The buck of a life time for me. It wouldn't have made Pope and Young but was for sure the best buck I have ever had an opportunity to shoot with a bow. A minimum of a 4x4 for sure as I did not count the points and focused on the task of getting a good shot. Well here is how it all went

6:30 PM...Two bucks come walking down the ridge. 2x2 and the big boy. They meander around for a while in front of my other ground blind. I started to kick myself in the ass for not sitting there. They go down by the creek and disapear for a while.

6:45 PM...A pheasant starts to cackle and the two bucks come jumping out of the creek bed and head my direction.

6:50 PM...Big buck presents a 33 yard shot. Draw, hold 30 pin on the lungs, squeez release trigger, and let her fly. The buck takes a step forward and jumps the string and takes a hard left. I heard the arrow hit and thought it was a decent shot. The buck runs up the hill about twenty yards and stops. He stood there with his back hunched and head down like it was about to fall over.

6:55 PM...Buck still standing. Starting to second guess the shot. Finally he starts to walk a little but definatley showing signs that he is hurt. I decide that he might need another arrow in him. Start to stalk but he walks off into the canyon.

7:00 PM...I see him one more time and he takes off up the canyon. I go to the last place I seen him and mark the blood trail. I check the shot area and find the arrow. At first the arrow looked clean then I picked it up and gave it a whiff. OH NO! OH NO! OH NO! My worst fear as a bow hunter; a stinky arrow with grain and grass on it. Son of a mother f'n bitch, a stomach shot. Went to the spot where he stood for a while and found some decent bleeding. Figured I know what trail he is on, and I will give him a while to lay down a die.

7:30 PM...Call my wife to see if she would come and help me track him down. She agrees and we set a meeting location. I spend the time waiting for her getting the frame pack, lattern, flashlights, knives sharpened and other pack out stuff ready.

8:45 PM...On our way up the canyon

9:00 PM...On the blood trail

11:00 PM...Have tracked the blood for 3/4 to 1 mile to the top of the canyon/draw. Blood drops and wipes were getting further apart. Last blood found where the trail splits 2 to 3 directions.

11:45 PM...Cant find any evidence of which direction he went. Spend the next 45 min just following trails. Pitch black wading through hip to chest high grass and weeds. No more blood and no sign.

12:30 AM...Both of us had to work next day so I call off the search. Ridding home with waves of anger and sadness. I was hoping to wake up from this nightmare.

1:30 AM...In bed sawing logs in dream land.

6:00 AM...Alarm clock is blasting Guns and Roses, Welcome to the Jungle. I wake up from a dream land back into my nightmare of a lost buck.

8:53 AM...Re-tracing and reflecting on events.

Well I hope to get out of here early so I can go get another look in the light. The meat is no doubt spoiled beyond the point of eating when the temps will be in the low 80's this afternoon. I owe it the buck and myself to search some more.

J7,
I'm glad to see that you are giving the effort to find that deer. Too many times people just give up after an hour or less.
Good Luck

At least you can recover the head, and you may be lucky and discover that he expired this morning. Get on him.

Sure sign of a gut-shot. The typical school of thought on these situations is to leave it alone and hope it beds down and dies nearby overnight. With lack of blood, all too often these deer move to far from the scene and die unrecovered. If possible, I have had better success getting another arrow into gut-shot deer, SOON, while they still feel sick. Of course this isn't always possible in big open contry.

Same thing happened to me on my biggest buck, a P&Y record book blacktail. I was sick about the shot, too far back, buck hunched up. After weighing my options I opted to go after him, running over ridges and through draws, emptying my quiver at him in the process. He was already mortally wounded after all. About a half mile from where I first hit him I finally got a lung shot on him with one of the arrows I had already shot and him and had picked up in the chase.

Hope you find it J7.
Sol- Sounds to me like you are getting the urge to hunt again????

I am. I've been slowly getting the bug back over the last couple years. This time around I'm leaving the traditional archery stuff on the wall and went out and bought a compound and all the crap that goes with 300 FPS. Come late deer season I will start working on my deer head collection again.

Good to have you back!

