JEEZE!!!!!!Bitter Sweet!!
 

Sunday I shot my first deer with my bow 20 yards....one problem though 2 words gut shot my arrow made a complete pass through no blood just green grass never found her bitter sweet moment!Hopefully next time I'll find the one i shoot and it'llhave a good shot on it!

Also found a dead 8 point good rattlen horn's all i found was the skull nothen else though made the time somewhat better.

I completely understand the bitter...

but what do you mean by sweet?

iSnipe

Thats sucks big time. Go back and look for her. Look for birds circling in the sky above. She'll die from that wound.

So your saying your just going to leave a dead deer in the woods?

Your a disgrace to me

How long did you look? Their should be blood somewhere on the trail she ran off on. I would have kept looking. If you had let her sit overnight you probably would have found her the next morning.
Can you use punctuation when you type, It gets confusing reading your post. lol

man that sucks but it happens just keep searching thats all you can do. use a blood light its helps find the small traces

I've heard of folks leaving deer over night and still eating them but not where I live. The weather is usually too warm, and if a deer isn't found and dressed within an hour they are left. I wouldn't reccommend eating the meat even in cold weather, if the deer can't be found and field dressed right away, but cold weather could stretch the time several hours maybe. I can't understand how guys hunting in warm climates can wait very long before tracking, but I see it on tv all the time. Ted Nugent or someone is hunting in Texas, in a bug suit, and after shooting the deer at noon he waits to let it die. Then six hours later in full darkness they track and find the deer, and hold it up for photos in a cloud of flies. Let an already warm ( body temperature) steak lay outdoors a few hours and you would'nt eat it. There are a lot of bad things inside a body, that will spoil it very fast. Especially when you don't drain the fluids and remove the guts. After that, with cold weather they cool fast.
I guess it all depends on the temp your hunting in.

To me it sounds like you only looked for blood at the impact area of the shot and didnt really try finding it other than walking in the same direction the deer went. There is blood somewhere and thats a dead deer. Go back and look.....:nonono2:

You bettter find that D@@#$ Deer Man!! You dont just shoot a deer and look for a few minutes an say,

"Oh well He got away"

You find him.

Five days after the fact and you all want the guy to look again , LOL . It is to bad it happened but it does happen to a lot of people, probably way more than will admit it .

Ohhhhh!!! I'd of been out there looking, looking, looking for that deer! I'd of probably cussed anyone who said, let's go, it's gone! The only thing that would have stopped me is sun set... but I'd of been out there the next day searching!!!

The feeling of a lost and wounded animal just kills me inside, especially if I was the wounder! I'd of definately been out there looking all day for that deer for as long as I could! I feel obligated to search and recover if it runs off but that's just me though.

Tell us how long you searched?

iSnipe,
I'm assuming his "sweet" is hitting it with an arrow or finding a rack... :confused0024:

I am not very sure how you got bitter sweet out of this one either! This thread is a discrace to all of us hunters on here.. Two words? Gut shot = dead deer!! Why the heck haven't you searched for her? She might of ran but you can bet a hard earned dollar she has laid down and died some place not that far away. Unless you pushed her but she still will lay down and die some place. Recovery is your responsability and it should of been performed or at least attempted. That would not be a story of no blood to be found. Blood will flow after a few yards if that is the shot you state it to be. No doubt we all can loose a deer from time to time but to not follow threw with the recovery part of it surely is sad and a discrace to all hunters. Deer will run from most all bow shots so perhaps you need to reconcider how you plan on recovering after a shot is made.. Not just give it up because it ran off in the woods..

Hunting Kuk,

The frustration here and the heat you're feeling is because of the candor in which you talk about gut shooting a deer and saying it's sweet that there was no blood and only grass on your arrow.

Sounds like you don't realize what you did really.

Well, you placed a mortal(killing) shot on a deer. Your deer is dead out there. Just because there was no blood, doesn't mean the shot wasn't good. Often people take a quartering-to shot and it enters just behind the shoulder, but exits the guts. When this happens there may be no blood to be found immediately. Just like in your shot.

You didn't find that deer and sounds like it was due to lack of serious effort. When shooting a deer, the hunter carries big responsibilities. From the moment the deer is shot to the dinner table requires a lot of effort and time. Unfortunately when an animal is wounded, the tracking will be harder. Once you laid the shot in the guts, it's traditional to back off a few hours, let the deer bed down nearby and bleed out. A gut shot deer can travel a long ways if pushed and that's why you don't follow up right away.

