Strange things can happen with arrows and blood. I'd really have to do the autopsy to figure it out. had a similar shot only from above one time. The arrows entered about th 4th or 5th rib and exited low in the arm pit on the offside. I literally was on my hands and knees looking for blood. My buddy was behind me marking the last spot. We found no more than a tablespoon of blood in the 100 yards the deer went. My buddy finally said, there he is. I looked up ahead about 25 yards and couldn't see him. I ask "Where"??? He said your nose is almost on him. He had fallen with his legs tucked under him and his head back along his side. No white showing. I was about 5 feet from him. Most of the blood we found was at a spot where he jumped a little ditch. We found the arrow had passed through his food pipe. He evidently vomited or something and a large glob of chewed up food followed the arrow right to the lowest hole and plugged it solid. There was a glob of food about the size of a baseball between the chest wall and the hide. I was positive of the hit and exit on this deer as he was only about 15 feet off the arrow when I let it go. I was only 8 feet off the ground in an old stand I had found in the woods. I saw the hole appear right where I was looking. The arrow was covered with green slime, but never entered the guts, just passed through the food pipe. When my buddy saw the arrow he insisted I shot him in the guts. I was positive I saw the hit and where it was and insisted the deer wasn't far away.

I'd venture to say your tracking skills will improve if you're slow and dilegent. Most people hurry or panic or both. They usually never leave blood on the ground for the first few hops. You'll find a few specks and hair at the hit site and then nothing for a few yards. A deer shot in the heart sometimes is the worst. If the heart shuts down or quits pumping, the blood has nothing pushing it. Fortunately, these deer usually drop fast. FAT can plug a hole in a heart beat. Deer shot high up don't bleed as well as one with a hole near the bottom. All kinds of variables. The one constant you can count on..... They're all different. GO SLOW. Positively mark the spot of the shot and the spot of last sightings. If all else fails, get help.

If you double lunged the deer but didn't cut any major arteries or veins there won't be a lot of blood on the ground. That sounds like what you did.
To get a lot of blood on the ground you have to cut large arteries and veins so the blood will flow and have a low exit hole in the chest cavity so the blood can drain on the ground.

Think of it like a hose that is shut off at the nozzel in a bucket. when you cut the hose with a knife the water will go into the bucket. if you put a hole in the bottom of the bucket, the water can drain out on to the ground..

Sometimes the blood trail will be there but so sparce that it is almost impossible to follow, but usually it is there, very easy to get caught up in the excitement and misjudge where the animal was standing by a few feet, especially true with a pass-thru. Great job reading where the doe went, the only thing I would have done different, and something I ALWAYS do is after I find the animal, I will back track the blood trail and try to figure out why I didn't find it as easy, usually tracking from the animal back to the shot site is surprisingly easy and great practice for finding and tracking animals in the future.

Congradulations on your first stick and string kill. Sometimes too what blood that does come out is soaked up by the hair and doesnt make it too the ground. Its weird sometimes you can have a heck of a exit wound and not find a drop of blood on the ground. Luckily you saw where she ran so you had a starting point to look if you didnt find blood. You could also look for other signs besides blood, like dirt kicked up, leaves turned over and places were the grass was disturbed to help track if you dont see much blood.

Congrats on the big first harvest. It gets your blood pumping don't it! Good luck!

MoHunter:... I agree completely. I track out every deer, even if I watch it fall and can see it from the stand. Blood is different on different materials, like bare corn field, pine straw, tall grass and all that stuff. If I lose it but find the deer I back track too trying to figure out what happened. Quite often the blood stops flowing the last few yards too.

Its hard to emphisize this enough. I learned from someone (with 60 bow kills) 20 years ago and have to admit, learned my lesson the hard way a couple times when I was young. You can never predict how much they'll bleed and how far they'll go. Any shot I take I'll wait 1 hour before even taking one step in the direction the deer was standing at impact. This is even if I think I made a perfect shot. (remember......even you said you hit 3" lower than you though) If I'm not sure of my shot but am pretty confident it was good I wait 2 hours. Its hard to do. If I make a questionable shot, to a bad shot, you need to give it a minimum 6 hours to 8 hours. If shot in the evening give it until the next morning. Its hard to do but you'll always recover your deer. The absolutley worst thing you can do is to start tracking a deer that isn't dead yet. If you think your doe was hard to find just wait until you jump a wounded deer that has bedded down to die. It goes off on adrenilne another 150 to 250 yards and there is no blood trail! First time bowhunters and rookie hunters(some vetrens) often learn vary hard lessons by tracking thier deer to soon after the shot!

Good Job on your first deer and good luck on the next one!