I would have bet money on that shot being tight on the shoulder and now I look at the top half of the arrow and it looks like it might be stomach content on the shaft.....
Now I have to rethink this out before I follow-up on this deer. Over time I've learned if this is a gut shot deer I better wait a long time (6-8hrs). I decide to back off and wait untill later to follow-up.
Pat comes out from his little piece of realistate for the evening and I fill him in on what has transpiered.
After 3hrs I decide to follow-up a little farther while it is still light. If the trail doesn't look to good I'll back off untill morning.
The bloodtrail is not that great but at about 50yrds we fined a couple pools of blood and I comment to pat that this looks alot fresher than 3hrs......Than out from under our feet no less than 3 feet away this deer explodes and turns to the river 15yrds away and proceedes to cross. He hits the other bank and makes it another 10yrds or so and crashes to the ground.
Wow....We were so focused on the blood trail at that point we didn't see the deer no more than 3ft away.
At this point we need to work our way to the other side of the river without getting wet.
It's dark and here is what we found