While hunting the E. VA woods to cull whitetail I had a tracking experience I've never had before. I shot a nice doe at about 25 yards. She was clearly hit well and ran straight up wind out of sight toward a creek. I waited about 30 minutes and followed up in the dark. A good blood trail lead about 30 yards across an open patch and into a rose thicket bordering the creek. Holzauge does not like being skinned alive in rose thickets and reasoned that she would naturally turn up or down the creek along the deer trail that parallels the creek to avoid jumping 12 feet off a vertical clay bank into the creek. I went around the thicket and searched the trail going down stream for blood. No joy. I walked around the thicket and searched the trail going up the creek. Nothing. I took a twenty minute break to snack and cogitate. Then I fetched my hip boots and waded up the creek from a ford down stream of the rose thicket. Guess what I found in 8 inches of icy water below the vertical bank. To land where I found her she was quite a broad jumper.

so, does she get the gold, silver, or bronze for "long jump?"

I wonder if she wasn't just "dead on her feet" and it carried her over the bank? I once had a heart-shot six point buck run full speed into tree. He hit it so hard he broke an antler. I always just figured he was already dead, his legs just didn't realize it before his brain did.