Where I hunt in Wisconsin we have to shoot a doe in order to get a sticker to legally register a buck. Well I sat for 3 hours Sunday afternoon and was lucky enough to shoot 2 does. One I found less than 10 yards from where I shot it and the other one..... The other one was lost after backing out when we jumped it 3 hours after I had shot it. I think I hit it high. I went back to look for it yesterday morning but lady luck decided to spit on me. We had a hard rain over night and the entire blood trail was washed away and our marsh went from 2 inches of standing water to knee high over night. 4 hours of searching and nothing. I know the doe is dead from the amount of blood I found Sunday night and slow speed it fled with when I jumped it. I had marked last blood with tape from the night before. The marsh is 7 foot tall grass and reeds and visibility is about 5 feet. I know its in there but after zig zagging over a mile I had to pull the plug. Does anyone else feel like throwing up when this happens to them.

Hunting is one of the few things you can do that I've found that can give you such wonderful highs and nausiating lows.

Ben

bulbwerks,

Sorry to hear about what happened.

Same thing happened to me earlier in the year with a bushpig boar. You must understand this. To get a shot at a bushpig at night with the bow is very rare... I made a good shot the lumi knock went in where I wanted it to. I was confident after seeing the amount of blood that this guy will not go far.

120 meter further the blood is gone... nothing... I backed out after marking the spot of the GPS. Next morning early back to the spot and the blood just stopped... Man I was hammered.

But thats why I love bow hunting so much.It will take your emotions on a roller coaster ride of incredible highs to the next moment a into the dirt low...

But I learn from the experience and try not to make the same mistake the next time I am in the same situation.

Bow hunting...

You got to love it....

I agree I love doing it despite my hatred of losing animals. Sorry to hear about the bushpig its on my top 5 or so things I want to hunt before I die.
Ben

I too used to hunt Wisconsin, having lived there for 52 years. I have lost exactly two bowshot deer in thirty years of bowhunting. It's been probably twenty years since the last one was lost, and it still haunts me at times.

The bad thing is, the last one I lost, two days later the crows helped me find it. It ran a huge circle and died within fifty yards of where it was shot, and about thirty yards past where we stopped the search....

When it stops bothering you, that's the time to take up golf......

quote:

Hunting is one of the few things you can do that I've found that can give you such wonderful highs and nausiating lows.

Ben

I've been on the boards here for a bit and altho' I don't hunt, I shoot everything from airsoft to 50 BMG. I'll eat anything my hunting friends put in front of me and support all of their conservation efforts.
I applaud your ethic, and appreciate your concern for the "lost" animal.

Collins

I had similar experience with a doe in Virginia. My score for the season was one bullet for one dear and this doe - close enough shot to know I hit her - jumped and moved and I never found her. It was bothering me for weeks - hell I still feel bad about it now.
And this ML season I didn't take a shot at a buck on Saturday and didn't take a shot at a doe today, since I didn't want to go through it again. I may sound like a pussy, but I prefer to remember the deer that never got close enough than the deer that run away on me because I didn't shoot him well enough.
Maybe I am developing a mental block

Ben,

I can relate totally to your issue. I hit a doe a couple of weeks back using a Grizz Trick, almost knocked her down from the impact. I watched her work hard to make her way around the tree she was under then down a hill about 50 yards where she hooked a hard right into the thick stuff.

The shot was taken about 6:45pm, and around 7 I called my wife to drive down and pick me up, since I had forgotten my light. When she got there I eased over to the tree and found my arrow covered in bright red blood, then followed the trail finding blotches of around 4" or bigger on either side of it about 4-6 feet apart. Where she turned into the thick stuff I hung a rag and we headed to the house to change and eat supper. Around 8:45 we came back right as it started to drizzle rain. Not har but enough to start spreading the unprotected splotches. I wasn't worried as I knew from the amount of it that not far inside the thick stuff she would be piled up. Well some 50 yards through the thick stuff it opened up to a grassy spot along a fence which was about 50' or so across and about 30' or so wide and the grass was about a foot and half tall. The other side of the fence I had plowed and planted in a food plot, with the rest of the pasture in coastal.

I found one drop at the entrance to the clearing, nothing around any of the edges, nothing on any of the grass, and nothing in or around the edges of the food plot, where I would have easily seen any blood on the whitish sand.

I looked until almost midnight, even bringing my dog down there, and he too lost everything at the same spot I did. We looked from daylight until noon the next morning before it started to rain too hard for any sort of serious search.

Still I am sick like you. I have managed to drop several hogs since, but have hesitated on one shot at another doe, and completely missed a buck weekend before last. I had three easily within 15 or less yards under me Saturday night, but passed on them all. Mosre or less I decided I will not shoot another deer in the evneing, when I can do it in the morning and have light and all day to look. I told the wife, it is going to really be bad if the buck of my dreams comes out one afternoon and in the back of my mind I am thinking of that doe. I think in all honesty that is what caused me to miss the buck the other evening. Simply a mental thing I guess. Hopefully the hogs will get me through, since I have no issues with shooting them when ever I can, no issues with evening shots at all.

I think that everybody has experienced some sort of bad luck when it comes to bow hunting but as stated earlier its what makes it such a challenge.

I too have lost a few that I thought I had definitely dropped. One of my first bow hunts ever was in Zimbabwe, I was at a blind overlooking some water. A few huge impala walked in and started rutting in front of me. I Aimed at the neck as I wanted to have the buck down as soon as possible.

The thing is with a neck shot one of three things can happen.

The animal drops on the spot.
Its jugular gets severed and it runs a few yards
And thirdly the arrow can sometimes slip between both jugular and vertebra. This is when the dam thing will run forever.

my arrow just happened to slip between the two points I could have hit.
we tracked the thing for 7km and then lost the trail. Every day I think about that lost buck.
I still feel like I should go back a pick up the trail although it happened in 2001.

I advise everyone to do a bush pig hunt they are the most exciting animal I have ever hunted, second to leopard.

Good luck for the next hunt

Well I made up for losing that doe in the rain last weekend and arrowed a huge doe Sunday night, found her within 60 yards of where I shot her. To be honest after seeing what my crimson talon did to her insides I can't believe she made it that far. I will always remeber the deer lost or wounded by myself and others and try to learn from those experiences. It has made me more cautious but at least I have my confidence back.
Ben