This may sound like a really stupid question, but what do you do after you shoot a deer? Growing up we would always immediately head over to where the deer was shot. Most of the time we had a good clean shot and the deer was down and the work began. Sometimes the deer was wounded and it would try to run away and 95%+ of the time we would shoot it again and kill it. Gut shot deer were always the ones that went the fartherest and fastest. I can recall 2 or 3 times when someone wounded a deer and it got away and we never found it.

I was watching some hunting shows the other day and it seems like the standard practice is to shoot the deer then sit around and talk for a 1/2 hour then go over to see if the deer is down or not. Is this just part of the show or is this standard practice for everyone? I can see that immediately going over to check it out could possibly spook a wounded animal and it would more likely run off vs. if you didn't immediately go over to check it out. I can also see that depending on how hard you hit it, a wounded animal could travel a long way in 1/2 hour and make it even harder to track down and find.

I also thought that this could be due to the fact that in most of these shows they are stand hunting and the deer might not know where they are when they shoot so it wouldn't know which way to run unless the huntershowed themselves. Generally they are also hunting in the woods so theycan't see whether the deer is running away or not. We grew up hunting the prarrie and most of the time it was easy to see if the deer was running away or if it was down, but in the shows, even if the deer goes down and stays down they often wait quite a while to go over to check it out.

I'm sure that we weren't the best hunters growing up, we mainly hunted to put meat on the table. It was not uncommon for us to come home from a day of hunting with quite literally a "truckload" of deer.

[EDIT] I changed the picture to a link instead of an embedded picture because some people found it offensive. It is literally a picture of a truckload of deer.[EDIT]

http://padens.com/files/truck_load_of_deer.jpg

Lots of rambling, but I just wanted to get some other opinions on this.

Thanks, Nathan

I always wait 15-20 minutes, for the deer to bleed out, even when I shoot them with a .300 or .338 Magnum, because, I just want to make sure.

yeah i wait 10-20 minutes, i guess depending on how the shot was, even if i saw it go down i'd wait and watch it. so if it tries to get up again i'd give it another shot. but i think i mostly wait so the adrenalin will slow down a little bit and i can breathe again lol

With rifle i wait for 10-15 min then go fielddress.
With bow i go to where deer was when shot, find blood and then wait 10-15 min.
the closer to dark the less I tend to wait...

First I give thanks for a good hunt.


How soon to recover or track? Depends.

If it went down on the spot or if I think my shot was on the money I recover right away. Even if the deer runs after the shot they normally don't go far 20-60 yards.

If I am gun hunting and I think my shot may have not been as good as it could be I wait 20-30 min and then start to track. I also do the 20-30min wait on any bow shot deer.

If its raining I follow immeadately and I won't bow hunt in more than a light rain.

I always wait. I have a number of experiences when I have shot a deer and it would run off, then I would wait and another deer would come up on me in my stand. Deer do weird things when they are spooked. (Especially when they hear shots ring out) LOL!!

i usually wait at leats 45 minutes, basically because one time i gut shot a deer adn went after it way too soon and we jumped it and it took 3 or 4 hrs to track. so even if some guys think that 45 minutes to too long, they will most likely be dead by then.

we torns the spot lites off and hide the guns real fast than we sneakith up to the deer make sure no one a lookin and we grabs it bys its legs and runs real fast and throws it in the truck and hurry home and hides it in the sellar
that how we does it boys you way of things take to long

i can't remember...it's been so long.

I do a little dance in the tree stand, Bow I get right out and mark first blood then go get help. Gun I wait about 10 minutes to see if anything else comes in the I go get it.