HuntingNet.com Forums - Pretty sure I have one down.

Thanks, guys!:D

Yeah, a big 10-4 on the furniture. The wife is happy, at least for a while.;) She had to get me to move the stuff while I still can.:)

It took me over an hour to find the deer this morning. Still no blood at all. I shot her in a field that my friend just mows periodically, weeds and grass. Never saw so much dead grass and stuff that looks almost exactly like deer hair.[:@] I followed the trail that I saw the deer take. Some tracks, one more little wet spot that smelled like urine. No blood. I decided to follow the tracks I could find until I got closer to where I heard the crash. First try, no sign, no dice.[:@] I went back and sat in the tree stand again. Tried to remember exactly where the crash sounds came from. I felt like I had it pretty well pinpointed. I got down, looked for hair, blood, arrow one more time. Nothing:( Took up the trail one more time. I went a little farther into the woods to see if she went a little farther in before cutting down. Saw an unoccupied climbing stand on a trail where the deer had been entering the field. [:' (] The place is pretty rocky, and there are old rock walls in the woods. I guess that there used to be small fields there. One rock wall runs down the edge of my friend' s other field, and two walls that run 90 degrees to that one. I was pretty sure that the deer would have had to cross at least one of those cross walls to get to where I heard her fall. I got up on the first wall, figuring that I could see better from there, and that the deer was likely to leave some blood with the effort to clear the height of the wall, which is about 3 ft. above the rest of the woods. I saw the deer before I walked 20 yards on the wall. I did backtrack her, and there was only a small spot of blood where she went over the wall. No other blood anywhere except where she was lying. Amazing, huh?[X(]

Some critter did have a meal last night, chewing about 3-4 pounds of meat from her butt. The deer' s condition was not too bad, considering the temp. The skin and connective tissue smelled some, but the meat didn' t really seem too bad. I decided to have it processed into pepperoni and summer sausage so it would be cooked in processing.

So what happened? Well, I found the last 9" of my arrow shaft still inside her when I field dressed the deer. It had broken off clean. The broadhead broke the 2nd and 3rd last rib on the left side, and exited the right shoulder, but higher than I would have thought. There was an exit wound though, and the broadhead (Slick Trick) really did a number on the off-side shoulder. I don' t know where the rest of the arrow and the broadhead are. Still didn' t find them.:( The entrance and especially the exit were higher than I thought they should be, but that deer ran 80-90 yards total, and only one small spot of blood, that one within 5 yards of where she died. I am glad that I really tried to pinpoint the sound when she went down. That ended up the only thing I really had to go on.[X(]