wasn't cold, at 10:30am. (32 degrees air temp at that point). The deer was laying 160 yards from where the jump up point was. I had hit her in the liver as well as the guts. This is a relatively new area that I have been bowhunting in, and I now know what to expect when leaving a deer overnight. Although with a suspected gut shot, what else can you do?
Right, so I have now officially become an unwilling member of the "bowhunters who have shot a deer in the guts" club.
Here is the full unaltered story. Feel free to comment.
My friend and I talked about hunting Sunday am, but the weather forecast wasn't good, lots of rain, so we decided to wait until morning and make a game time decision. About 5am, he reports to me that it is pouring rain where he lives, where I live just spotty, so we decide to skip morning, and try for the afternoon hunt instead. (our time was limited to either, but not both) Of course, the morning turned out not bad at all, a little rain but also some sunny periods as well, very huntable - the weatherman blew it yet again. Sunday throughout the day was spotty rain, but also times of no rain, so we decided to hit the evening run. I'm up in my stand, he is about 60 yds? away in his climber, and it is raining steadily. Not pouring, just a steady rain. I'm not happy about the rain, as it is hard enough to track a deer in sunny weather at noon, throw in some rain to wash away the blood trail and you really make it fun. But, the weather pattern thoughout the day seemed to indicate that the rain would just turn off after a while. (Ha!)
Now, understand that at this point in time I have no meat in the freezer, so "if its brown it's down!", not exactly but you get the idea. And about 30 minutes or so later, that is just what started walking my way, a yearling doe. Perfect! She walking at a steady pace, heading almost right at me - probably will walk right beside me. I can see her about 80 yds or so, and immediately get my bow ready to draw. She is completely unaware of me. I wait until she gets under 20 yards from me (close to 20), and draw back. She probably sees movement, and stops almost with a broadside stance to check things out. I have my pin on her vitals, but the shot is a little iffy - there is a small sapling over/near the front shoulder. I thought about taking the shot, but she wasn't acting that spooked really, and I figured I would have a better shot. Sure enough, she takes a couple of steps and stops again. I did notice that she was not looking at me when she stopped - not acting spooked, etc. I put the pin on her vitals, make sure left arm is straight, make sure trigger hand is at correct anchor point (my usual routine inotherwords that takes 0.1 seconds), and let the arrow fly! Now the story gets interesting. Now I am going to preface this by saying I practice a lot, especially during the season, with my gear on, and shooting practice broadheads. If only so that I'm confident that I didn't knock the sight pin out of whack climbing the stands...
I knew I hit the deer, I could hear it hit her. But, it sounded, for lack of a better description, exactly like an arrow that goes through a sack of guts. No rib snapping, no thwack, etc. She takes a few steps forward, and stops. I could see that I hit her back further than I wanted, in fact I thought I saw some blood, or my arrow fletching sticking out of her side. (I Have white and pink fletching) It was hard to tell really as I didn't have much time to see her side, but, the deer acted like she didn't even know she was hit. At that point I realized that as soon as I pulled the trigger, she took a step forward, and I hit back. Vertical placement the shot was perfect, just back.
She then starts walking, not real normal, but defintely not hunched up like I've read about. Basically a slow walk, and she is headed right towards my friend up in his stand, who has watched the whole thing. At this point he thinks I missed the deer... Now, please understand that my friend is still basically a rookie at bowhunting, who doesn't understand why you need to practice, especially with gear on etc. (Yes, the story gets even worse) He draws back, and shoots at a deer about 10 yards away and hits low as well, very low I think right along the bottom of the deer. The deer then starts walking, and proceeds to walk about 50 yards away from us, and beds down within site of my friend. After maybe a minute or 2, she struggles to get up, walks about 5-10 yards, and beds down again, this time within plain site of both of us about 50 yards from me, directly behind me. (I'm in a lock on stand) We are looking at her, and I'm thinking to myself this is a dead deer within the hour, she could barely get up and walk 10 yards before bedding down, lets just wait. So 30 minutes go by, and her head is up and alert and she is licking her wounds now and then, and she is definitely not anywhere close to expiring. Now keep in mind that it has been raining steadily the entire time here. It is beginning to get dark, and we are in a major dilemna. I felt confident of waiting until dark, sneaking down from my stand and then coming back much later. The problem is my friend is not going to come out of that tree quietly in his climber without alerting the deer. I'm thinking a gut shot deer might last hours, maybe even till morning or later, depending on how bad it was hit. What do we do? Sit up in the stand for X hours, and then spook the deer? How do we even know we spooked it, and if so, which direction does it run to? We sure as heck won't have any kind of blood trail to follow with this rain the way it is.
