NRA4LIFE
Member
Has anyone ever had this happen to them? My dad and I were hunting SE MT for mulies a couple weeks back. All we had left was one of my dad's doe permits. As he does not get around too well anymore, we were just cruising around hoping to find one where we wouldn't have to stalk too far. We spottted a bunch and got the truck out of sight and my dad crawled up to a high spot to shoot. I could not see the deer, but there was the unmistakable "BANG-THWOP" of 150 grains striking critter. Dad was not sure he had hit her as she had run off. We went out but could not find blood. I was sure he had hit her. The area was one where the sagebrush was unusually high and extremely dense. After about a half hour of looking, I was coming up a small draw and something caught my nose. I stopped and started sniffing the air and it had the unmistakable odor of a dead sagebrush dwelling mule deer. Anyone who has hunted them there knows what I am referring to. From the direction of my breath, I took off over a small rise and sure as heck, there she laid piled up between the sagebrush where I had passed not 20 feet from her earlier. He had hit her quartering away and had just barely nicked the gut bag before tearing apart a lung and her front shoulder. Turns out she had only run about 20 feet but was a little farther out than my dad had thought. I felt a tremendous sense of relief because where she was laying would have been almost impossible to find her by sight.
