Sitting in my Loc On Spirit.....holding on to the stand as my knees continue knocking I begin mentally committing everything to memory. Where the buck was standing at the shot, the path he ran, making mental notes of particular trees, the contour of the terrain where he ran and the last spot I had him in sight. As I am doing this I see blood from my stand, soon I realize it begins just a few feet from where I can see my arrow and I can easily follow the blood trail with the naked eye for at least 30 yards perched 20' up in my stand.
Without a doubt I know he is down, it is just a matter of not giving in to the urge to climb down right away and get after him.
The 30 minutes passes like Molasses in February. I tried to focus on other things but as you may imagine it was all an effort in futility. At 20 minutes I start lowering my gear and making my way down from my stand. A closer inspection of the arrow reveals it is 2" into the ground and there is blood and a lot of hair at the impact sight. Th hair is a mix of dark brown and white chest hair.
I retrieve my bow from my gear rope, nock and arrow and check my watch......25 minutes.....to hell with the other 5 minutes....I am going.
I start following the blood trail, slowly and quietly which is hard to do considering how heavy the trail is. I almost want to start jogging it but instead I continue "by the book". This is what I find at 8' from the impact site.
This pretty much continues for many yards, the only gap in the trail is where the buck faltered once, hit a tree and rolled. He did regain his footing and managed another 20 yards after this and immediately the trail resumed. Here is last blood. (note the hoof in the left of this photo)
He had traveled about 80 yards in what could not have been more than 10 seconds. Standing there looking at him I look and after a couple seconds I find my stand in the trees less than 40 yards away, he had run around the little hill I was hunting one edge of.
Field dressing and autopsy began although I was sure I had hit the heart I also found that the single bevel had destroyed 1 lung and damaged the other as well. However, the real damage was from the over 3" slice into the heart, my arrow had found its mark.
Topic: Rattle, the shakes and.....OH BOY! (Read 1914 times)
