How would you handle this situation?
 

I shot a doe at dusk on Monday and she ran into the thick stuff where she had come from. I waited a few mins and came down to check my arrow. I find it stuck in the ground with blood on it. I find good first blood (and mark it) about 20 feet away and decide to wait till morning to retrieve her, so as not to push her. I return at first light and find her about 75 yrds away. But she has been badly torn up by fox/coyote. The entire hind quarter and much of her guts are eaten! What would you do given the situation?

That is a tough one, i believe god put scavengers on this earth for the hunters mistakes lol. What if the coyote/fox had some sort of disease? You probably could salvage the front shoulder and some of the backstrap and neck meat but there is always going to be that thought in the back of your head that some nasty critter ate it before you did.

I am probably one of the few hunters that doesnt like leaving deer overnight. Yesterday evening when i was in the stand i tried counting coyotes as they all started howling from different directions. I came up with 23 by the time they were done howling. Had a buddy last year that let a buck lay overnight and the coyotes had everything gone up to the neck by morning. he still tagged it and kept the horns and bought doe tags to fill the freezer.

If i have evidence that i hit a deer well i follow up on them after dark. If i bump them i dont have much of choice but to wait till morning. Even when it is light out i only give them about 10 minutes before i find my arrow and look for blood. The way i see it, if they arrow is caked in blood and there is a good blood trail and you are confident you made a good hit. Why cant you follow up in a short amount of time?

ouch...that sux...i dbl lung em every time just so i dont have ta let em sit over night. usually i start trackin after 20 minutes. they dont go further than 30-50 yards.
as far as eating it..i dunno, i eat my meat perty dang rare and i would worry bout rabies and what ever disease a yote might carry. maybe it is ok to eat, but i dunno, dont think i would. gl

Ok, there's no blood flowing when the yotes are eating it so I don't think I'd be worried about anything they hadn't touched. If there were no bite marks I would probably take out the backstaps and front shoulders. Any part I could tell they chewed on, I wouldn't touch.

I was watching an episode of Major League Bow hunter and the same thing happened. They shot a great buck but had to back out for the night. Well they have a yote problem in that part of Oklahoma and the next day when they found the deer it had already been stripped down to the bone! That is crazy!!!!!!!

I don't like to leave my deer over night. If its a good shot I will try and recover in the dark with spot lights if I have to because the same thing can happen where I am at with poachers and yotes. Unless I think it is a bad shot then I will let them go for the evening.

kill the coyotes!

would salvage what meat i could,
and cook it well, very well, burn it,
and i probably wouldnt store that meat for a long period of time,
or give it to a not so good friend as a gift :)

DEM will probably give you a replacement tag...

I wouldn't use it. Lost my first archery buck that way. Salvaged the skull and did a euro mount, but thats all. The rest was all eaten. I wouldn't touch anyting the yotes had been into.
-Jake

I wouldn't burn a tag!