MyHuntingForum.com
The Camp Fire => Hunting Stories => Topic started by: adkRoy on Oct 07, 2011, 07:20:23 PM
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I went out hunting after work today. Nice fall day in the southern Adirondacks. Got into my stand around 4:30. Its situated in a nice thick balsam swamp. At 6:30 I hear crunching coming from my right on the other side of the little stream I'm hunting by. I get ready and I can see its a deer., I see its legs but nothing else. It stops behind a big tree and I pull back.. It steps out and I see its a big doe. I shoot and hear thwack. That doe jumps into the stream, stumbles about for a few seconds and then jumps up and runs off into the thick swamp. I can hear slow down and then nothing.
By this time its starting to get dark in the swamp so I climb down and walk over to where the deer jumped out of the stream and onto the bank. there is water and mud everywhere. I look across the stream. Its only 4 feet wide and I don't see my arrow or any blood. I start following the deer's track in the mud. You can tell there is water dripping off her but no blood. no arrow.
Finnaly her tracks dissappear, so I start doing half circle sweeps from the last spot I found her tracks. As I'm doing a sweep, I got my little 2 AA battery mag light out, its dark, the leaves on the ground happen to be all red with dark spots on them, and I can't find blood. I decide to cut back to the stream to cross where she was when I shot her. I start walking that way when I see a small moss covered clearing, I step out into it and sink into muck up to my knee! I lost my balance and my other leg went in and as I tried to catch my self so did my right arm. It was a peat bog. I was sinking fast. I quickly got my arm out, saw a small mound with a hemlock growing out of it behind me. I tossed my bow onto the mound and reached out and grabbed a branch. by this time I had sunk up to my butt. I finally worked my left leg out and got it onto a tree root. I then pulled on the branch stepped up onto the tree root. I got my right leg out but minus my boot! Crap! I had to step back into the muck with just my sock on and dig my boot out by hand. I finally got that out. Got onto the mound, put my boot back on. Now I'm frustrated as hell.
I finally make it back to the stream, cross over to where the doe was standing when I shot her and noticed 2 little branches thinner than a pencil, that might have defleceted the arrow. I don't know if they did or not because I can't find any sign of the arrow. (I really should get lumi-nocks) I don't see any blood or hair on that side of the stream either. So I decide to cross back over and get my climber and go home for the night and come back in the morning to look for her. As I'm crossing back over the stream, my boot gets stuck again in the muck and down I go. Grrrrrrr.
Now I'm home, I hate the waiting but there was no way I was going to go stumbling around an unfamiliar swamp at night by my self. I'll be out at first light looking for her or any sign that I hit her. I just hate waiting and not knowing. :P
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First I'm really glad your OK!! Scary stuff there.....Hope you find some blood and your deer!! Sounds like you might have ticked a limb and it made the arrow hit her at a funny angle, and high....??? If it didn't go through her it will take some time to fill up and bleed out......she may be right where you heard her slow down and stop.... ;)
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First I'm really glad your OK!! Scary stuff there.....Hope you find some blood and your deer!! Sounds like you might have ticked a limb and it made the arrow hit her at a funny angle, and high....??? If it didn't go through her it will take some time to fill up and bleed out......she may be right where you heard her slow down and stop.... ;)
For a while there I thought, great, I'm gonna be stuck in the middle of a swamp with no one to find me....at least my wife knows where my spot is and if I don't contact her by 9:00, who to call.
I hope I find her or I find the arrow. that way I can tell one way or the other if I hit her for sure.
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Geezzzzzz.. Glad you got out Mike... And glad you got your boot back.. ;D At least you dont have to worry about rain tonight... Good luck...
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Geezzzzzz.. Glad you got out Mike... And glad you got your boot back.. ;D At least you dont have to worry about rain tonight... Good luck...
Thank you.
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Ok I got out in the woods by 7 this morning. I did not find the arrow but I did find blood about 70 yards from where I shot the doe. I started tracking her through the thickest balsam and witch hobble. Made for slow going. She then crossed a stream. Of course when I went to cross it I slipped on the moss covered rocks and to a bath. :-[ I then tracked her into a thicket of blackberry bushes where I found she bedded for the night. Looks like a gut shot. I started tracking from the bed and found blood for another 100 yards and then nothing. I got calls into 3 different dec deer trackers. I hope one of them gets back to me soon.
