Had an eventful evening last night. Yearlings, young bucks, a nice 2.5yr old walking with his mouth open making clicking sounds. Beautiful evening to be out. Bit warm but nice. Finally had a momma come into bow range to check on her button buck and doe yearling. 17yds and she hit my opening. I drew when she was behind a tree. She approached the tree at an angle so I thought I had a quartering away shot. She must have changed her angle when she came around the tree because the shot was perfect broadside. Unfortunately, I hit her back a couple inches more than I would have liked to. If she were still quartering away I would have caught lung and liver. As it was, I was all liver. No lungs. No guts. She ran 20yds or so and stopped. Walked another 10 feet and stopped. Then she fell right on her nose. Front legs gave out. I was pumped! But she laid there with her head up then rested her head and then head up. This went on for awhile. I was blown away when 20min later she got up and walked away. All this time I had no shot to put a second arrow in her. Frustrating.
So I climb down, go home, change and we begin to look. From where she got up we never found another drop of blood. After some futile searching I called it. So this morning I took Hank out. Again, no blood. Hank started out hot, then seemed to be wandering aimlessly following anything which distracted his doggie ADHD self. At this point I pulled him around rather than following him around. I began to grid search. After a bit of this he started going nuts again. He was tugging hard on the lead and I followed him. 200-300yds from the stand he led me to her. We were probably 30-50yds from her when he started pulling hard.
I am thankful to have recovered her. No coyote damage. Meat was good and in cooler. Hank? The jury is out. I truly need to work him more. I take partial blame. He was never professionally trained either. This is likely part of it. Some of it is also because I don't always trust him. The handler needs to be able to read the dog and the dog needs to know what the handler is asking. At the end of the day, she is on ice.
So I climb down, go home, change and we begin to look. From where she got up we never found another drop of blood. After some futile searching I called it. So this morning I took Hank out. Again, no blood. Hank started out hot, then seemed to be wandering aimlessly following anything which distracted his doggie ADHD self. At this point I pulled him around rather than following him around. I began to grid search. After a bit of this he started going nuts again. He was tugging hard on the lead and I followed him. 200-300yds from the stand he led me to her. We were probably 30-50yds from her when he started pulling hard.
I am thankful to have recovered her. No coyote damage. Meat was good and in cooler. Hank? The jury is out. I truly need to work him more. I take partial blame. He was never professionally trained either. This is likely part of it. Some of it is also because I don't always trust him. The handler needs to be able to read the dog and the dog needs to know what the handler is asking. At the end of the day, she is on ice.
