Well, I went back and re-read my posts, and do not think I was chucking kaka at anybody, just stating personal observations from quite a bit of whitetail deer hunting............
And in fact just got home this afternoon from a week away goose and deer hunting. My clothes were all filthy and I smelled pretty bad too.
And GUESS WHAT HAPPENED!
One of my buddies shot a very nice buck, watched him run for well over a hundred yards, but could not find blood (it was getting dark) so he radioed the rest of us, who arrived at his stand with about ten minutes of legal light left. Just before we lost light we found a VERY good blood trail. Back out of the woods, cased up the guns and took off some clothing, grabbed the lights and in we went to get the deer, figuring it would be within the first ten or twenty yards.
LONG story short, it was not down in a short distance and we eventually lost the blood trail entirely after about an hour and a half. Back out the next morning, went to my last piece of flagging tape, nothing, nada, zero. BUT our host has an old lab who has found deer in the past, and we sent a tractor and wagon for Emma the Wonder Dog. Emma is ancient, has arthritis everywhere, tumours hanging off her by the dozens, but has a heart as big as all outdoors. Emma was shown the blood trail and within two minutes was on the buck, who had gone about sixty yards past the last spot of blood, and we had not seen him when we were ranging out from the spoor. Now here's the kicker:
HE DIED IN A CREEK
First time I have seen this, and of course I discussed it with the other members of the gang, in terms of this thread. All of us had heard the theory that gut shot deer go to water, and the one lad said that he had found deer in water, but in his view the deer did not know it was going to die there, he just happened to be in water when he expired.
So anyways, this time that's where he died, and IF we had tracked down the creek we would have found him that night. So there!
BTW he was hit on quite a steep angle with a 12 gauge shotgun slug, which cut six ribs before careening into the liver and one lung, and we recovered the slug inside the hide on the far side. He was not gut shot, and even though his guts stunk to high heaven, the meat was fine. In fact, VERY fine, as we had a meal of loin steaks on Wednesday and a venison stew last night.
Doug