The Bad Shot

I’ll be reliving this hunt for a long time, and not in a good way…

I had a great 5 day archery hunt. Saw three shooter bucks, tons of does, a nice hand full or two of smaller bucks. I had set up perfectly on the back side of a ridge, sitting on a draw that seemed to funnel all the deer that would cross over the top. I drew out where I thought and hoped the bucks would be coming from, had a spot between trees where I’d hope to get a perfect broadside shot at 20 yards, and even had the location I’d be able to pull my bow back unnoticed when he’d walk behind a tinny shrub.

EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING work out as planned. The huge 8 came right out where I’d hoped, walked right down the trail as planned, when he got behind the shrubbery, I drew back on the bow, and in two more steps I had a perfect 20 yard broadside shot on a huge 8 pointer…then came human element.

Very long story short, I hit low. Tracked all I could until we ran out of blood and then some. It just kills reliving that shot and makes me sick to my stomach. We think due to lack of blood and by the deer’s general impression we got kicking it up twice, it looked fine and really hoping it was a non-lethal hit.

My big take away was holding on a deer. One thing that happened, when the deer got behind the shrub, I immediately pulled back my bow as planned…what I didn’t plan for was the deer stood there for some time. It really put some fatigue on my shoulders. I even once thought of releasing a re-drawing. I am buying a bow this off-season that has a higher let-off (this was planned before this horrible incident) but I’m really going to focus on long hold shots this summer and see how I do.

It’s absolutely the worse thing that could happen, not just to me but I feel horrible for the deer. I just keep thinking of how I saw the deer afterwards and how well it looked and hoping it’s not suffering.

If anyone has other suggestions for practicing archery scenarios, I’d love to hear them.

Dang that sucks, I know it’s not any conciliation but they are amazingly tough animals and it very well could have survived just fine. Any chance you will be able to get back to the land for gun or late bow season?

BigWerm wrote:

Dang that sucks, I know it’s not any conciliation but they are amazingly tough animals and it very well could have survived just fine. Any chance you will be able to get back to the land for gun or late bow season?

Unfortunately no, this was an out-of-state hunt..it was a loooong drive home.

Sorry to hear that!
You just need to work on your strength through training.
Archery can be practiced in your living room. Hold that bow for long periods of time and let down. Repeat. Put a dot on the wall or a target up and practice until you can hold without movement.

My first compound deer had me waiting a long time, but i’m a burly guy who can hold a long time too and deer don’t make me jittery since i’ve killed so many, grew up on the farm harvesting, etc.. I doubt i could do the same today though. There’s a reason i’m shooting a crossbow these days with a disability permit. Even with the crossbow i sat in my living room holding a shooting position a lot to get the muscle memory down. I’d shoot in the house too, but the expectations is zero movement on the bullseye at those indoor yardages

When hunting, if you cannot hold still, you shouldn’t shoot. Deer deserve an ethical kill. It is normal to feel bad about the situation. When your moving or unsteady and fatigued, you tend to yank the trigger vs pull.

I’ve lost 2 deer in my lifetime, and remember them both vividly. One i shot the jaw off a deer with a shotgun. The other i double lunged with a muzzleloader and pushed it 5 miles, continuously, figuring it MUST run out of blood eventually…Lessons we learn and try to apply to all future hunts so we don’t make those mistakes again. I hope to never lose a deer again, but it would be foolish to think we can be perfect!!

With compound, it is a good idea to regularly, while in stand, pull that bow back and keep your muscles ready. We can get fatigued quickly after sitting idle several hours in a stand. Maintaining body warmth is especially important in compound hunting for those reasons alone.

Another tid bit, read the recovering whitetails threads on here:
https://saddlehunter.com/community/index.php?forums/deer-hunting.5/

It is excellent information for all hunters to read.

I absolutely love tracking deer, gutting and butchering deer. I love the CSI of it all; so much of this i’ve learned over the course of the years anyway, but it is great this information is out here for those who haven’t had the practice. Check out those threads, it may be helpful in your future kills.

Good luck the rest of the season.

Mistakes happen, jump back on that horse!

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

Another tid bit, read the recovering whitetails threads on here:
https://saddlehunter.com/community/index.php?forums/deer-hunting.5/

It is excellent information for all hunters to read.

I’ve been deer hunting 22 years, and killed dozens of deer and that was still super informative. Thanks for sharing! The craziest one tracking experience I’ve had, was a small buck that I got one lung and grazed the heart (didn’t puncture a chamber or valve, just sliced the exterior) with my bow, and it still made it 300-400 yards into some real nasty stuff before dying.

I’m sorry it didn’t go your way on this hunt. It’s a tough deal when things don’t go as planned, but it’s called deer hunting, not deer shooting and that’s for a very good reason. Hunters have agonized over the poor or missed shot since the beginning of time.

People can invent a thousand wild practice scenarios, the problem is that in nature the number of possible hunting scenarios that could occur during a hunt is infinite. A miss or bad hit is ALWAYS possible.

Now somebody’s going to try to say that I’m saying that practice doesn’t matter. Bull cookies. I’m saying that practice is great, but you cannot and never will be able to practice every possible scenario such that you can eliminate any chance of anything going wrong.

The only thing you can do to minimize (NOT eliminate) the chances of a poor hit are to know your capabilities through practice and stay rigorously within them. Extending or expanding capabilities does not eliminate this rule.

I had a nice buck at 25 yards 2 weeks ago and EVERYTHING was right for the shot. Except me. It was at 6:20 and legal sunset was at 6:25, but I was looking down at a brown deer, on brown dirt, in a brown soybean field and damn it, I just could not SEE well enough to place the shot. My 50-year-old eyes could not pick out the vital zone well enough under those poor contrast conditions. Damnit, I wanted to shoot so bad but I had to let down because I freaking could not see. If that deer had been in a clover field or anywhere else, it would be in the freezer right now.

I replayed that a thousand times in my head, should I have stayed drawn and waited for the possibility of an angle change allowing better visibility, etc, etc, but at the end of the day the shot was NOT within my capabilities and I knew it, so I let it go.

Grouse

Sad to hear about your situation. I know it probably wont help much, But if you hunt long enough its most likely to happen at some point. From the sounds of it there is a good possibly that the deer may survive. They are incredibly tough animals for sure.