If this ever happens again, take some friends and all you guys/gals walk every square inch of that area searching for hours and hours until you find your kill. One man looking for 5 hours is 5 man hours. 5 people looking for 5 hours is 25 man hours and that's a lot of searching.

I think people saw your cavalier style of being happy you only got grass on your arrow instead of blood as something you were proud of. There's NOTHING to be SWEET here about. You made a mistake and that's hunting. Just make sure you do your game justice and make every effort to recover your game.

Practice a lot from the same position you will be shooting from when you are hunting. Doesn't help as much if you're standing 20 yards from a bullseye target on level ground, but does if you're up a tree and shooting at a 3-D deer target. Shoot until you feel confident you can get the job done!

Best of luck out there next time.

iSnipe

I understand everyone's frustration, but ya'll are assuming alot. It looks like he posted today, how do you know he didn't spend all week looking for it? Maybe he just got right to the point, thinking everyone would understand he looked real hard! He did say he found a dead 8 point while looking.

And for all you asking, the sweet part for him was finding the 8 point and some good rattling horns! He was still upset about losing the doe but excited to find the rack! Maybe he could have chose a better way to say that, since the loss of the doe far out weighs finding the rack.

I could be wrong, but I think you all jumped the gun on criticizing this guy! Ask some more questions before ya jump all over someone! And find out if we are talking about someone just learning or a real slob hunter before blasting away!

ok do you see when i posted that do you see when sunday was yeah i have been looking everyday whenever possible i dont see one freaking place in my post where it said screw it lets waste a deer or yeah i looked for 2 minutes you didnt know i was looking i looked today no i wouldnt be able to eat it today but i would be able to say i found me first bow deer and.....let me go into more detail so i dont get judged more i shot her watched her for half and hour in a field(obviously never fell)i watched her walk behind a pond bank so I run back to the house tell dad me and him wait 4 hours go look for her/blood never saw nuthen he walks back to the house he is the one that sed screw it...i stayed look where i shot her looked where she was standing look where she walked behind the pond bank i looked for a hour went back home got something to eat and went back every day after that i walked out the fields and all the fields around it

do you honestly think i am not gonna look for my first deer I shot with a bow???

Unfortunately judging comes with the territory. By your statement above, it sounds like you recognized your first post left out some vital details and what was left, was something that didn't make you look too good. I'm sure you agree.

I think you handled the heat just fine, given the circumstances of the lack of info from your first post.

Like I said, "that's hunting" and at times, things happen that we don't like.

I felt your wording was misguided the way you talked. It reminded me of something like a guy walking in all happy saying his friend just died, BUT HEY, the Vikings kicked *** today! You know what I mean? LOL!

Better luck next time. Just keep practicing and build confidence in your ability. Make sure you take pics of your deer when you get one so we can check it out!

Take care,

iSnipe

I agree with Hooked!!! Most of you all jumped to major conclusions here. This guy is telling you what happened when he shot his first deer with a bow and you all are ready to lynch him. I took bitter sweet as meaning he finally got to shoot his first deer, which is sweet, but that he could not find it, which is bitter. I know everyone is trying to steer the guy right, but there are much better ways of doing it.

I say keep on hunting and learn from your mistakes!! This aint HOLLYWOOD. Stuff happens out there. I have shot deer at point blank range and never found a drop one of blood. I lost a deer in some really thick cover a few years ago. She was only two hundred yards from where I shot her and I looked for two days and got scratched all to heck and felt terrible about it. I found her once the buzzards came and could not believe she was there. I also helped a guy look for an eight pointer he shot with a rifle and there were five of us looking all day for that buck and we never found it until the birds came. We must have walked past that buck three or four times at least and never saw it. Its just the way it was laying. We are experienced hunters and can track wounded deer as good as anyone. Its just that we hunt in some really thick stuff and every shot is a different situation.

LOL! Okaaay.

At least you're good at something. On the other side of that coin, I'm good at placing the bullet where it needs to be "as good as anyone." So excuse me if I don't have the tracking "wounded deer" down as good as you.

Besides, you beat a dead horse. You're a day late and a dollar short. Topic ran it's course. LOL!

iSnipe

I do believe this may be the world's longest sentence. :jaw:

YES!!!Thank you.

& yeah it was a long sentence I think period's are over rated;)

uh..... it didnt say how long he looked..... so i would say assumptions are like ass holes everyone has one......i would find out more info before i started bashing