The one that got away...

[Sypher....]

A little over a week ago, a buddy and I went deer hunting just outside of Sheridan WY. After hiking into an area about a mile or two, we scared up 6 mule deer, which looked to be three does and three fawns. We scared them out of some brush and didn't see them until they were hightailing it up the side of a mountain. 20 -30 minutes later, after taking a bit of a circuitous way up, so we didn't spook them if they had decided to bed down, we made it to the top. Now the top was plateaued with light brush and trees scattered around, but was mostly grass. We didn't see those deer anywhere, so we headed off in the direction we thought they might have gone.

After about 30-45 minutes of walking and glassing we could not find them anywhere. I started to head towards a small hill, to get a little more elevation to look around, when we scared them out again from some grass about 150-200 yards ahead. When they broke, they were in two groups; the one in the lead had 2 deer and the other was a little loser grouped together with the remaining 4. My buddy had already filled his tag the day before, so I had my pick of the bunch. After taking aim at one of the larger does in the group of four, I fired. I continued tracking the deer waiting for it to drop, but it kept running like I hadn't hit it! As I prepared for a follow up shot, I hear my buddy say I got it. Puzzled, I lowered my rifle as the deer I had been aiming at continued to run away. Looking towards the back of the group, I see a deer circle twice and go down. The only thing I can figure, is that I missed the deer I was originally aiming for, and hit one on the other side of it.

As we start heading towards the downed deer, it pops up, and as I bring my rifle up to finish it off, I notice its right rear leg is just dangling as it hops behind a couple of trees and goes down again. Not having a clear shot, we once again start walking towards it, so I can put this poor creature out of it's misery. After we took no more than five or six steps, this stupid deer gets up and bounces away on three legs!

Over the next 30 minutes or so we are looking all over for this deer, that I've affectionately named stumpy at this point, and can't find it. We run into a group of deer that we think was the original group, but none of them are hopping around on three legs. They kept looking over their shoulders at something, not us, and finally move on after about 5 minutes. I didn't take any shots at them due to them being off the land that we could hunt. We went back to where I shot the deer, but couldn't find a blood trail anywhere. After about an hour of looking around, we decided to move on and see if we couldn't find any of her friends.

What is your story about " the one that got away...."

 

[Jeff Flannery]

And her I thought you meant the two legged variety!!!

 

[Jeff Flannery]

HERE I thought

 

[gspn]

So many about the ones that got away when I was younger and still learning. One morning I was hunting a patch of public land next to a lake in MS with my brother in law. We'd split up, with him hunting a few hundred yards from me through some extremely thick areas. I'd set up in a thick area of tall bushes with tons of limbs. It was really hard to move around in the area but there was a big opening in the middle of it, and we'd built a hasty ground blind there earlier in the year. You were impossible to see when you were tucked into that thing, and you had a nice kill zone stretching out in front of you.

Late in the morning we decided it was time to leave. He radioed me that he'd start pushing my way. I was bored as could be, and it would take a while for him to cover the distance, so I got to work. I put my rifle down and used the time I had to make our ground blind a little better. I was cutting limbs off a bush when I heard my brother in law coming. I looked up to say something to him, and what I saw instead was the biggest buck I'd ever seen on public land, standing there staring at me from 20 yards away. This buck had a huge rack with tall, thick tines. I was aghast. My stomach still turns a little even today when I type the words.

I quickly glanced down at my rifle 10 yards away, and it might as well have been on another planet. There was literally no way I could get to it in time to do anything. Before I could even start crying, that buck snorted and blew out of there. I never saw him, or any other decent buck there again.

This was one of several episodes from early in my hunting career that helped hammer home the lesson "You are always hunting, from the moment you leave the truck, until the moment you get back to it. ALWAYS be prepared!"

 

[Eddietruett]

I can't believe you did all that hiking to shoot at a doe. Not judging by any means and I know different places are harder to hunt than others, but it would have to be a huge trophy buck for me to hike several miles even if it was a 2 legged variety!

 

[d2wing]

You did what you could. It is always bad to lose a deer. Last year a friend wounded a deer and called me over to finish it because his gun jammed. I saw it through the brush and maybe should have shot it then I tried to sneak around the brush to get a clear shoot and the darn thing got up and limped into heavy cover. I swapped guns with the guy and he tracked it for over a mile. Sometimes a wounded deer will lay down and watch its back trail or hide. They can hide in tall grass pretty easy. In retrospect you and I should have taken less than ideal shots when we had the chance. It's done better luck next time.

 

[Bfh_auto]

The only one that I had get away was a 14 point that was between 150 and 175 yards away.
At that time I could only afford my SKS and had a self imposed limit of 125 yards give it take a few.
I watched that deer for about 5 minutes from the far side of the clearing.
A neighbor killed it the next weekend. It was the biggest deer I've seen in the wild.

