Alive or Dead?

[NY_Bowhunter14]

the other day i guy i was hunting with shot a buck at about 25 yards... he was sitting on the ground and not in a treestand... anyways, he shot the buck right behind the shoulder, but a little high (few inches) he missed the vitals but was low enough where he didnt spine the buck... we tried tracking him, however, there would only be a drop or two of blood every 25-40 yards... we couldn't find him after looking all day yesterday... my question is, do you think he is still alive or would he have died...

[Randy]

More than likely he is dead, if not, he will probably die either as a result of the wound or an infection.

[earnhardts12000]

had same prob yesturday

shot her 15 yrds apparently above vitals below spine cause complete pass through blood all over arrow on the ground got me confused what happened

[buckee]

When you hit a deer high like that, especially with a pass-through, most of the blood falls inside the body cavity, instead of leaving a good exterior trail. The deer is dead, no doubt, but where. A grid search from the last sign of blood is your only hope of recovery.

[Ohiobucks]

I helped a friend of mine recover a buck shot just like your describing. He shot from the ground, hit high, and the deer ran for about 400 yards. We found that buck near a water source in the bedded position. He shot it on a Saturday morning, we found it on a Monday afternoon. Stunk to high heaven, but his mount looks good.

Check around water, we walked almost right up to his after locating the water source. Good luck!

[MUDRUNNER]

Looks like I'm in the minority,but I think it may live.If it hit in "no man's land" and missed all the vitals and arteries it should heal up.I remember reading a post a couple of weeks ago about someone hitting a deer in the same spot and not recovering it,but their brother shot it about a week later and the wound was healing.

[natethebowhunter]

shot her 15 yrds apparently above vitals below spine cause complete pass through blood all over arrow on the ground got me confused what happened

did the exact same thing last year. i had a drop or two of blood but then it would seem to dissapear. i never found the deer but i have heard of people that shot a deer like that and shot it again the next year only to find that it had survived the earlier shot.

[Randy]

Looks like I'm in the minority,but I think it may live.If it hit in "no man's land" and missed all the vitals and arteries it should heal up.I remember reading a post a couple of weeks ago about someone hitting a deer in the same spot and not recovering it,but their brother shot it about a week later and the wound was healing.

I understand what you are saying but, isn't "no mans land" a bit further back?

[pointing_dogs_rule]

Looks like I'm in the minority,but I think it may live.If it hit in "no man's land" and missed all the vitals and arteries it should heal up.I remember reading a post a couple of weeks ago about someone hitting a deer in the same spot and not recovering it,but their brother shot it about a week later and the wound was healing.

I'll join you madrunner. I would bet that the deer was hit high enough that the arrow "actually went above the spine". You must remember that in the shoulder area, the spine is actually quite low in comparision with the actual top of the deer's outline. On the other hand, towards the back end of the deer the spine is located right at the top of the outline. Have seen deer hit high and the survive.

Good luck in your search

good lcuk to all

the dog

[Bowtech_archer07]

He's probably dead. My friend's brother shot a buck exactly where you are describing. He rolled the big 11 pointer, then the buck got up and walked off. He made it ten yards. We had to shoot him again, but he went nowhere. I think eventually that deer would have died, we just did the ethical thing since we found him so quick. Like Steve said, oftentimes on a high hit the blood trail is poor because it is all internal bleeding.

Good luck and hope you find him!!

[NY_Bowhunter14]

thx for all the input, gonna be searching for it some more tomorrow... going into some thick stuff to see if we can find it...

[GobblerBuster618]

i say no mans land as well. deer will still be alive in my opinion. no mans land often times looks like a good hit but has left many a hunters stumped. Good luck tho keep looking if u have any gut feeling the deer is dead

[axman]

I had the same thing happen to me a few years ago high hit buddy said it sound like someone hitting a 2x4 over a picnic table from 100 yards away. Well the deer took off like a bat out of **** i could hear the arrow twanging off the saplings he dropped the arrow about 25 yards down the trail. I found the arrow upside down broadhead up covered in blood. Well had 8 guys helping me and we never found him very little blood and terriable blood trail..We did a grid search went to water, looked some more and never got close to finding him. I am sure it was a high hit just above the lungs but not in the spine and pretty sure he bought the farm never seen him again and i am sure i would recognize him because he was the boss hog of the woods. That was the first time i have ever turned a deer around with the old snort/wheeze....Its does work on the alpha males lol....

