any weird deer recovery stories?

[jim phenes]

i watche dthe video of terry green havalina recovery and it reminded me of two years ago. I hit a nice 7 pointer while i was on the ground the arrow went strait through and just below the spine. I got on the deer as soon as i could but ran out of blood. hoping he would live i tried to go on but it bothered me for days. opening morning of shotgun season i shot a buck that resembled the same one i hit during archery season after skinning him out i came to the conclusion from the wound that he was the same buck made me feel better knowing he did make through alright, unfortunatly for him he stepped in front of me twice!

[Hot Hap]

Not really weird but the first deer I shot with a bow-took 4 years to get a shot-went about 30 yards and it took me 5 hours to find him. I didn't even know enough to look for blood. Hap

[Bowjunkie]

The first buck I ever shot with a homemade selfbow... arrow angled forward through him, looked like a good shot, and stuck in the ground. He ran just 10 yards or so and stopped. Stood there for a short while, then ran sort of slowly/laborously along the creek and out toward an overgrown field with trees scattered around. Blood sign petered out. It was a small area and I searched it thoroughly, or so I thought. Called off work the next day and searched and searched. I finally gave up, totally disappointed, and turned for the truck.

Right away, I crossed a creek at an old farm crossing, with a culvert pipe underneith... it's so old, it's almost indistinguishable, and again, totally overgrown and brushy. There's a bunch of redbrush to my immediate left. As I pass the last bush there, something down and to my left, in the creek, almost at my feet, scares the livin' crap outa me. It's the buck, in the small pool at the culvert, facing me, dead but sitting upright, IN the creek, half submerged, with his head up, tucked nicely in/under the brush. He was only 60 yards or so from where I last saw him alive, 15-20 yards from last blood, and I must have walked past him, CLOSE, from different angles, many times during the search.

Since it was so thick and brushy in there, and the creek banks were deep and steep he was hid really well. I stepped back just a few feet from him and he totally disappeared. Found him by pure luck.

[Bowwild]

In 2005 my son shot a deer with a mechanical broadhead. I saw the shot from 250 yards away. He said he hit it broadside but I saw a lot of arrow flopping as the deer exited and I was on the off-side.  We found very little blood and no arrow. We searched for hours one day and again the next. No deer. I told him he must not have penetrated the chest cavity and the deer would live.

The next year I'm on a Colorado Elk hunt (one I call the Kidney Stone trip -- that's another bad and expensive story --$14,000 and emergency surgery).  My son called me on one of the alternate days that I was hunting instead of at the hospital. Seems he had killed a deer a few days before. The processor found the mechanical head (private land no one else hunted this large property)lodged in the spinal process above the lungs.  He shot the deer about 600 yards from where he hit it the year before. We figured the wide blades of this mechanical on a quartering away shot deflected the trajectory of the shot upward along the ribs and into the spinal process to prevent the arrow from entering the chest cavity.  Needless to say we have a pile of those broadheads that won't see the the end of our arrows again.

I have a far more personal unsusual bear recovery story that I don't put in writing. It involved a string tracker, cut hand, an empty quiver, and one arrow shooting the bear twice -- dead bear, raw nerves, and a big rock.

[Todweelz]

First time hunting in the u.p., with the man who got me started in trad bowhunting, Dave was waiting on the trail for me when I came out of my stand. He had a big but concerned grin.
  Told me he had shot a buck, problem was at the shot [ about 17 yds] the buck ducked and spun to its right away from Dave, he said the arrow hit back a bit, we waited about two more hours and started the recovery. Three hours and 75 yds later [ it was THICK ] we found Daves buck.
  Arrow entered about an inch from its nataural exit, burried to the fletch was his arrow, think thats why there was so little blood, when I rolled it over, we found that the right side of his face was covered in porcupine quills, its left eye was full of them, to this day we refer to that buck as "The blind eyed butthole buck"

[John Scifres]

My first bow kill.  Doe, about 20 yards away broadside.  Had good blood right away and trailed for 100 yards or so.  Got nervous and went to get my buddy but never found her that night.  Went back the next morning and after a couple hours found her dead tangled in a fence.  The only wound was a graze across her nose.  I don't know if that killed her or the fence.

[Bowwild]

Gee whiz John that is weird.  Do you suppose the deer, in its mad rush to exit the area misjumped the fence and broke her neck?

By the way, are you related to Bayou Bill?  I worked for INDNR for the first 13 years of my career and followed his column regularly.

