Two Beards

Sorry to hear you haven' t found him yet. I agree,
you definitely did the right thing by waiting
until morning. It' s easy to second guess yourself
sometimes, but not in this case. I, myself, would
never push a deer to try and keep it bleeding.
From my experience, most fataly hit deer will bed
down within 100-150 yards if not pushed. This
buck did some things to make me think it may
have been a non-vital hit???...but it sounds like that
buck lost a awfull lot of blood.

After reading your first post, I' d have bet it was a
liver hit. I' ve taken several bucks through the liver,
each time they would run for about 10-15 yards and
then either trot or walk off. I found all of them
within 125 yds of my stand.

I would still recommend doing a grid search, though
you' ve already searched hard, it could pay off.

Best of Luck
TB

UCObaseball

I had a similar occurrence happen to me last year during blackpowder season. I shot the buck at a distance that was too far but I shot anyway. After the shot the buck kicked high and took off with his head down. I thought it was a perfect hit. I got on the bloodtrail similar to the bloodtrail that you described. After tracking for 4 hrs. through thick brush and trees the blood trail got extremely thin to non existant.We marked the last spot and decided to look the next day. When we were headed out of the field I was riding in the back of the truck. We were 400 yards away from the last blood spot and heading in the opposite direction the deer was headed last. I looked in front of the truck and I saw the buck in the headlights laying in a grove of trees. It was paying no attention to us at all. I banged on the truck and told my buddy to stop. Luckily I still had my gun loaded and shot him in the neck at 80 yards. Come to find out I shot him in the two front legs, broke one and went through the meat on the other. It was the luckiest thing That has ever happened to me. You never know what they will do. Good luck, hope you find him. Oh, by the way, you made the right decision to wait. The only thing you would have done if you would have tried to find him that night, is drive him clear out of the country you are hunting in.

titleist_03

I made a questionable hit on a deer last night right at dark. So I made the call I' ve always said I would make in that situation and decided to get out and not push the deer any. Hopefully it would bed down and die. Well we went back out this morning and tracked it a couple hundred yards. Found it laying 5 feet from a creek. It had apparently bedded down there and died. Well in the mean time some **** coyotes picked up its trail and destroyed the deer. When we got to it at 8 this morning, there was nothing but legs, hide and a head. It still makes me sick thinking about it. I would feel 100 times worse had it been a big buck but I' m still really upset about the situation. But I guess there was nothing I could do about it. If I did start tracking in the dark, I probably would have pushed who knows how far and onto who' s land adjacent to the land I was on. And we might have never found him because of the hard to follow blood trail in a bean field. I would like to say I' ve learned my lessson and will never let another deer sit over night, but I still think leaving it was the right decision. What do you guys think?

MDManiac

i think you made the right decision titleist!! It was just bad luck that the ' yotes were out...sorry to hear about it. Put it this way, either decision, and the yotes would have gotten him....O well, get em next time!

PAHUNTER21

I' ve seen a couple deer run in this manor. The oddest was from a hunt where my buddy and I were hunting this creek bottom and he one lunged a decent 8. This deer crossed over the creek looped back and crossed 20 ft. down stream, loop and crossed another 20ft. down stream, and finally made a larger loop and crossed the creek again. After he crossed the creek the last time, we lost the trail, However we could see a destinct line through the brush that looked as if something just ran through (not a trail, just broken sticks and bent weeds. This was some really thick stuff!). We fought our way through the underbrush and ended up walking right passed the deer! Here he had made a small detour and laid down in a fallen treetop, where he expired.

We tracked this deer around 75+ yards w/out a blood trail. I guess lady luck was in our favor that day.

Back to the creek... It was really odd that this deer crossed the creek so many times in the same spot. It wasn' t as if we were pushing it, and he only laid down once (where we found him). The creek was about 6-7 foot across and was about 2-4 foot deep in the places where he crossed. Each time, he did not jump the creek, but ran through the deep water.

Its amazing what these animals can do with only one lung hit. They can run for a long long time.