On the other hand, that deer wanted to bed down right away, and in addition struggled to get up, and then wanted to bed right back down again. And, its getting dark - we need to decide now what to do. So after some cell phone discussion, we decided that I would attempt to get down from my stand, and stalk the deer to finish it off. It was a risk I know, but I think we were screwed no matter what. So, I get myself unstrapped from my tree belt, get my bow, and start descending the climbing steps very slowly. On the first step, I managed to somehow wedge my boot in the step, and that was a real pain getting unstuck in slow motion, almost got a cramp, and it hurt. I'm probably lucky I didn't fall in all honesty. Remember it is still a steady rain, and cold as well. Anyway, I managed to climb down without spooking the deer, who is still bedded down. I slowly move to have a tree in between me and the deer, and start my stalk. By the way it's getting pretty dark at this point. So I stalk to what I figure is about 20 yards, and then ease my way to the right of the tree. I probably didn't even show 1/4 of my body before the deer realizes something isn't right, jumps up like it has coil springs under it's feet, and bounds off. ^%$$#@!!!!
So we now have a gut shot deer that has been spooked. However, in looking back, I don't think the deer thought it was being hunted, something startled it and it ran. I of course could be wrong. So it is dark by now, my friend starts climbing down, and I go back to my spot to retrieve my gear and see if I can find my arrow that I shot. I look around with a flashlight and realize I have no idea where I shot, with all the climbing and stalking. So I climb back up the stand, get my bearings, climb back down and find my arrow in about 30 seconds sticking in the ground. After an hour of steady rain, the arrow is still completely covered in hair (brown/white), some intestinal matter, and blood. The fletching is very bloody - not dark red, but more like arterial red blood. I smell the arrow - smells like deer guts. The arrow had passed through the deer, and embedded into the ground. By the way I'm shooting 125grain muzzies. My friend finds his arrow, which is completely covered in a fatty material, white hair, and some blood on the fletching. So, we pack up and head out, my plan is to return in the morning to attempt to find a gut shot deer that has been jumped, and has the possibility of running a mile. Needless to say I'm feeling discouraged. So we go home, I make plans to take day off of work to look for this deer. Please understand that in my early bowhunting years, I almost gave up bowhunting because I made a poor shot and was horrified that a deer was out there suffering because of my actions. This time it was different though. I mean, I felt very bad that there was a gut shot deer out there, but I didn't feel that I had done anything wrong (other than hunting during the rain). Broadside shot, under 20 yards, bow was only pulled back 30 seconds at the most, pin on vitals, clear shot, did my technique etc. The only thing that went wrong was the deer took a step forward. I can only imagine how many people will tell me what i did wrong on the forum. Anyway, fastforward to the morning. We now have about 3-4 inches of fresh snow on the ground, this is just great! Not! Now the deer can bed down, expire, and get covered by snow!!! As if I weren't depressed enough in pursuing a gut shot deer, this just adds to my misery. Right, so first stop is mcdonalds, get a big breakfast in anticipation of walking in the woods all day long to find this deer. Head out to my spot, get in the woods and start searching. There is fresh snow even in the woods about 3 inches or so. Every single snow covered log looks like a dead deer, and some large rocks as well. I realize that I am about to spend all day in an exercise of futility, but feel obligated to do this, plus you never know. My first buck with a bow only went 100 yards, but it took me 3 hours to track him, he took two 90 degree turns (ended up going exactly opposite), bled very little because arrow had stayed in the deer, leaves were falling like crazy, but I found him. Anyway, back to this doe. I first start looking in likely areas, down trails, etc in the hope of seeing a dead deer that died on the run. Nope. I then start looking around some thick brushy areas, which by the way, since the snow is fresh, I am constantly getting snow dumped down the back of my neck, my face, etc. I am having the time of my life... Now, after about 1/2 hour, I realize that I am hearing crows - a group of them. So, I head over that way to investigate, go through the woods, and hit a large field, with more woods on the other side of it. The crows have shut up, I don't see anything, but I head across the field to poke around the woods on the other side. Nothing. OK, it is now time to grid/circle search. I head back to the spot where the deer was bedded down, and clear out the tracking on my gps. By the way, I used my gps for this, and it is really a tremendous help. I did a grid search, watching my tracking on the gps while in heavy snow covered brush, and really felt like I was covering every square inch. I did a half circle grid search, progressively moving out away. After about 2 hours of getting snow dumped on my neck, I ended up getting into a clearer section of the woods, and stood there a few minutes. Again, I am hearing the crows from the same area. So just as a break from grid searching, I decide to head back over there. I'm still thinking at this point I am in for a day long woods walk and nothing to show for it. I come again to the field. I stop just before getting into the field and look for the crows, who have shut up again. There, accross the field, I see 2 crows in the tree tops, not too far from each other. I decide that maybe something in the woods over there has got their attention - maybe my deer? So I start crossing the field, and there 30 yards out in the field I see my deer. I was probably within 50 yards of it the first time I crossed the field but could not see it because the grass was too high. The pic below is from my cell phone, not very high quality, but the damage is bad enough I'm sure you get the idea:
Apparently the coyotes got pretty hungry last night - not exactly what I wanted to find. I flipped the deer over - the other side was untouched, so I actually was able to salvage some meat from this deer. ( 1 and 1/2 back straps, some rear haunch and some front shoulder) I probably could have taken more meat, but really wanted to be absolutely sure that nothing a coyote touched, or gut matter, had touched the meat I was taking. The meat itself wasn't cold, at 10:30am. (32 degrees air temp at that point). The deer was laying 160 yards from where the jump up point was. I had hit her in the liver as well as the guts. This is a relatively new area that I have been bowhunting in, and I now know what to expect when leaving a deer overnight. Although with a suspected gut shot, what else can you do?
