smoked a doe ended bad


countryboy89

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Hey guys i smoked a huge doe at 4yds tonight put it right behind her shoulder and found puddles of blood at first i thought with the rage 2 blade and the hole i saw in her when she took off she was dead. my cusion was sittin about 100yds from me and he even heard the thawck and said dead deer. well i waited a good 45 mins and started finding puddles of blood then we started finding drops of blood bout 70 yds from the stand then out in the field we only found one drop and that was it we crilced that field for 2 hrs and couldnt find her idk what happend. the last deer we have shot this year have been really fatty idk if the hole plugged up with fat or with it bein so close my bow is to fast idk kinda pissed me off i thought these rages really did there trick but idk sry for long post

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Sorry for your loss of the doe...thats always a hard pill to swallow!

On another note...rest assured it wasn't the rage heads fault. The shot was either not where you thought it was...or you just lost the blood trail. If it was a good shot...she's gotta be there somewhere, any broadhead shot through the vitals of a deer will kill that deer.

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Sorry for your loss of the doe...thats always a hard pill to swallow!

On another note...rest assured it wasn't the rage heads fault. The shot was either not where you thought it was...or you just lost the blood trail. If it was a good shot...she's gotta be there somewhere, any broadhead shot through the vitals of a deer will kill that deer.

I have to agree with Snapper on this subject. Things happen and so many variables can come into play on a shot (even at 4 yards).

I have seen the fat plug up an entrance/exit wound before.

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countryboy89....You may have called it with the fat. My buddy shot a doe last week , he had great blood at first and then just a drop here and there...then nothing at all. Fortunately after about an hour of just looking for her, he found her. When he looked, the shot was five, but the exit hole was completely plugged with a hunk of fat.

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May have hit bone and did a sliding richochet. May have missed vitals even though the shot looked good. Think about the angle and if the shoulder bone might have caused the arrow to slide around instead of pass through?

Just another possibility to put out there?

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Like was said previously..........if she was lung hit, she'd be laying close. So she must not be. Going back 45 min. after the hit may have bumped her out and she put some ground between ya without bleeding enough to find it. Also a lung hit should not have large hunks of fat filling up a hole. Deer just don't have that amount of it around their rib cage normally.

The Rage is kinda getting a "cure all" reputation and it is far from that. No broadhead is. I am curious if you can give more info on the specifics of the situation like angle, ground or treestand, kind of arrow (light vs. heavy), what your arrow looked/smelled like, etc..... Something must have gone arye somewhere.

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There just isn’t something adding up. As previously mentioned the ribcage area typically carries a minimal amount of fat. And even if it was fat that would have to be a pretty big piece to block up the hole that a rage makes.

Again I don’t know a lot of specifics about the shot, but I saw something 2 years ago that sounds somewhat similar to what you describe. My cousin shot a doe that, at the moment he took the shot, turned to lick her hind end. After the doe was hit she turned to run. Initally the deer bled a lot but then just stopped after 75 yards. We found the deer 150 yards away. My cousin had made a perfect shot. Its just that when she turn to run she closed the hole and prevented any blood from coming out. When field dressing her we found all of the blood was in the chest cavity.

Again I don’t know the specifics of your situation and it might be possible that the fat plugged the hole (I know stranger things have happened). But like the others have said if it was a vitals hit shes around there.

Good luck and keep your chin up it happens to the best of us. Just learn from this experience and you will be that much more prepared the next time you make that shot.

Edited by NYmathewsman
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I've killed several deer with the 2 blade rage heads...never had one "seal" up.

Either way...lets humor the idea...even if the hole (2") plugged with fat...the deer isn't going to make a recovery! Any deer shot through the vitals will be dead...very rarely beyond 100 yards!

exactly im having a hard time believeing that a two inch hole closes up from fat, more than likely if you saw what you saw that doe is dead within a hundred yards

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I did about the same, from about 10 feet away with full pass through. The went almost straight down. Very little blood. After I searched for a while looking for turned dirt and leaves I found her about 60 yrds in thick brush. It turned out that the Rage did it's job, but the exit hole was so big the liver plugged the hole. Not much blood at all, and after having her come in so close I was worried. Sorry about your loss, I fed coyotes last year in KS so I know how you feel.

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I've shot numerous deer straight through the boiler room that didn't bleed worth a darn, but they've all been dead within 80 yds. Depending on angle they don't bleed until the chest cavity fills up and by then they're stone dead. If you truly got her in the vitals she's balled up somewhere close. But like someone said, single lung hits are a pain to recover and the deer can go a long way, many aren't recovered.

Also i've had deer bleed good for the first half of the recovery distance then nothing the last half. I attribute this to a death run. When they sense they're done their adrenaline pumps up and go on one last run til its lights out. At a high rate of speed blood doesn't accumulate and is hard to follow.

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