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good luck on finding the deer. know what you went through with the mud...happened with me once when i was trout fishing a new stream. never went back to that stream again
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I got John, Jeanneney, the guy who wrote the book on leased dog deer tracking, coming to help. Said he'd be here by 2:30, I just hope this warm day doesn't ruin the meat. :-\
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Hope you find it, sounds like you are doin evetrything you can,, that's all you can do
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Good luck. That sounds like its trackable!
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Good luck, I've been there but never used the dogs. Glad you got on her trail, hope you find her today.
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Well the deer tracking guy came with his dog. We spent 2.5 hours tracking that dang deer from the spot where I last found blood. We went through 6 foot tall blackberry thorn thickets, through a balsam swamp, across a peat bog, up a mountain where we found 1 drop of blood on a log. this was a good 600 yards from where I last found blood. That little dog was amazing. Unfortunately that was all we found. We tracked that deer up one mountain down the backside acrross another swamp. You could see its tracks.Then we went through a clear cut that was loaded with blackberries. Then it went up another mountain with no problem. by this time we had gone almost a mile. Thats when we determined I had not hit the deer bad and it was still running around no problem. We think that I hit muscle and missed anything vital. the blood must of clotted up. We quit before it got dark and started following an old logging road out of the woods. We ended up coming out on the main road a good 1/2 mile from where we parked the trucks. At least I feel better knowing that I did my best to track it. Mr Jeanneny said I had done a good job tracking it and marking its trail to its last know blood spot. I did give him a $40 donation to cover gas and his time coming out to help me.
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Yep that happens, but you did everything possible to find that deer. There will be a next time ;)
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That's a long track job. Sounds like she could still be running around. Did you ever find the arrow?
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We looked and looked but no arrow. Its a mystery to me where the heck that thing went. Its somewheres in that swamp. (http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u55/BJ_BOBBI_JO9/Emotions%20feelings%20moods%20related/emotionsshrug.gif)
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Sorry to hear you didn't find the deer. But it does sound like she's still around for sure
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The tracker gave me credit for calling him to find a doe. He said most people don't bother if its a doe.
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The tracker gave me credit for calling him to find a doe. He said most people don't bother if its a doe.
Where's Drobs? Those people need a KTTDD!
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I don't get how someone could put less effort into recovering one deer over another. Don't feel bad about not finding the arrow. I had a pass though on my buck last year ten feet from my stand. I looked for the arrow for over ten minutes while it was getting dark.As I gave up and turned to leave it was right next to me against a log ::). If your arrow hit that soft bog it could be sunk.
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glad to hear you made it out of the swamp ok! thats scary stuff. sucks about loosing the deer but you put more effort into finding it then most people would. As for the arrow when I shot my coyote I had a full pass through shot and I looked for like 5-10 minutes for that arrow. I eventually found about 20" of the arrow stuck into the ground with only 5 inches sticking out. the arrow snapped and the only part I could find was the broadhead/shaft part. I never found the fletching/knock side which had yellow and orange colors. I look briefly for it every time I walk to my stand and still haven't seen it.
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Sounds like maybe a skip shot.....Buddy had one like that, we looked for two days for that arrow....We found the deer in 40 yards.... :o So knew the arrow wasn't in it and had to be right in the area.....He went through there to go to another stand three nights later and pushed a branch out of the way to get through.....when it snapped back the arrow fell out of the tree..... ::)
We never looked up.....we were looking on the ground....the thing must have skipped up and was sitting on the branches of the little sapling.... :o :o :o
To bad you didn't find it, but does sound like it's still going fine....
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I had the a similar thing happen, but I found my deer and arrow, two weeks later, what was left of it in an area that I never checked. It doubled back on my and I missed when it broke off the blood trail again. I kept on going in the same direction as the original path of travel, when I cut back and turned off again. Who knows why. It was hard to tell where I hit it, but it looked like it was a high shot. The arrow had a bunch of fat on it.
On the other hand, it could have lived. My brother shot a buck and nearly sliced his hand open (only a glove) on a broadhead that was lodged in the right ham. It was encased in a cyst of some sort...weirdest thing I ever saw while butchering a deer. I was cutting the other ham when I heard him yell out.
Deer are amazing with their will to survive.
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Look, you never gave up on her and that's the important part. Noone ever intends to do so, but if you hunt long enough, you will wound game. Chalk it up to experience. I went through a similar situation on a bear some years ago, I use it as motivation to hunt as ethically as I can. You did the right thing and it was just a crappy situation. Happens. Good luck the rest of the year.