well i did it, 3 years in a row of shooting a deer on Nov. 3rd. my buddy asked why i even bother hunting other days ? this year has been especially good and frustrating for me. i've encountered 11 different deer, 10 of which have all been in bow range (<30 yds) but for one reason or another it just hasn't worked out. Of those 11 deer, 8 eventually busted me, which being in such close proximity is not surprising.
Yesterday AM i got to my stand at first light and around 9 a doe came in... eventually giving a perfect broadside shot at 15yds. being an "easy" shot i got a little cocky and just aimed centre mass. arrow hit exactly where i was aiming, when watching it looked like a perfect shot. the doe bounded a bit then started walking tail down and i eventually lost sight still on her feet. thinking it was weird she hadn't gone down i glassed up my arrow which was stuck into the dirt. nightmare scenario, no blood - all green. gut shot. Now i'm freaking out. This was my surplus archery doe only tag so i still had my buck tag, and i sat the rest of the day (9 hours) to see if i could double up. I was pretty confident early in the am with the snow on the ground that i could just follow tracks until i found her bed... everything i've been told is the deer won't go more than 200 yds before it beds down and if not disturbed will die there. if bumped from that bed, the deer is extremely likely gone. i was texting a buddy all day and we decided that we'd search in the dark. Slowly over the next 3 hours the snow started melting, now i have an untrackable deer with likely no blood, and no tracks. this was a long 9 hours. at about 3p.m 2 dudes on a quad rolled through the forest (public land) to set out bait for the rifle season the next day. the trail is about 200 yds from my stand , and likely not far from where a gut shot deer would be, did they bump her? is she gone ? now what... only thing to do was keep patience. we went back after dark (10 total hours since shot) and found her within 30 minutes. she didn't go more than 200 yds and was stone dead. after the autopsy i figured that i got a small back piece of 1 lung, liver and then guts. the guts coated the arrow disguising the other hits and we figured she had been dead for probably at least 7-8 of the 10 hours... better safe than sorry.
Now there is meat in the freezer and still have my buck tag to pursue. there are a lot of shooters in this forest so it will be exciting to get back in after the rifle hunt is over.
Attachment 39162
shot was probably about 2 inches back from being double lung and 4 from being "perfect".
