Deer bummed tonight

[HICKMAN]

In my expirience, if it's not dead in an hour, it's not dead enough it will ever be found in edible condition. If it's laying down where you can see it, stay in the tree with an arrow nocked ready to shoot again if it get's up and watch it for 10 minutes or so. If it's out of sight, use the time to go get your gutting gear and take any thing you won't need back to the truck. A gun, treestand, food, bow arrows and then a dead deer all at once is a hassle to drag through the woods and you need to stay occupied any way.

Very well said!

 

[csaws]

The second deer I ever shot bled like that, we saw her later in the year with a limp I had grazed her leg... way too excited to take the shot I took as I had just dropped my first deer ever 30 seconds prior. As the others have said live and learn, we all have. Congrats on enjoying your time in the woods and for seeing shooting your first deer.

 

[UltraRick]

In my expirience, if it's not dead in an hour, it's not dead enough it will ever be found in edible condition. If it's laying down where you can see it, stay in the tree with an arrow nocked ready to shoot again if it get's up and watch it for 10 minutes or so. If it's out of sight, use the time to go get your gutting gear and take any thing you won't need back to the truck. A gun, treestand, food, bow arrows and then a dead deer all at once is a hassle to drag through the woods and you need to stay occupied any way.

During last years gun season I shot a nice 8 point. Left the woods and came back the next morning. Found my buck about 70-80 YARDS from where I last seen him. Unfortunately. the coyotes had feasted on his rear quarters, and had eaten into his side. The meat left was unusable. If the same thing happens this year, I will track it into the night until I find him.

 

[Jack Ryan]

In my expirience, if it's not dead in an hour, it's not dead enough it will ever be found in edible condition. If it's laying down where you can see it, stay in the tree with an arrow nocked ready to shoot again if it get's up and watch it for 10 minutes or so. If it's out of sight, use the time to go get your gutting gear and take any thing you won't need back to the truck. A gun, treestand, food, bow arrows and then a dead deer all at once is a hassle to drag through the woods and you need to stay occupied any way.

During last years gun season I shot a nice 8 point. Left the woods and came back the next morning. Found my buck about 70-80 years from where I last seen him. Unfortunately. the coyotes had feasted on his rear quarters, and had eaten into his side. The meat left was unusable. If the same thing happens this year, I will track it into the night until I find him.

I'm 54 already, I ain't got your kind of patience left in me.

I did leave one in the woods over night one time when I shot it not more than 100 yards from the house. I was sitting in a little blind I built out of factory skids and put a tin top on it. Late muzzloader season, I was only there because it had poured down rain all day and turned to freezing snow an hour before dark. The ground was wet and covered by 5 inches of spongy wet snow and still coming down by the buckets, quiet, absolutly gorgeous and probably getting where it was really a little iffy on too dark to shoot with iron sights but I'd put a lazer from off my bb gun on my hawken and figured I was good for a close one and it was absolutely snotting out from under the roof. I had half a thermos of tea left so what the heck.

I pour a cup and just like always when my hands are full of everything but gun, somebody shows up to kick crap in my face. I set the cup down, kick the thermos over and pick up my Hawken. Poke the smoke pole through the skid slats and rest it on the board, cock the hammer an the noise resonates through the skid like a sound board, as he looks straight at me like I'd yelled his name I hit the lazer button and put the dot on his heart and POW. Blinded by the fire ball, choking on smoke and seeing little yellow balls every where like a flash bulb went off in my face I pull the barrel back in and kick down the skid/door leaning on the blind and nothing. Nothing but yellow dots any way, like a ghost dissappeared in to thin air.

WTF now, I figure. Load up, powder and shove a ball down that yellow ball thing floating right where I'm trying to look down a 45 cal. barrel, fish out a cap and it's pitch black now but there is one heck of a bloody spray radiating out in the glowing white snow on the opposit side of the trail I was watching.

How can that deer not be laying right here? Where did he run? Which way did he run? How will I follow this 5 minutes from now? It's pouring down snow/rain and will be pitch black in 5 more minutes if it's not now.

I look to the warm glow of the security light as it flips on, supper is ready I imagine as a I bob back and forth looking for the warm glow of the kitchen window through the branches.

He's dead most likely, if not I'm just going to run him off me and out in the HNF where there's a million ways to disappear. It's as cold right here on the ground as it is hanging in the garage.

I went home and went to bed. Came back the next morning at daylight, sat down in the blind, had a cup of tea, picked up the gun, untied the dog and walked to the spot covered with blood the night before and walked 50 feet from there to see what the dog was after and there it was.

I lost about 5-10 pounds of meat on the insided of the rear hams where it took all night to cool down but that was it. It was already dead and laying in the briar patch when I was loading up again in the blind is why I didn't see or hear anything when I got out to look.

 

[UltraRick]

I had to correct the years to yards, I am 50 yrs old. So if it was years, I guess Dad would have had to shoot him before I was born. LOL