[wtnhunt]

Tough to say for sure, could be just like buckee said and it bled inside and went and died, or could be that all vital organs and arteries were missed and it might live. Think the chances it is dead are probably more likely, but could not rule out the possibility that it somehow lived if not enough blood was lost.

[Rhino]

I agree with buckee and Ohiobucks that the deer is dead.

A good friend of mine's 11 year old son shot a 9 point on Oct. 13th that was hit in the same place you described. It went a long way and we found it but we were real lucky. There was no blood trail at all until after I happened to find the arrow about 250 yards from where he hit the buck. Even then we only started finding small spots of blood about 50 yards past where I found the arrow. The deer was laying another 50 yards past the 1st blood.

Like buckee said the deer bled internally and went a long way before any blood started coming out the wound be he didn't have an exit hole. Like Ohiobucks said too that buck was headed to water. He fell about 50 yards short of a creek. Thank goodness for that or else the drag would have been a nightmare.

[Trigger]

I know we had a client shoot a big bear like that with a 375 h&h and was never found. so it could have missed all vitals, but i have seen it where the deer bleed out inside. So run a grid and check any water holes is my guess animals tend to head towards water when wounded.

[Guest LIVEWIRE]

the post on here sorta suprised me for several reasons.

the first is no one knows where he shot this deer his buddy told him where he hit "a few inches high"...what does that mean ?????

next someone relates a story read that somebody else shot one the same place .....now we "know where he was shot " so we can compare??? not really.

we can only assume he shot it a few inches high.

i can't count how many deer i have recovered for people (german shepherd) and one of the first things they say is i though i hit him here or there ,so unless we saw the shot we really can't give advise on this .

there was some things mentioned here that was real high hits usally do bleed inside.

we all have the skills to kill them but very few have the skills to recover a poorly hit animal.

people would come from miles away to get me and my dog for this and i can honestly say most don't understand how or why they do certain things and how they react to the loss of blood.

also folks give up too soon.

i found one twenty yrds. away from the stand and this fellow had given up but i also tracked a doe over three miles the hard way before she was found.

i've said enough here tonight but you owe it to the animal to go back and search ...water is a good place to look but it's a puzzle you'll have to learn before you get good at recovery.

[Hardwood_HD]

im not trying to be negitive but im guessing hes going to die, infection or something would probly set in, but i know deer are tuff and some have been killed later.. the first buck i shot was with a 12ga, dropped him then after about 10mins it was like he just woke up and took off running, we hadnt even started to go to him yet.. i didnt get another shot and we never found him..

[Rhino]

Well first off...welcome to the forum Livewire.

I understand where you are coming from but all we have to go on is what we were told here.

he was sitting on the ground and not in a treestand... anyways, he shot the buck right behind the shoulder, but a little high (few inches) he missed the vitals but was low enough where he didnt spine the buck

Given that description and if that's what happened, it sounds like a high lung shot and maybe just one of them. This year will be my 39th season deer hunting. So far this season I've helped track and recover 4 deer including the high lung shot buck in my prior post. I couldn't begin to count how many I've tracked over the years.

Like you, I've helped recover a lot of deer for people before that weren't exactly hit where they thought it was. I even videoed a guy once that swore he hit the deer behind the shoulder when I knew and the video showed he hit it square in the ham. We recovered that deer but gave it a whole lot more time than we would have if he had hit the deer behind the shoulder. I agree that sometimes in the excitement of the moment where some hunters think they hit a deer is not where the deer was hit. However, I've also helped recover a lot of deer that were hit were the hunter said it was.

In this case we can give advise but it is soley based on the assumption that the deer was hit where he described it was hit. From that we hope to give a hunter some idea what a deer just might do as a result of that kind of shot. There is no guarantee he'll do that but we can only comment on what the best odds are of what we think the deer might do based on our own experience.

Maybe I misunderstood your post on this statement

...so unless we saw the shot we really can't give advise on this

but it sounds like your saying we shouldn't give anyone advise on what a deer might do under those circumstances. I have to disagree with that train of thought. Hopefully some advise here will lead to the recovery of a deer. I do believe it has in the past.

