While shed hunting yesterday I stumbled across my buck I shotthe last day of the first illinoisshotgun season with my muzzleloaderand never found. It was only about 200 yards away from where I gave up. Itis the first buck I have ever shot with a muzzleloader. I was extremely happy to find it, the rack was still in perfect shape. Lost a lot of sleep because of this boy.

Glad to hear you found it!!! I wouldn't have slept if I had lost that guy!!! He's nice.

Thats a nice lookin rack and too bad you couldnt find him after you shot him but just to warn you im sure someone is gonna raz you cause you didnt look hard/ long enough but hey at least you found a bit of him.

Oh believe me I looked for him for 2 weeks. Unfortunately there was no blood trail and it was basically like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Took my dog with me and had her try and sniff him out and everything. So I definitely made a valiant effort to retrieve him before now. I'm just glad I found him.

Gosh, it's ashame you didn't find it, nice buck! You could do a Euro Mount!

Another fine specimen of oursweet illinois herd!

Congrats on the deerand the find.

glad to here that you found it

Tha6ts a nice buck. Too bad you couldn't find him earlier. Better late then never.

Glad you found him, too bad you didn't get the chance to enjoy the table fare.

Glad you found him...at least now you know what became of him.

Now onto the learning aspect of this...

Make sure you study all details of this situation so you can learn from it. If you can, try to find where your bullet struck and why he died. Was it from the initial shot? Or did he simply die from infection later on? Look at where you found him....think about where he was when you shot....study the terrain inbetween and figure out why he ran where he did. How far did he travel? What features are around him? Thick cover? Water? Ridgeline? In an escape route? Bedding area? Make note of everything possible....then if (we all hope it never does, but sometimes it does) it happens again in the future you can think back to this buck and remember key aspects of why the deer behaved the way he did. It may just help you out later on.

Everytime I find a death bed in the woods, I study everything I can about it and put it away for future reference....its amazing what you can learn. I actually used this type of knowledge this year to find two does who bled very little....I thought about normal escape routes and where they went. I followed that intuition and found both deer.