Cant Find My Damn Deer!!!

canadian hunter312

canadian hunter312

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Brant County
i was up about 18ft in my stand and took a broadside shot on a doe that was about 40 yards away. had my elbows rested on the stand and it was a 100% clear shot. heard a loud smack and watched them run off out of sight. waited 15 minutes and climbed down (climbing stand, took 10 minutes) and took my gear back to the truck. returned to where i shot her and couldnt find any blood or my arrow?

looked around for 2 1/2 hours and couldnt find a damn thing.

it was a steady rest and my bow shoots great (excalibur exomax, slick trick 4 blade heads) so the only possibility is a low or high shot but i find that unlikely as i was 100% confident is was a great hit.

will a hit deer head into a corn field or stay in the bush?

ground is hard where i was so its hard to see tracks and theres zero blood to follow.

any ideas?
 
A hit deer will go where it feels safe, home for the deer is the bush, not the corn. My guess is that even if she did go to the corn, she will make for the bush eventually.
Take it slow and track her down. Chances are, if you hit her where you should have, she's within 500 yards, more likely much closer than that.
 
First thing I always look for is hair....sometimes blood won't be seen for the first 10-20 yards. Did she hunch-up at all? Tail up or down?
Is it possible you hit her too far back? Mark the spot with flagging tape, get some buddies and start a grid search.
They will head for any cover if available corn/bush etc. Good luck! :( :)
 
Any water sources around. They sometimes go for water, if they are hit to far back. I have also found them tucked up tight against a blown down tree.

Know anybody with a decent dog. They can be quite useful finding dead things.
 
heres a quick drawing of the land, where i was, and where the deer ran before i lost sight of them. they ran in the direction they came in from.

i couldnt see the hit deer very well but im thinking her tail was up/straight behind.

i just zero'd my bow an hour before i left for this evening hunt and was shooting 1" groups at 40 yards. it was a very steady rest so i cant even make myself think that the shot was anything but a double lung hit as she was perfectly broadside. the smack i heard was definitely not like hitting a tree so i had to have hit her.

going back now with a spotlight to see if i can find her.

i dont know what to think about no blood at all. my bow shoots 355fps and it would have been about a 25-30 degree angle shot so there should be blood somewhere as id expect a pass through? unless i hit the front leg?

i guess im going to be a grouchy, tired ##### at work tomorrow:rolleyes: hopefully i find her, or an arrow with no blood;)

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Take a couple of good flashlights out and look at night - a drop of blood sometimes shows up better. A person is better able to focus when all is dark except a small lit area.

This works for any search - a lost bolt or spring - turn the lights off and look in the dark with a flashlight.
 
There is a questionable spot you may have put the arrow.

Behind the shoulder but above the lungs and below the spine and main artery that runs just below it.
Hope not, but possible, and in that case it's not a good thing.
They can go a very long ways.

Do hope you find you're deer...
 
Since you heard a loud smack you may have hit the scapula. i hope not for your sake, best of luck.
P.S. dieing deer do go to the corn as they feel safe there normally.
 
just put in another couple hours with the spotlight and led flashlight with no luck at all.

its suppose to go down to 0 tonight so the meat should be ok if she is down. its really thick bush so im hoping im just not seeing her tucked in somewhere. i was hoping to find a bloodless arrow but didnt have high hopes anyways because of that smack i heard after i shot.

how would she do with a carbon arrow in her? i know aluminum breaks off but its much harder for the carbon to break.

ive been reading on the net and it sounds like i got her in the shoulder joint. a scapula hit with my bow would mean a double lung hit. seems like theres many stories of broadheads being found in the shoulder joint. if we dont find her i guess i can hope this is what happened and she'll be ok?

i feel like a bag of ####. its going to drive me nuts until i know for sure what happened. :(


on a side note, they came running in to a few bleats from a primos "big can" and it also got them to come back when they were moving away. i should have just shot the small doe when she walked right under my stand...
 
i also walked into the corn field about 75 yards checking up and down each row with no luck. looks like they took a well used deer trail after the shot but then the trail peters out and it was hard to follow. hopefully ill be able to follow it better in the daylight.

i better just stay away from that place now. first time hunting deer there and it looks promising but ive only went to that area 3 times and ive lost my custom carved predator call, 3 shells of hevi shot dead coyote, and now 2 carbon bolts with slick trick broadheads (lost one while looking for the doe)
 
I have "heard" that deer get thirsty after being shot, might try around the little ponds.

But I wouldn't know for sure, only had to look for one deer;)

Good luck
 
Well, I had typed a reply with BOTH fingers, and my Internet went down..........:mad:

To recap what I said before my reply disappeared, I see several possibilities:

1. HIGHLY LIKELY. You hit the close shoulder blade (scapula). If you zeroed your bow on the ground (level) I am betting it shoots differently from a stand, especially as high as you were. Normally one should aim LOW from an elevated stand, so if you aimed right on, you probably hit high. If the deer's front leg closest to you was back, you would almost certainly hit shoulder and not get a pass-through. This is not normally a mortal (or even particularly disabling) shot, and would give you that loud smack sound.