11-21-2008, 05:07 PM
#2
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: TN
Posts: 2,089
RE: my gut shot misadventure - story with pic
I had the same thing happen to me....
I shot a doe 40 yards from my treestand coming down a hill broadside. The shot was further back than I knew at the time, so I started tracking her after an hour not knowing that I made a "Gut Shot". After 30 minutes of searching I couldn't find my arrow or a blood trail. I called my dad and explained the situation to him and he said ask the neighbors if they would help me track my deer. They did! I showed Darrel, (my neighbor) where I shot my doe and where I last saw her. We spread out to where I last saw her and about 100 yards from there we spooked her up from bedding down. We went to where the she was bedding down and there was blood everywhere! We decide to continue tracking her in an attempt to bleed her out. We tracked her for 5 hours and were amazed that this deer could still continue to run after loosing so much blood!
We lost the blood trail at the edge of a big pasture. Darrel saw the deer stagger up from bedding down at the edge of the wood line and start walking away. Now the deer could only go three ways. Up a steep mountain, (Which we didn't think it had the strength to do because the whole time we were tracking it, it was always going down hill.) into the pasture where there wasn't much cover, or follow the fence line. We searched up the mountain for 30 minutes then I walked the fence line for about 200 yards before we decided to head back home.
When my dad got home I explained where we last found blood and where Darrel last saw my deer near the fence line. We dove into the pasture where the doe was last seen and began searching again. My dad said he would search the mountain side of the fence and I would search the pasture for my deer. There were little tree lines all throughout the pasture with a little pond in the middle of the field. I first looked by the pond for my deer but found nothing. I then decided to go help my dad search the mountain for my deer. On the way up to the mountain I decided to walk into a thick little treeline that ran from the woods all the way to about 40 yards from the pond. As soon as I stepped into the treeline my deer jumped up 5 feet from me and ran a short distance before collapsing. I nocked an arrow and gave her a finishing shot. I called my dad on the walkie talkie and told him that I found my deer! The whole track job with my dad lasted no more than 5 minutes... Versus the 5 hours we were tracking her in the morning!
Persistence pays off...
I shot a doe 40 yards from my treestand coming down a hill broadside. The shot was further back than I knew at the time, so I started tracking her after an hour not knowing that I made a "Gut Shot". After 30 minutes of searching I couldn't find my arrow or a blood trail. I called my dad and explained the situation to him and he said ask the neighbors if they would help me track my deer. They did! I showed Darrel, (my neighbor) where I shot my doe and where I last saw her. We spread out to where I last saw her and about 100 yards from there we spooked her up from bedding down. We went to where the she was bedding down and there was blood everywhere! We decide to continue tracking her in an attempt to bleed her out. We tracked her for 5 hours and were amazed that this deer could still continue to run after loosing so much blood!
We lost the blood trail at the edge of a big pasture. Darrel saw the deer stagger up from bedding down at the edge of the wood line and start walking away. Now the deer could only go three ways. Up a steep mountain, (Which we didn't think it had the strength to do because the whole time we were tracking it, it was always going down hill.) into the pasture where there wasn't much cover, or follow the fence line. We searched up the mountain for 30 minutes then I walked the fence line for about 200 yards before we decided to head back home.
When my dad got home I explained where we last found blood and where Darrel last saw my deer near the fence line. We dove into the pasture where the doe was last seen and began searching again. My dad said he would search the mountain side of the fence and I would search the pasture for my deer. There were little tree lines all throughout the pasture with a little pond in the middle of the field. I first looked by the pond for my deer but found nothing. I then decided to go help my dad search the mountain for my deer. On the way up to the mountain I decided to walk into a thick little treeline that ran from the woods all the way to about 40 yards from the pond. As soon as I stepped into the treeline my deer jumped up 5 feet from me and ran a short distance before collapsing. I nocked an arrow and gave her a finishing shot. I called my dad on the walkie talkie and told him that I found my deer! The whole track job with my dad lasted no more than 5 minutes... Versus the 5 hours we were tracking her in the morning!
Persistence pays off...