 

[stillquietvoice]

Lost one in a snowstorm. I shot a doe with a 12 ga slug at about 30 yds as the snow started to fall. The wind picked up and snow fell 2 in an hour not wanting to lose the deer I started tracking she went nearly 2 miles and lost her in a swamp. Checked-in back trail and most of my boot prints were full of snow.

 

[buck460XVR]

I can't believe you did all that hiking to shoot at a doe. Not judging by any means and I know different places are harder to hunt than others, but it would have to be a huge trophy buck for me to hike several miles even if it was a 2 legged variety!

To some folks, it ain't the size of the deer in the hunt, it's the size of the hunt in the deer. Some of the biggest bucks I've had the opportunity to harvest, took nuttin' but sittin' in a tree over a food source. Coupla of them were only a coupla hundred yards from the cabin. Some of my fondest memories are those less mature bucks I shot late in the season, on heavily pressured public land, by sneaking up to them in their beds in the rain/snow. Those deer had more wariness and hunter sense, than the four and five year olds I've shot on private land.

 

[badkarmamib]

The one I will always remember:

First or second year with a crossbow, About 9AM, heard a good rustle behind me. Waited, and a nice buck stepped out about 50-60 yards and stopped broadside. Slowly eased up, got the crosshairs on the boiler room, and squeezed. Buck took off full-throttle. Waited a couple of minutes, and eased over to start trailing. No blood anywhere. Started looking for my bolt, also nowhere. Thought a through-and-through possible, so followed a straight line, and found the bolt about 50 yards further with no blood. He must have jumped the string, so I vowed then and there to keep all future shots under 45 yards. My only clean-missed deer. HOWEVER;

Decided my day was shot, but my father was still hunting, so I renocked, leaned back against a tree to wait, and fell asleep. Woke up about 11:30, to a doe standing 20 yards in front of me, in the exact same direction as the buck. She didn't get away...

 

[Patocazador]

Last year I had a "gimme" shot at an 8 pt. with my crossbow. He was quartering towards me at 22 yards. I aimed in front of his near shoulder as that was the proper angle to reach his heart/lungs. When I shot I heard a loud "THWACK" and the buck took off. I watched as he made a semi-circle to the left and disappeared. No blood, no bolt, no hair.
I searched for 2 hours and never found anything. I went back several times over the next 3 days and looked for buzzards = nada.

I finally decided that he turned his head towards me at the shot and the bolt careened off his antler into a large stand of palmettos. It was the only explanation that I could come up with that fit the facts.

 

[Legionnaire]

I posted this on TheFiringLine, November 20, 2001. The hunt was in Central NY.
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Last Wednesday I was out bow hunting. About 9:30am a nice six point buck walked past my stand at less than 20 yards. I let him pass and took what I thought was a perfect quartering away shot. He flinched slightly and kept moving, but didn't seem particulary spooked. "Good kill" I thought.

Unfortunately, it had been raining earlier in the day, and it picked up again about that time, so I decided I could not afford to wait the requisite 30-45 minutes before starting the trail. I climbed down and retrieved my arrow. Straight away, good covering of bright read blood; no green. "Good pass through shot to the chest" I thought.

Pretty good blood trail for a quarter of a mile to the edge of the private property I hunt. I knocked on the door of the home on the adjacent property and received permission to track their land. Unfortunately, the trail began to weaken as I crossed their property; good news was the rain let up again so I had less concern about losing the trail. But the deer was not to be found. Trailed him all the way across the property and across a road. Now we're a good half mile from where I shot it.

On to the next property (again with permission of the land owner). Through a field of fairly high grass. Now I'm getting suspicious. Blood was less evident than I would have liked, and I noted that it was only on the left side of the deer's path. Hmmm. If it was a pass through shot, the exit must have been through the chest, which would explain the lack of blood on both sides of the trail.

So across the property into dense woods, across a four-foot-wide stream . . . pick up the trail again. Down through a marsh. Blood trail is becoming a drop or small splash of blood only every few yards rather than a constant drip. I had to spend a lot of time marking my last sighting and then circling to find further sign. I began to suspect I had crossed another property line just because I was so far into the trail; but I never saw an obvious line and no posted signs, so I slogged on.

Got all the way to the bottom of the valley and the buck had crossed a creek, about 10 yards in width and a good foot or two deep at the crossing point. I went east until I found a place I could wade across, counting on the Gore-tex liners in my leather boots to keep my feet dry. I managed to pick up the trail again on the far side, but now the blood was pretty sparse. The buck followed the creek for some 70 yards.

