Bearings and Landmarks
Through the mental haze clouding my adrenaline-added mind, I remembered to dig out my compass and record the bearing of the direction where I'd last heard the deer crashing. I had no idea what awaited me out there. I hoped the deer was lying dead not far away, but you never can tell.
I also read and recorded the bearing to where the buck had been when I'd shot, and eyeballed some landmarks in that vicinity. It's all too easy to forget where things happened unless you pick out and remember some landmarks immediately after the shot.
The Waiting
I glanced at my watch. The time was 9:27, and about two minutes had passed since I'd flung the arrow at the buck. I spent a few minutes collecting myself and typing up some notes about the experience on doPi (my iPod Touch).
This allowed me to record some facts that I probably would have otherwise forgotten, but more than anything else I was using up time before going to look for my deer. As you may know, deer sometimes need time to fully expire before being tracked. If you don't wait long enough, you can lose the deer by causing it to get up and run when it may otherwise have simply lain there and died if unpressured.
In my notes, I finished describing what had happened, and wrote, "Now I have to go look for him. It is now 9:39 AM."
The Searching
I gathered some of my gear, climbed down the ladder, cocked and loaded the crossbow, and walked over to where the deer had been when I'd shot. Examining the area, I found no arrow and no blood - not even a drop. So I decided it was smarter to back off and go to where I hoped the deer lay dead.
I had felt my tension level rise as soon as I'd discovered neither arrow nor blood trail, and decided I might as well head towards the last place I knew the deer to be alive, rather than attempting to track it.
I knew from the shot angle that there was a good chance I wouldn't get a pass-through shot and a blood trail, but I would have felt a lot better if I'd found them.
I backed out of that area and skirted the thicket through which the buck had run, working my way towards the POed squirrel, which continued to bark itself silly. Then I spotted the white and tan hair of my deer up ahead, lying there in the wide open. The deer had apparently been heading for the ditch crossing which is used by both deer and hunters. That was convenient, since that's the way I had to go out.
The Damage
The buck ran no more than 60 yards. The only blood I found was very close to the deer. By the time you found blood, you would have found the deer. The time was about 9:52, and the buck's beautiful dark seven-point antlers wore some tree bark on the bases, where he'd been rubbing them earlier that morning.
The deer showed no sign of injury on his right side, which faced upward where he lay, but a large pool of bright blood was visible on the ground beside his spine. Rolling him over revealed the reason there'd been no blood trail. The entrance wound was fairly high on his left side, and the rear end of my arrow protruded from it. The height of the entry wound combined with the lack of an exit wound meant that, until he fell over, most of the bleeding had been internal.
The entrance wound was a horizontal slash five inches long. I later determined that the Rage-tipped arrow had sliced through four ribs on its way in, slashed a portion of the diaphragm, laid waste to both lungs, and punched through the opposite ribcage before coming to rest just shy of the bone in the right shoulder.
Weighty Matters
The lack of a scale at camp meant that, for the second time in as many hunting trips, I had to estimate the deer's weight. My original guess was 140 pounds, which I based on some deer I'd taken (and weighed) the previous year. The club president claimed that a 140-pound buck is huge for the place, but a good accurate scale may change his opinion on that. I'm confident that this buck weighed no less than 130 pounds. Heck, my hound dog weighs between 70 and 80 pounds.
I had a time loading the buck in the truck. I finally climbed onto the tailgate while holding his antlers, then stood up to drag him up on the tailgate. Speaking of antlers, his had about a twelve-inch spread. Certainly not earth-shaking, but plenty good enough for my first archery buck.
Nice Numbers
Driving back to camp, I got to thinking. In a total of eight hours over three mornings of deer hunting on this property I had seen six deer. Five of them were within bow range, and I brought two of them home with me - one of which was a seven-point buck. Not bad at all, especially considering that in my youth I spent many years hunting where it was commonplace to see only a few deer during the season.
Steering the Deer
As happened after I'd shot a doe there a couple weeks earlier, my buddy John hunted the same stand afterward, and although some deer came within bow range, he wasn't able to connect with one. Oh well - his time will come. Dad used to say, "When it's your turn, a deer will walk up and cross its legs and wait for you to shoot it."
As usual, Dad was right. What he didn't mention was how helpful it is to know when (and how) to get a deer to cross its legs when all it really wants to do is walk away. In this case, that was accomplished with some fast decision-making (had to take a risk by setting down the crossbow to use the binocs) and a little "deer conversation."
If I'd relied on my naked eyes and stood stock-still then I may never have gotten a good enough look at the antlers to confirm the buck's legality, and if I hadn't spoken I wouldn't have gotten a shot at the vitals.
It's nice to know that something more than luck went into bagging my first archery buck. Heck, keep it in mind next time you head to the woods; it just might come in handy.
- Russ Chastain