[DRR324]

I've been on a few "goose chases' in my many years of helping buddies track deer- but one stands out.  A "buddy" (co-worker) who doesn't see well, shot a buck with bow one day.  After many hours of looking with another co-worker, they called me to see if I would give them a hand.  I get on the scene and the guy says it was a real nice 10 point, shot was 20 yards and he was tight behind the shoulder.  No arrow, very little blood, so I rule out his shot placement.  I begin tracking from where they left off and come across a small clearing leading down to a brushy creekbank.  After an hour or so I find blood on the under side of the marsh grass and begin creeping in on hands/knees.  I slowly make my way inside the mess, and spot a deer bedded 20 yards away- facing away from me.  I see that it is a small 4 point, but don't see any damage from my angle.  I'm thinking its a different deer- (not a nice 10 point) so I'm waiting for it to bust out at any moment, it doesn't move, I get closer and now from 10 yards I see the end of an arrow sticking up near the front of the back leg.  I back out slowly and check the guys arrows- yep- they match.  After a few minutes of discussion, I didn't think I had enough room in there to shoot his bow, so I took the guys 6" bladed knife and my boot lace- cut off a stout 8' branch and lashed the knife to the end of the stick.  Back in I went, slow as possible.  I crept to within 4-5 feet of the buck, picked a spot, and lunged at it with the "spear".  The little buck jumped up and I tried to stay with it- trying to cut it deeper with blade.  It jumped into the creek and out the other side-out of my vision.  I heard it run for just a short ways, and then silence.  I backed out, we went around the other side creek.  I found blood right away and slowly followed it about 50 yards to the now dead buck.  After giving the guy some serious crap about a "10 point- and nice shot", took a look at the damage.  His arrow was all guts, just in front of the rear leg.  My spear shot, managed to cut through the top of the right lung- and when he jumped, it caused a 4-5 inch cut downward- pretty much slicing the lung in half.  Needless to say- the guy was ragged on the rest of the year for his superior visual awareness, and he lost his right to hunt that piece of property....  100% factual story of my most memorable blood trail.

[D. Key]

My buddie shot a nice 8 point one morning a few years ago and he and I started trailing the buck only to run out of blood after about 80 yds.  He said it was a good hit so we went back to camp for some breakfast.  After about an hour we went to the place where we ran out of blood, which was in an open field only about 50 yards from a creek.  We started to fan search for more blood and I walked along the low creek that only had warter in the deep holes.  To our surprise his buck was floating in one of these holes.  We retrieved his buck and after some conversation we determined the buck ran into the creek an died, sank to the bottom and after the hour or so, he floated to the surface.  My buddy had looked at that very spot before we gave up the search before breakfast.

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Arrowed a little buck last november. Saw it go down 40 yards away.  Walked past it on my way to get the truck...about 10 minutes down the road.

In the time it took me to get back something had eaten a good sized chunk of meat out of its hindquarter.

[Jerry Jeffer]

I was hunting about 20 yards into the woods off a power line. My car was parked out on a right of way on the power line about 50 yards from my stand. Just after sun rise, I shot a buck. It ran out to the power line and slammed right into my bumper. Shortest drag ever since he died right there.

[Mechslasher]

i guess my strangest recovery is when a cousin of mine shot a deer, didn't know what is was exactly.  we tracked it for a while until the blood ran out.  then called a friend with a dog.  the dog went staight to the deer.  turned out to be a 200# 10 pointer that he had hit high in the leg.  the buck was sitting in it's bed and was fairly dazed from the lose of blood.  in our excitement of following the dog, we forgot to bring a gun or even a decent size knife.  so my cousin pulled out his pocket knife that had a 3" blade and proceded to walk over to the buck.  i really wasn't sure what he was going to do when he straddled the buck, grab a antler and was about to cut it's throat when the buck stood up, with him on it's back.  all this happened in a four year old clear cut.  if anyone knows what one of these looks like in s.c., it is a tangled mass of green briar, honey suckle, and blackberry bushes, not a place to wrestle a 200# buck.  after the buck stood up, i ran over to help but the buck kicked me in the arm causing a 8" cut from wrist to elbow and rolled me into a blackberry thicket.  while i was disentangling myself, my cousin was riding the buck like a bronco buster yelling to whole time for me to help.  you may be wondering what the friend was doing with the dog.  he was laughing his a$$ off the entire time.  when i got up, i jumped on the buck hoping to bring it down.  that didn't work either.  now this buck had lost a lot of blood but was still managing to carry over 400# of us on three legs and beat us black and blue.  we finally got him down and finished him off, but i respected the raw power of deer ever since.  i later asked my cousin how he felt when the buck stood up?  he said all he could thick of was keeping the brow tines out of his crotch.  we had to dig thorns out for the next two weeks after it was all over.  i now carry a good size knife when deer hunting.