2. POSSIBLE. You hit the far shoulder. Same scenario, but the deer's far side front leg was back. The bolt would not exit, but you should not get a loud smack noise.

3. QUITE LIKELY. You missed. Your bolt hit something and deflected and you are not going to find the bolt. The deer went away tail up and not apparently hit? It probably wasn't hit. Did it flinch, or move, when you shot? If not, you missed almost for certain.

The guy who posted about HAIR has it right. If you did hit the deer, there will almost certainly be hair within a very short distance of where it was standing at the time. There might not be any blood trail at all, but that broadhead definitely cuts hair when it hits hide. No hair = no hit.

Them's my thoughts - free advice, worth what you paid for it. ;)

Doug
 
To me a loud smack means the bolt may very well have hit a rock. I have shot numerous deer with a crossbow (Browning Orion - which is not nearly as powerfull as your setup) and a hit on a deer at close range generally sounds like hitting a drum. As an example of penetration, I spined a deer at ~ 15 yards and the bold went half way through the spine. In other words you would have certainly broken the shoulder joint had you hit it. I think it would be obvious from the deer's reaction.

I also think that you would have penetrated the shoulder blade, had you hit that at such close range. Where you very high in the tree? It is possible that you hit only one lung, but you should have found some blood. Go back to where the deer was standing - I'd try looking from your stand. Is the ground soft? Look very carefully, your bolt may be burried with only a tiny amount visible. It may be completely buried, but may have left a visible mark on the ground where it entered.

Thinking more about it, I suspect the loud smack was the bolt hitting a rock.

Try to look in the opposite direction, of the direction the deer went - imagine it doing a J-hook type path. This happened to my brother and me with a blacktail once. We found that deer after many hours. When it left our view it cut back about 140 degrees from the initial direction of travel. We found it UNDER a blowdown.

Good luck.


Edit - This will happen to you if you hunt long enough. Contrary to the "I've never wounded or lost an animal" type posts I have seen. It's ok, just do your very best.
 
Thought I remembered reading it somewhere

Also, when all else fails and you have completely exhausted all options, since it sounds like you are hunting by a stream, walk up that thing a mile and walk down it a mile. Deer that aren't hit fatally (immediately anyway) very often go to water to die. They get thirsty and it is also a safe place for them.
Click to expand...
 
Ditto the J-Hook pattern comments - wounded/frightened critters seem to have an innate instinct to alter direction of travel the second they get out of sight after the shot. I have never found one on the same path it departed on unless it hit the dirt before it had time to do the double-back 100 yards over thing.

Also bear in mind, that an Excalibur Exomax has a LOT of KE/FPS. I have a Phoenix which is about 50FPS slower, and even it has so much "torque" that I have never successfully recovered an arrow from a whitetail - the arrows whistle through them like they're not even there and keep going and going and going and... you get the idea. They also make a loud 'whack' at that velocity, not the gentle 'thump' that I used to get from my old 210FPS rig. Furthermore, if you did hit the shoulder, you have enough "torque" in that arrow to push at least the broadhead on in to the vitals and git er done (and if it wedged in tight through a bone, and didn't exit the far side - nope, you probably ain't finding much for a blood trail).

Which brings us back to the J-Hook pattern problem as outlined above. Best way to cope with the situation at this point, is to get some buddies, and start doing a grid search pattern (everyone walk arms length from each other, back and forth, and back and forth) until you've covered a good 500 yards in any direction (1,000 yards in any direction is better, 2,000 is better still, etc).

And the last note is - from a treestand, you probably did hit a LOT higher than you wanted to, possibly so high as to make a clean miss and/or just winging it through the backstraps non-fatally (and the FPS/KE mentioned above would be PLENTY to skiff it off into the brush so you'll never find it without a metal detector and a lot of patience). If you give it a good honest effort with the grid search and don't find so much as a drop of blood, I'd consider that a missed deer, myself - even without ever finding the arrow.
 
thanks for the info guys im going out in 10 to give it a shot. it was about a 20 degree angle and i put the 40 yard dot about 1/3 up from her chest figuring id get a high lung it on the close side and a low one on the opposite. this bow shoots like a laser so it should have been a good hit.

ive been playing it through my head over and over all day today and i keep coming back to a good hit. solid rest, clear shot, deer not moving, etc. have a gut feeling i hit her good but just cant find her.

the bush where i was hunting is only about 300 yards from road to corn field but not sure how long it goes for. hopefully i can do a good zig zag pattern by myself. none of my friends are hunters and willing to help because its "cold" and the old man (the tracking guru) is in the states until tomorrow.

how long will i have to find her before she spoils? the nights are down to 0 or colder and today was a high of 4, same as tomorrow.
 
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