Man this waiting thing sucks. Replaying the shot in my head, over and over. Wishing I did not take the shot or wishing it could have been an little more to the right and got something vital. Wondering if I walked right by him, late in the search, in the darkness of an ocean of tall grass. I felt real good about the shot at first. I think when he stepped and jumped, it put the arrow in the wrong spot. From my blind I could see where he was hit and it looked in the liver area but if he was full of food the stomach can push up into that area.

I am not going to get out of here until 1:30. Which means that I will get to my spot between 3:00-3:30. Gives me about 4 hours of daylight.

This is the first gut shot I've ever had. I have had some bad shots in the past that worked out in my favor. Twice I have got lucky and broke the spine from hiting to high shooting up a steep slope. I lost a doe once I hit too high in the shoulder.

I am going to put in some more effort to find him. This is not the first time this has happened and probably wont be the last. I realize this is bow hunting and these things can and do happen.

Look for scurrying coyotes when you approach. They will have devoured that thing by now.

Yeah, I was thinking that. Maybe some magpies or those big ass ravens will give me a clue too.

If you can recover the scuned-out corpse and can collect the head you can get a replacement cape to get it mounted, if it falls into the trophy catagory for you. All is not lost, yet. Daylight always changes things. Good luck.

Agree on the birds thing. I can't believe how quickly they get on a downed animal.

Well you are out there on it by now J7. Hope it works out for you. Btw pretty cool that the wife was willing to hump around in the dark and help you look last night.
I was going to say bring a bear tag with you. Two years ago one of my partners had the same thing happen. He went back the next morning and found a bear on his deer. He could see thru the binos that the deer was about empty. He shot the bear (in ID you can use your deer tag as a bear tag).

Bad deal J7. There isnt a worse feeling at all. I hope you find him.
I have never had good luck finding animals after the shot if they went up hill. Seems like the ones that gone down the quickest are usually headed downhill.

I hope you find your animal. Not knowing sucks.

Queue the music" for a loser on the "Price is Right" . Bump bum, ba dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Could not find any more evidence on which direction he went. No more blood and cant get a definitive track. The last blood was in some heavily used bedding ground so I checked that real good. I kicked up two more bucks that were bedded down. He may have continued into lands I dont have permision to be on. I found this out the hard way. The only option then was to check if the buck back tracked and side hilled it. No dice. I checked several trails and found no blood. Without a blood trail; I'm screwed. Need a helicopter to find anything in that jungle of weeds and grass. I tried to find the buck and feel like sh!t for not finding it. So I am self medicating with multiple doses of 16 ounce High Life.

For me, it is rare to get an opportuinty like that. I usually end up shooting a doe for the meat. In this case the buck was the first available option, so I took it. Sure as a tipped pass for an interception, I f'd it up with a gut shot. Way to show up in the clutch; dickhead.






Yes! Very cool. I owe her big now. She is usualy OK with a small support role of hunting and helps me cut and wrap a deer (thats it). She wont kill it herself but figures she should do her part if she's going to eat it. This time she gave one for the team. She is awsome.

She also dosent like it when I'm out there by myself in deep terrain at 11:30 PM looking for a bad shot. When we first got together; she called the sheriff on my ass becuase it was late and I was looking for deer. She dosent want me all banged up either. She says I'm no good to her then.

It's not much of a consilation, but even though you "lost" it, it really didn't go to waste. This was explained to me by a biologist friend after I was lamenting about releasing a bleeding chrome 25+# springer. I knew it was going to die, and I wished I could keep it. Well....what he said was it would be used by other animals in the food chain, just not me. I've lost 1 deer, and it totally sucked. I slept in my truck (after searching until well past midnight) and trailed the next morning to no avail. Sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug.

You should have given it another day and went back, by day 3 there should have been an assload of ravens, crows, turkey vultures, etc making a ton of racket where ever he was at...

I've often found myself hunting "gutpile ridges" and have always found them via the birds, some of the kills were obviously 3-5 days old....

Keith

Your reaction to this whole thing shows your character. You searched well past dark and went back the next day. That's all a man can do given the situation. There are people with hunting licenses who would have looked around for 10 minutes, then gone looking for another one.

Well I have shaken it off a bit. Shot some arrows into the target and changed the blades on the broadhead. Hope to get back out there this week and give it another try. I have browsed through a few pics on the net and the buck I lost was a mix of these two. Tall rack with the spread inside the ears. 4x4 or 5x5, not quite sure.