What do you do?...Hypothetical question
 

Ok. Here is the scenario. Afterwards, give me a brief description of how you would handle this situation.



You and a friend are bowhunting together on private land for deer. It's early season and lot's of good sign and bucks on the trail cams. Your buddy takes a shot at a nice 8 point at about 30 yards and thinks he made a great hit. You meet up with him at dark and start to blood trail his deer. After about 60 yards, the blood starts getting more scarce and has all but stopped. You are standing in a thicket of briars and thick underbrush. You know from experience that this is one of the areas core bedding grounds. His arrow did not make a pass through and has not been recovered. There is rain in the forecast for the night.

Given these circumstances and just the information I have provided, would you continue trying to track this deer into their 'core' area and risk pushing deer out of their sanctuary?

GREAT question....and you'll get varying replies (and multiple "right" answers).

First of all....it'll depend on how much I trust the guy I'm hunting with. If he says it was a good hit (we have a dead deer), I'm gonna trust his judgement. THIS IS HIS RECOVERY, until he relinquishes it to me.

If rain is imminent....and the trail hasn't completely vanished, I'm gonna trail the buck as long as I can. I will NEVER let the possibility of buggering up future hunts keep me from the task at hand. Never.

If we've lost the blood trail.....TRULY lost it.....then I'm gonna suggest marking last blood and coming back in the light of day (if temps allow).

First things first, though....

Another thing.....At 60 yds...a very sparse blood trail...and no arrow to discern the hit....my guess is his hit was not what he imagined. If rain wasn't imminent, I'd back out. Imminent rain changes everything.

Jeff answered it pretty well and how I would go about it also.

Tim

As stated.......covered it all!

Well, that eliminates his assertion that it was a great hit. If it's dark, and you have no further blood trail, and you're in thickets, and rain is forcast, I'd keep looking. It's night, so there will be no deer bedding, and if it rains, it'll take out your sent in the bedding area by the next day. If it rains, coming back the next day is just a shotgun hunt and great luck if you find him. This whole scenario depends on the likelyhood of rain.

Not necessarily:)

True

Tyler hit his first buck perfect but the arrow didn't pass through. We both saw where the arrow hit. We didn't find any blood for the first 35 yards and it wasn't a lot to where the buck dropped. Granted we could have missed a few drops. The buck ran 90 yards. The closest lung had an x through it. Part of the far lung was just a bunch of mush from the arrow bouncing and cutting away as he ran.



Tim

Agreed. There are shots like this, and others, such as a quartering away shot lodging in the far shoulder, that are lethal. But as usual in this forum, we digress into minuta. In this hypothetical, I would not assume a good shot without an arrow. You guys are entitled to assume whatever you like :party0005:.

Myself, I would give it my best at trying to recover a wounded deer under any circumstance! It is the right thing to do IMO.. I normally give a deer an hour before searching once any hair or blood is found or I have seen the shot that hit it. I do not hurry the deer during the first hour so that it can lay down and bleed out. I shot a deer that was quarting away from me and it was a direct hit threw both lungs. It narrowly missed the heart and embedded in the shoulder blade. The deer had run almost 300 yards in a light rain. It took me a couple of hours to find it while circling around as there wasn't alot of blood to be found then. None the less I take the idea of any deer being seriously hit before not trying to locate it. IMO it is the right thing to do as well as an ethical thing that makes us all responcible hunters..

I had a very similar situation late in the season last year. Shot doe in shoulder with a Rage B/H but my string caught on my RealTree compression type arm guard. The location of the hit was good by penetration was minimal. Very light rain and just about dark. Could see the deer running for a couple hundred yards. Waited for about half hour and went to last visual point. Very minimal blood. Followed the blood trail for several hundred yards more and finally lost it in the fine rain. Never found the deer or arrow after hours of searching.