I shot a doe this past Saturday in PA. It dropped in its tracks, however, on the way down it left out a bawl which I've never heard before. It kind of bothered me. When I cleaned it, I found I had taken out both lungs and the tracheal tube. Has anyone else had this experience?

Bob257

For a long while I wondered about this bawl, some deer make it and others don't. A significant contribution to answering a portion of the mystery came a few years back while I was out scouting for crop damage deer. I came across a fawn of perhaps 1 day old, I picked it up and all was fine for a short while but then it began to bawl and kick it's legs. I quickly thought back to several times when holding other aminals and their flailing legs events and this prompted me to put the fawn down, it immediately stopped bawling. I picked it up again and in a short while it began flailing and bawling, I repeated this up and down test until I was sure it was the inability to "run away" that caused the bawling.

I've shot hundreds of deer during crop damage shoots and a few dozen more during regular hunting seasons and I've taken note that the deer that can't "run away" seem more likely to be the ones that bawl. I believe it closely equates to "Help! I can't move!". Many of the deer that bawl are spine shot or for some other reason are incapacitated, even had one run into a woven wire fence and bawl until it worked it's way free. There are others that violate this premise but the majority that I've witnessed bawl because they are "stuck" and can't move. The idea that physical "pain" causes this bawling is unfounded in my observation(s).

David.......I thought it was against the law to disturb young wildlife..especailly by handling. I recall reading, on more than occassion, that by handling young fawns your scent stays with them and they risk be abandoned by their dam.

Yes I've had it happen but very rarely - a doe once and a wounded buck antelope - it bothered me too - and I guess that is why I put so much emphasis on quickly and humanely - the combined experience of all the board members here helps us do just that - but sometimes - even with the right load and perfect placement things like this will happen - this goes along with practice and being profficient and professional when using a firearm or any lethal device.

I'm of the same opinion as D.K. Spineshot deer and those hopelessly stuck in something often bawl like this. I've heard another similar, but not so haunting, vocalization from yearlings that have been kicked out by their mothers. It's sort of a frustrated, sniffling bleat. They seem to wander around for a day or two afterward, pissed off and whining.

DB Bill

The fawn was found while I was out looking for crop damage deer, a fawn IS a deer and I had permits to kill deer. There was nothing unlawful about this encounter.

The handling "myth" has not been held up in my observations, I've many times handled fawns and had the doe re-accept the fawn without a problem. Another "myth" that should be re-examined is the orphan myth, if the mother dies/is killed another doe will more than likely adopt the orphaned fawn (keeping in mind that the fawn can find another doe in the area).

Put'em down. Next thing you will be saying is " I thought animals didnt feel pain when you shot them"

smallfry

The idea that deer feel pain when shot is not one I subscribe to (in most cases), I believe they have the capability to feel pain for other circumstances but that they do so in a very different manner than many humans we come into contact with. Pain threshold is an individual and sometimes learned trait/adaptation, animals are different at this than humans.

I was a Navy Corpsman for nearly 20 years and have a bit of experience with traumatic injury among humans (sailors are basically the same as other forms of humans, somewhat slow on land but quick and nimble at sea ). IMHO The amount of time that elapses between a round impacting a critter (a well placed round) and it's death is insufficient for most of them to feel any pain, they immediately go into shock and then die before any other system activates. Find someone who has suffered a significant traumatic injury and discuss the immediate event at the time of injury, time alters, senses and awareness shift but mostly no immediate pain. (Recall the scene in Saving Private Ryan when the fella comes back to get his arm (Normandy beach scene), this to me seemed very realistic.)

I dont believe all of them feel pain, however my conclusions to the others differ from yours.

I've seen this "death bawl" many times and it's nothing specific to deer IMHO. Whatever noise an animal makes when seriously hurt or impaired is what you are going to get when you seriously hurt or impair an animal. You see it when a dog is hit by a car, a lion or bear roars or growls when shot........whatever!

I've been shot and can tell you it hurts. Immediately! But I'm sure not all gsw's are the same. Obviously some bullet wounds DON'T hurt for various reasons.

Anyway, I don't think there is any great mystery about this noise. It's just a DISTRESS reaction not much different from a drowning man crying for help or a child crying from a bad fall.

