Ok last fall i was deer hunting in Pa's early rifle doe season for youth. I saw a doe about 180yds away and i got a steady rest and fired she jumped straight up in the air and kicked her back legs out like a mule and ran off. I figured i had made a heart shot because of the back leg kick i walked up 2 where i shot and found blood. I tracked this deer for 300yds it bled good the whole way. Then all the sudden it just stopped. I searched for this deer for 2 days. By the way i was using a 243 with 100 grain Sierra Semi points. Would anyone have any idea where i may have hit the deer which caused me not 2 find it?? Thanks

Some might say it was the caliber, but the .243 and good 100 grain bullets was plenty good enough! Other than you saying that she left a good blood trail, I'd say she was gut shot!
If not, it may have been a muscle hit somewhere. I once made the mistake of pushing a deer too fast, and trailed it for well over a mile. The blood trail finally gave out, so I don't know where it was hit either!

Theres way too much I don't know about it to give you any ideas.....even If I knew everything I'm going to mention it wouldn't necessarily point in any particular direction..
Was there hair at the impact spot? What color? How much?
Bone at the impact spot?
Did the doe take off straight away or meander at all?
Did she appear "hurt"
Was the blood "frothy"? Bubbles in it? Bright red? Dark red?
Did the blood slowly stop or stop all of a sudden?
Was there a swamp or water nearby?

The caliber/bullet you used may have been a bit light but I know of a few folks who use it effectively for deer. I wish I had a simple answer for you but the truth is that I have run into situations like this myself and have never been able to figure out what happened.

If it was a gut shot then part of the intestine may have gotten lodged in the exit wound thus stopping the flow of blood.

Just a thought.

Blood was a dark red and i didn't see any hair even at the point of impact. There was no bone . When the doe ran off she turned around and made a left hand turn once she hit the woods she ran right. She ran off like she was hurt bad. She ran low to the ground and really bunched up with her tail tucked in. The blood slowly stopped it just kept getting less and less after about 250yds then she just quit after 300. She crossed a very small creek and when she hit the other side is when she quit bleeding.

Dark red or almost black could indicate a liver hit.

Yep....no way to tell for sure, but I might guess that you poked a hole in the smallest lobe of the liver.........she was probably dead within an hour and within 300 yards of the last blood you found..but I'm guessing....too bad you didn't have a dog with you.

Dogs arn't legal for hunting deer or tracking them. if they were i'd certainly have one.

you say that when she hit the other side of the creek she quit bleeding. did you mean that you followed the blood and it stopped at the creek or there was blood at the other side of the creek. if it stopped at the creek, is it possible she started running up or down the creek and this is why you lost her blood trail???

I would suspect the lungs were not hit buy the color of the blood described. A similar thing happened to one of my sons two yrs. ago. He shot from his treestand and the buck jumped traight up in the air and kicked before running off with his tail tucked and crouched close to the ground. There were 4 of us lookin' and we made sure this buck was not pushed. There was a lot of medium red blood to trail and when we kicked him out of his bed the blood sat in pools where he ws beeded. About 3 hrs. later and over a mile from the original shot, another son said he was close by because he could smell him. A moment later he saw him beeded in a small stream with no strength to go any further. He was put down there. This buck had been hit low with a gut shot. By the amount of blood he would not have survived the wound. Deer have a way of stopping bleeding when they hit water, almost miraculously. I don't believe this deer ran up and down the creek making it hard to track. I think your deer had the bleeding stopped as soon as she hit the water, just enough to hamper further tracking. My hunch is she was also gut shot, lost a lot of blood, eluded hunters looking for him and died somewhere else later.