[Guest LIVEWIRE]

thanks RHINO,

I'M GLAD I'M NOT THE ONLY "OLD MAN" HERE .

ABOUT THE COMMENT I WAS THINKING LIKE A SOLID SHOULDER HIT WITH NO PENATRATION WHICH WOULD NOT BLEED MUCH AND 90% OR BETTER WILL SURVIVE THAT SHOT.

SO FINDING THAT WOULD BE UNLIKELY.

WE NEED TO HAVE CLASSES ON RECOVERY .

I ONCE HAD A DOE IN W.VA.that took her last bit of strength to go into a river so i couldn't get her.

some doesn't make sense(sorry caps on).

anyway i hope they find him or see him again.

this will be my 45 yr. climbing trees and i still get excited to see them comming.

use to stand on a step ladder and get away with it now 20 ft and get busted

[Rhino]

There's a few of us old farts in here Rob. Buckee has me by a few months. Glad to have another hunter with many years of experience participating in the forum. Thanks for joining in with us.

Given the chance for hunter error in shot placement due to the thrill of the moment you could be right about a shoulder blade hit.

I remember those old days too when deer would hardly ever look up. Maybe it's me or the pressured deer I'm used to hunting down here but it seems like every year more and more deer go through the woods looking up for danger.

I'm only familiar with one tracking experience with a properly trained dog. They are amazing. In that situation the hunter was a very well experienced hunter. He and his brother had exhausted virtually all of their possibilities looking for that buck. I arrived in Iowa 2 days after he shot the deer. On the 3rd day their buddy came in from Michigan to pick up his tracking dog (long story but his dog had been missing for about 2 weeks) and they recovered the deer in a thick CRP area about a mile or so from where he put an arrow through it. The buck was gut shot. The meat and hide were spoiled but the buck still made a fine mount. I understand the dog owner has since written a book about training deer tracking dogs and mentioned that recovery in his book.

[dogdoc]

dead---I don't believe in the "dead spot". If the arrow passed thru the thoracic cavity it hit lungs.

[NY_Bowhunter14]

let me add more to my post... it was NOT a lung shot there were no bubbles what so ever on that arrow, i doubt he even clipped the lung... it was a high shot, he knows where he it... hes been hunting for many of years...

i do very much appreciate all the advice.... and livewire, did you find the deer or your dog? because it seems to me you are taking all the credit for what your german shepard has been doing...

we were still unable to find the deer, it happens, its not like we look for a few minutes and left, we spent 2 1/2 days out there looking for it with no blood trail what-so-ever... its all a apart of hunting...

[Guest LIVEWIRE]

NY_Bowhunter14

10-Pointer

KASSIE,was 14 when i had her put to sleep one of the hardest things i 've had to do in life she was "my best friend"

but she got her reputation at about 2yrs by following me looking for mine as well as others.

it didn't take me too long following her that i begain to realize what deer do after the hit.

could i write a book "no " but i have enough info.to wright one.

once you learn that deer use their instincts to survive you'll see a pattern they do.

such as the fish hook if i said look for the fish hook you probally wouldn't know what i was talking about.

this is a term that we use to decribe what a deer will do if a wolf was after it .

they will run through the thickest part of their surroundings

go through it turn go down wind of the thicket(or whatever)go anywhere from 25-50 yrds. and lay down they'll watch their back trail watching for what every is after them .

when your in the middle of the thicket looking he will get up and head to the next thicket and fish hook again.

thats what i tell a lot of folks that come or call me i'm getting to old to go tracking every deer shot and not recovered.

but instead i tell them one follow the blood trail and have another follow downwind paralell to it and watch ahead incase they get up most of the time you'll find them in a bed there .

if you find a bed with blood in it there might not be a trail leading away .

now if this is the case and there has been a long time from when you shot and you didn't push him he will get up and go straight for water,if he can make it from the bed depending on the terrain,he wont vary over a 50 yrd. path to the water.

these are some of the things i've learned over the years following KASSIE.

she now has a stone outside my window that i look at every day and yes this time of year i miss her.

no i don't want credit for anything,i learned by hunting deer with a bow for 45 yrs.

i don't need credit ...i paid my dues i'm just here to offer any help i can.

but in the end it's just an old mans opion on a subject thats close to my heart.

thanks for listening

[wildthing]

he's dead...just a matter of where he is at.