long difficult blood trail ends successfully
Moderator: Excalibur Marketing Dude
long difficult blood trail ends successfully
It was one of those mornings........I shot a doe with my Exocet and knew within just a couple of minutes that it would probably be a long day. The doe was broadside at 15 yards with no clue that I was there.......I had to shoot through a hole in some branches but it looked to be wide open for at least 1'x2'...... apparently, the arrow was slightly deflected by a small branch that I didn't see. The deer moved off a short distance and started licking the wound........I could see her but couldn't shoot and couldn't tell exactly where she was hit. The shot was taken at 7:00........I stayed in the stand until 9:30 and then started looking. I had a decent blood trail at first, then it became inconsistent. She crossed 2 areas of high grass and I almost lost the trail several times there but always managed to find tracks or a tiny speck of blood, just enough to keep me on the trail. I caught up to her sometime around 11:30 .....she was walking very slowly with her head down but I couldn't get close enough for a shot. I thought about backing out and returning later, but what little blood there was had started to dry and became difficult to see on the leaves......I figured I'd never find her if I left the sparse trail I had. By 12:00 I had lost the trail, but she was headed into a creek bottom and I knew she would never be able to climb back out.......so I started looking in the thickets. The thickets were so choked with blackberry canes that I couldn't walk through them and I had just about given up. This is the kind of stuff where you could be within 10 feet of a bedded deer and never see it. I decided to return to the last of the blood trail and see if I could make any more progress. I found a couple of smudged places and got another line on the direction she was headed........I kept the line and walked back into the edge of the thickets looking for blood but didn't find any. I just happened to look in exactly the right place and saw her laying down........another arrow quickly finished her at 12:30. The first shot had entered low and behind the stomach and had exited through the rear leg. I was relieved to find her and put an end to her struggle, but was sorry that the shot hadn't been true and her death hadn't been quick. I have no doubt about the effectiveness of a sharp broadhead.......most of the deer I have killed with archery equipment didn't go 40 yards after the shot and lived less than 15 seconds after the hit........ fact is, stuff happens and if you hunt long enough, it's bound to happen to you......I'm just glad this one had a happy ending!
Last edited by GonHuntin on Thu Nov 04, 2004 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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(THE BLUE STAR)
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schnarrfuss
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Hi5
You are correct, I was lucky that this didn't happen in the evening as the result would surely have been a lost deer. I am always reluctant to shoot a deer late in the evening because of the difficulty in blood trailing after dark. Even a good hit can be trouble late in the evening. Last year, I lost a doe that I had hit through both lungs.......she died within 50-60 yards of where I shot her but she had circled and I couldn't find her in the dark........the temps were suppose to drop into the low 30s that night so I wasn't too worried.......instead, they only got down to the mid 40s and the doe was spoiled when I got to her the next morning.
You are correct, I was lucky that this didn't happen in the evening as the result would surely have been a lost deer. I am always reluctant to shoot a deer late in the evening because of the difficulty in blood trailing after dark. Even a good hit can be trouble late in the evening. Last year, I lost a doe that I had hit through both lungs.......she died within 50-60 yards of where I shot her but she had circled and I couldn't find her in the dark........the temps were suppose to drop into the low 30s that night so I wasn't too worried.......instead, they only got down to the mid 40s and the doe was spoiled when I got to her the next morning.
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wildwindom
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Woody Williams
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Red Label