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2009 Shoulder hit, one lung, long blood trail....found him!

2009's Columbus Day weekend found me in a treestand, over looking a scrape. Saturday evening a movement caught my eye (to the right), with about 2 minutes of legal time left. It appeared to be a very large doe, but she was standing on her hind legs and raking the overhanging branches of a tree...by the scrape. As soon as I'd seen her, she turned and left the way she'd came. She was there and gone in 20 seconds. :smiley_confused_sch

Sunday evening, that same "doe" showed up about 20 minutes earlier, with plenty of daylight and a rack on her head. It was so dark the evening before, that I never spotted the antlers. The buck was behind my tree, which forced me to lean out backwards as far as I could to get a shot. My safety harness teather was too long to allow me to hang from it to get a shot, so I was borderline on falling to get the angle.

He was almost in position (at 12 yards) when I let the arrow fly and heard the loud crack of a shoulder bone. He bolted out of there and headed back the way he'd came. I gave him 20 minutes and started getting down. In another 20 minutes I had all my treestand, steps, etc. gathered up and was ready to start tracking.

I tracked 40 yards of scuff marks before I found the first splash of blood. :smiley_beard: Another 40 yards of blood splashes and I found my entire arrow with about 16" of blood up the shaft. The corner of the main blade (Razor Trick) was broken off, but that has to be expected with a shoulder hit. Another 170 yards of spotty blood that kept becoming less and less, until he exited the woods into a picked bean field.

The bean field blood trail was a few spots of blood (2 to 4 penny sized), 10 to 15 yards and a few more...for the next 700 yards. I kept kicking bare spots in the field to keep track of what line of travel the buck was taking. Meanwhile, I had to throw a few dirt clumps at a skunk to get him off of the blood trail. Towards the end of the bean field, there were 3 intersecting corn fields...a 4 way farmer's lane. I looked hard at that intersection to find scuff marks, overturned leaves, broken twigs and all I found was some smaller hoof prints.

At this point I had been on the trail about 2 hours, so I figured if he's hurting, he's hiding. So, I was shinning my flashlight into the standing corn, when I see a set of eyes with antlers looking back at me. :smiley_chinrub: I couldn't believe he was still standing after all this time and blood loss. He bolted further into the corn, after seeing my light, so I reluctantly left him and came back in the morning.

Monday was Columbus Day and I was off work, so I started at first light...picking up the blood trail in the corn field, where I'd seen him last night. He ran another 180+ yards and piled up in the middle of that corn field. I learned a lot on this blood trail...an education to be remembered. :smiley_blink:

230#, 15" inside spread, 10 pt. buck and since he was slightly bigger than my Recurve Buck, I had to put him on the wall too. :smiley_bril:

Good hunting, Bowhunter57


 

hickslawns

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
39,721
248
Ohio
Hank could have helped you on this one Daniel. Hopefully this year you don't have this long a blood trail to follow. You have my number if it happens. Don't hesitate to call. Best of luck, and I enjoyed reading it. . . again. Great story! Glad you found him!
 

Tree Monkey

Member
1,825
0
NW ohio
Great looking buck!!! and awesome story!!! You gotta love when you learn some thing new or get reminded of the little things and still get your deer in the end!!!