bummed

it’s just a long heart break story but anyway you don’t have to read it, but i feel i gotta post it. So here goes i put an arrow to a nice buck on friday morning 7:40AM, knew it was a little far back. found the arrow: blood, tissue, hair. found blood trail, but not much, after the impact sight in the clover. followed the blood that morning to about where the deer crested hill out of sight. felt it best to back off as i was not 100% with the shot.(9am) left my arrow stuck in the ground here. came back 3pm. brought friend. went to arrow, picked up on drops of blood, watery looking (dew on clover, rain mist, shot placement?) very few small drops of blood at the wood edge/clover field, buddy checks for double backing, don’t see any indication of it. from here it gets very frustrating, no more blood, waning daylight…go back to last blood leave arrow. this morning right back to the arrow (740am), very hard to find any remaining blood anywhere brought 2 buddies, so we are gridding the thick narly bedding area & field edge, it’s windy, very windy, spook a small 6 point and 3 does out of the bedding area dave was 2-3 yards beofre they got up (due to the wind?) . so figured if he’s not dead, he will hold tight, (can’t hear us) searched all day including the corn on the other side of the bedding area, (that landowner kindly assured us he had not seen a shot buck, but requested we stay off his property because he’s hunting 1st firearms in a week) so back to the stand, and renact everything for the 2nd time, get back to woods edge, walk side by side through the woods covering the entire woods, then back to the clover for more gridding because, maybe he changed his mind and stayed below the hill crest, and did not bed down, so we gridded a 30 acre section of clover with nothing to show, so it’s the fenceline, surronding corn, and property we could. and it’s haloween, so i need to go help with the kids for trick or treating, and almost dark. i just am sick. I could say it’ was my broadhead, and if i had a rage the blood trail would be massive and I could blame equipment, or say it was the wind or weather but this was a 25 yard broadside shot, I can only blame myself, so i am just torn up, but then i think of heart shots I have made in the past and there isn’t a ton of blood because the blood stops pumping and they bed and die within 200 yards. and he’s gotta be just dead in his bed up next to a log or just some little nook we overlooked. and then i think a hit to the high back, or [censored] can bleed that way too, and the arrow didn’t stink, so it wasn’t guts. and so maybe he’s just fine, i mean he didn’t look fine, he looked like he was gonna drop in his tracks, just wobbled there, and walked off kinda stumbling and misstepping towards the wood. i am just torn up. going back to my stand in the morning and just sort of try to replay it all. anyway i just feel obligated to find this buck and tag him, but if i don’t what would you guys do? continue to look, and stop buck hunting, or look one more day, and then start hunting again? obvisiouly not this same parcel, I have to rule that ground out for a good while after being in it. anyways i gotta sleep now.

Thats a heartbreaker, but don’t give up. I had this happen to me on the buck of a lifetime about 7 years ago and it took a while to forgive myself for the bad shot. It was too far forward and caught the shoulder blade clean. The expandable broadhead penetrated only about 1 1/2″. I knew that deer lived but trailed, tracked, and renacted for two solid weeks every chance I could to find him. I am almost positive I saw him the next year, a very similar deer if not identical. I have convinced myself it was him. This stuff happens, but if you exhaust every possibility and cover every square inch of ground you can and don’t find him, I say continue hunting. You did your due diligence and made every effort to find that deer. Sometimes it just works out that way. You did what you could, but sometimes you chalk it up to bad luck and move on. Good luck buddy, hope you find him.

If it is eating at you try one more time and maybe take along a fresh set of eyes. You are probably right you may have just overlooked him. If you head out again I hope you find him, but I think you could go back to hunting. Chalk it up as a learning experience. Good Luck!!

I ditto what HF42 said. You and your buddies have gridded it out and nothing So, get back up in that stand and get back at it. There is at least a 50-50 chance he’s gonna make it, and maybe better. And, that you didn’t find that the coyotes made a mess of him(or you would have surely found that evidence)means he has avoided them too. So go another one. And tell us about that.

Just a thought but the farm i hunt on the lady calls me all the time because her dogs find dead deer all the time that have been shot. They are all labs that may or may not be an option just trying to help. hope ya find it good luck

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Just a thought but the farm i hunt on the lady calls me all the time because her dogs find dead deer all the time that have been shot. They are all labs that may or may not be an option just trying to help. hope ya find it good luck

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Not a good idea it is illegal to use dogs to track deer in MN.

Im not saying he is alive or dead but am saying they are tough animals. My old butcher used to tell me of broad-heads that he has found in the legs and what not that were all healed over.

Deano, sorry hear about all this. Going off of what you observed, the deer wobbling and miss-stepping my guess would be he is probably down somewhere in your area. A downed deer can be a needle in haystack even in an open feild. At this point the meat is most likely inedible so you’d be searching for your antlers. I would continue to search if he was a great one. If you can, sit in your stand during the morning and see if the crows can help. If they’re on something and not just gathering you’ll see them low in the trees and flying to the ground sometimes without being very vocal. Best of luck, I do hope you find him even if it is bittersweet.

hey thanks guys. I sat again watching for crows or other tell tale signs with nothing & then looked around again starting at first blood sunday morning. spooked 2 does, so we didn’t scent it up too bad. no dead deer found. anyway, just going to stay out of this area for the week. I think the buck is still walking. I need to make some adjustments to my equipment, and then start shooting those changes to build my confidence up. in the meantime I am taking my 10 year old on his first gun hunt this weekend, and maybe’ll we’ll get a long range poke at him or another buck. good luck to everyone this week, and weekend it’s really heating up, saw a ton of fresh rubs and scrapes while walking around this weekend

Been there and have had that happen. Not a good feeling. It looks like you have done everything possible at this point. I say try to put it out of your mind and get back out there. Best of luck to you and the young one this weekend.