Pecos,
GSW's do differ in how they are perceived...I was wounded in my left leg in an unmentionable middle eastern hell hole...broke my femur and took out about a cup of muscle. Hurt so bad that the medics gave me 2 doses of morphine and it didn't help!
On deer, I've seen lots limp and skip off tucked up...that ain't because they know they've been shot! Its because it hurts! Hell yes it hurts!
Some shots, however don't seem to cause pain or at least only minimal discomfort. Look at President Regan...took a .22 LR in the lung and didn't even know it. And I've shot deer through the boiler room that kept on feeding as if nothing happened only to collapse a few seconds later due to Massive blood loss.
I've had several that let out a "bawl" as they were dying. Most were shot through the heart with little or no lung damage. Usually when you shoot em in the lungs the esophagus fills up with blood and they can't vocalize anything.
But depending on where you hit the thing...hell yes you might hurt it.

Had one dang near moo like a cow one time.
Kinda creepy aint it ? Makes you feel like a real murderer.

P.S. - I've also heard those sounds coming out of port-o-lets a couple times.

It could be something some animals do just before the intance of death as they feel themselves going. I had a young and very healthy heifer calf do this. I found her down and unable to stand so I got my very experienced neighbor to take a look at her. She was worst when we got back to her and as he held her in his arms he could feel her slipping away and proclaimed, "I think she's dieing right now." The little heifer gave out a bawl and then lay limp. We came to the conclusion that she had eaten some poison plant that must have been pretty rare in the area. Over the next few years and in that particular pasture I had other calves get sick but recover and they along with the little heifer all had this problem after a prolonged wet spell. Apparently I had some kind of poison plant that proliferated during these wet spells during the growing season and it was confined to that one pasture.

Kentucky, I agree that not all gun shot wounds hurt. Some the victim may feel and others not. Lots of variables. But I think it is fairly safe to ASSUME that when something is shot that it bloody well feels it. 90% of the time we would be right in this assumption. Although there may be a point in the process of dying when a body just "switches off" the pain center and from then on they don't feel anything. The closest I've been to THAT category was almost drowning in a scuba diving accident. I wasn't aware of any pain. More a feeling of "who cares" and fatigue.

yes i have heard it once, it was a doe, and she let out a bawl that would make your hair crawl, it really bothered me after i found out she was full of milk. The worst death struggle i heard was out of a bear i shot when i was 19 yrs. old , it let out a bawl so bad, i thought he was coming back to get me, how thing's stick with you after 40yrs. Rick.

I've heard it, but under some wild circumstances. I was hunting pretty close to home and heard a couple of dogs jump a deer and began a chase through the woods. I was sitting in a field close to the edge of the woods and had just moved about ten yards so I could see the field better. They got closer and closer until all of a sudden the deer jumped the barbed wire fence and landed right where I was sitting before I moved! Then the dogs, on a black lab and the other a beagle, scooted under the fence and continued. The deer was a yearling doe and it's mouth was wide open, it was tiring. They ran towards a nearby pond. I got curious and went to see what the deer would do when it got there. It ran around to one side and jumped in. The lab didn't miss a beat and jumped in behind it. That lab caught that deer in the middle of the pond and grabbed it by a hind quarter and shook it. The doe started making a horrible bawl as it struggled to stay afloat. After about fifteen seconds the deer was dead and floating on it's side. The lab, probably too tired to swim with it, swam back to the bank with the beagle. They seemed to be waiting for the wind to blow the deer to the bank.
I drove the few miles back to my house and got an aluminum boat and brought the deer home. Other than some bruises it was fine.

I've only heard a white-tailed deer bawl once.

She got hit by a jeep in the hind quarter. She crawled, using only her front legs, from the road onto my fallow wheat field. She never made a sound while I was getting out of my truck. But when I got within 10 feet she let out this blood-curdling 'cry' and kept bawling until I administered the coup de grace with a 38 Special to the brain. I can take blood and guts and have a high threshold for pain, but that doe's bellowing bawl just went through me. Maybe cause it happened at night made the experience more vivid. If I had my druthers, I wouldn't want to hear it ever again.

The upshot of this story is that a deputy game warden came soon after. A neighbor called him to investigate. He asked all the why's and wherefor's. Then he asked if I minded if he gutted it out on my property. I said no go ahead, thinking after he saw the internal damage that I'd get the carcass. Wrong! He lifted it onto the car's carry rack on the back bumper and away he drove. Didn't even say have a good day\nite. I was dumbfounded staring at the gut pile. I didn't get the deer but I still recall the sound she made before she died. It'll probably stay with me 'till the day I die.