[RC]

I was hunting with a fella on a local WMA. WE were riding and doing some midday scouting and found where deer were crossing a logging road heavy on a very defined trail. We parked he went left and I went right...we were both very "green" at this back then. He shot a big doe coming down the trail and she ran hard the 75 yards to the road and almost ran into the truck. She swerved and ran  50 yards and fell dead less the ten yards from my tree. After dragging her to the truck we notice blood on the front fender.RC

[twitchstick]

One year back when I was younger I had a vehical with a transmisson out. I was pretty bumed out because that mean't that my hunt was over. I had a friend wanting to take me out because he had never been hunting before and wanted to learn about it. He had come form a rich family and never realy new anything about the outdoors,camping was a 3 star hotel. Well with some good luck(pure luck) I made a great stalk on a small buck 20 mins later at around 1:30 pm. I hit the buck a little high but he had a big spot red high in the lungs as he ran off. Well  by 4:00 pm I had seen no blood and no arrow and started grid searching likley routes he went. I found him in a funnel about 100 yrds away still barely alive. I decided to slit his throat to finish him off. Simultaneously while I started to cut the throat a lighting strike hint within 100 ft of us. The type you hear the pop before the big boom. It was the frist stike of the day so it took us by surprise. My buddys eyes were as big as they could be like it was a sign from God. It did spooked him pretty bad for a day or two but I reasuured him it was ok. I'm just glad it didn't scare him away form hunting all together.

[Don Stokes]

Shot a little buck a little far back, broadside. After waiting half an hour, followed him up and heard him jump. Found him again 8 hours and a quarter mile later in a bed, and didn't get a shot. There was only a thumbnail-sized spot of blood in the bed after he left.

While turkey hunting the next spring, I found his remains within 20 yards of where my arrow had originally hit him.

[JamesV]

Some years back I was fairly new to bowhunting. I made a bad shot on a doe and gut shot her about 3 hrs before dark. I went to camp and got an old-time bowhunter to help track her. He had a coleman lanter with a reflector he used to track blood at night. No blood but found the arrow and knew she was hit bad, thru the stomach. Then the old man saw a opossom on the gut trail and he said be quiet and we followed the opossom right to the deer. That thing was like a beagle on a rabbit trail.

[robtattoo]

Not a bowkill, but last year I shot my very first Whitetail. I shot it from a ladder stand with my muzzleloader at 30yds. I got a perfect, broadside, back of the shoulder shot. The doe jumped, staggered for a while & then walked straight to my tree. She died leaning against the bottom section of the ladder! I actually had to jump over her to get out of the stand. Shortest trailing job in history, the ATV was even parked less than 50 yards away!  :D

I had one odd one.  I propped my three leg stool against a tree to rest my back.  a large doe came charging in and slowed a bit about 20 yards from me.  I fired an arrow and the broadhead went straight through and stuck in a tree beyond the deer.  The doe ran up to a flat spot on the steep hill and turned broadside so I took a long shot and put another arrow through the deer. When I looked up where the deer was after I looked for my first arrow, there was a doe laying head up right where I took the second shot.  Then a group of bucks does and fawns came over the high side of the ridge and the doe got up and went over the flat with them.  I went up to the flat spot and found blood going up the hill to the spot where the second hit happened and then just a very light sprinkling beyond where the deer was sitting.  From there the pin size specks went for about twenty yards and then nothing.  I saw the direction the deer went and searched and searched, nothing.  After two hours of this, I was exhausted and it was dark. The next day we went back and started the same process all over, nothing.  when we were finally ready to give up we thought what if we just go up to the fields and glass around. From the point where the second arrow went through the doe there was a trail heading up.  Alongside that trail about four feet from where the second hit happened was a cedar with branches all the way to the ground. The doe was in a ball at the base of that little cedar in plain sight the entire time if viewed from above. The sprinkles of blood, we discovered when we had full morning sun, ended 30 yards at my arrow which we also found.  The squatting doe that ran off was not the doe I shot.

[Plumber]

I had a doe right under me I shot she ran 20 yds piled up deader than anything. as I exit the deer stand I could not find the arrow so I walked over to my kill an her stomac was all blown up.  one hole in no exit no arrow. after my poking around the fletching with about 5inches of arrow was all the way down her right front leg by her foot an about 10 inches of arrow was horizional tight against her back bone.thats is all I found .no broadhead. an again no exit.I told the butcher to be carful he reported no futher arrow parts were found. the inital hit was stright down on front3rd of back behind neck this arrow must have exploded in side of this deer.

[katie]

I had both of my deer and the 1 turkey I took last year all fall into the same creek within 5 foot of eachother.  All taken from different spots on my place.  From now on I am not going to trail, just walk out to the creek:)