In the thick weeds/grass/rushes along the bank, I jumped him. He was up and gone in a flash. There was blood where he had been lying, but nowhere near as much as I would like to have seen. I trailed him another fifty yards or so, and he crossed the stream again . . . or at least entered it.

. . . and that's the last I saw of the trail. I spent another hour looking along both sides of that creek, painstakingly, both sides, for 100 yards in either direction. No dice. I called it quits at 4:15pm, almost seven hour after the shot. It took me 40 minutes of brisk walking to get back to where I left my bow on the original property I was hunting on, and another 20 minutes to get from there back to my truck.

I still can't figure out just what happened. My best guess is that the angle the buck was at when I shot, as he turned away, was more acute than I thought, so that I grazed or penetrated the left shoulder and missed the chest cavity and anything vital. The one thing I'm confident in is that I didn't gut shoot the animal; absolutely no evidence of that on the arrow or on the trail.

But boy does it feel bad drawing blood and not being able to recover the animal. Just hoping that he was taken by another hunter during gun season, which started yesterday.
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I can remember it like it was yesterday.

 

[Eddietruett]

Back when I deer hunted the worst feeling in the world was to draw blood and never find the deer. Most of our hunting was with dogs and I did have a beagle that would track a bloody trail (if you have never dog hunted, a lot of dogs will not trail a bloody deer) and this little beagle saved the day more than once in our club. Rarely does a deer hit with buckshot drop in his tracks but on the upside, one hit solid will bleed a good trail because most of the time there are several holes. Deer can be amazing. I've shot them and had them drop and not move and I've shot them perfectly and destroyed heart and lungs and they still would run hundreds of yards. Seems impossible but it happens.

 

[buck460XVR]

While there are some that will claim they never missed, much less never wounded an animal and didn't recover it, hunt long enough and it will happen. Over the years, especially my early years bow hunting with recurve and early compounds, there were several unrecovered deer. Mostly due to the shoulder blade being in the way of a arrow going too slow, deer jumping the string or misjudging distance. Funny how many of those deer I saw the following season or were shot during the rifle season. Even those that I was sure were either dead in the swamp someplace because of the amount of blood, or because I was sure of the hit being non-fatal and figured they became coyote bait. Remember a doe on a large tract of state land that was missing her right leg from the elbow down. I watched her for three years run/walk around like there was nuttin' wrong while raising fawns every year. We as responsible hunter make every attempt to take high percentage shots, with proper equipment to put animals down quickly and humanely. Still, every year I'll draw feathers of a rooster or two that I see go down, and even with my best bird dog, never find it. Ain't proud of it, but am proud of how hard I actually look. Far two many times I see folks walk over to where they think the deer was when they shot, and when they don't see it laying there dead, they go back to stand to wait for another.

 

[stillquietvoice]

OK so not exactly a hunting story, but I'll tell it anyway. About 20 years ago I was headed to a civil war reenactment in Long Lake NY with several members of my company. My commander and his wife had to use the restroom of a convenience store, it was located in the back of the building. They came back and said don't go back there, there is a bear back there. First thing I did was head out back, he followed me sure enough the bear was in a dumpster scrounging for food. I bent down picked up a stone and threw it at the dumpster, the resounding bang sent the bear running into the woods. Y commander says rind me to never mess with you cause you went after that bear with only a stone.

 

[WestKentucky]

This one got away... kinda. Mid November, Opening morning a few years ago I was sitting under a cedar at the edge of a clearing. I took a very careful shot at a massive nontypical whitetail. A true behemoth for the area I was hunting, nearly 400 pounds on the hoof (yes, I have had one tap 300 field dressed and dad had one 325 field dressed). Dark brown coat, thick, palmated antlers on one side and a really heavy typical looking side on the other. At the shot I heard the plop of the impact and the deer hunkered up and tried to run but ended up in a slow trot. I thought he would pile up any second and he got into brush quickly so a follow up shot could have happened but it would have been rushed and the deer was acting like he was going down with every step. He went into river cane which I have had them do before. Thick, nasty place to be, but they feel secure and they lay down and die there. I drank a cup of coffee from the thermos, called my dad and told him I needed the little tractor to go and get the deer. Found blood, found hair, found a very easy to follow trail, but then it just stopped with no deer at the end. Carefully looked and circled around for blood and followed the deer for a while. Got the beagle on the trail and she followed it for a while but the deer crossed a creek a couple times and circled back. I felt terrible knowing I had lost the deer of a lifetime. Fast forward to January, and I was working with the beagle trying to get her to run rabbits when she stopped and started acting funny. She led me to the deer and he was nearly laying where I was standing when I took the shot, just about 40 yards away in another thick brushy spot. Not much left as the coyotes and buzzards had stripped him clean.