Anyone ever recover a high hit?

[DouglasR]

So tonight the powers that be handed me a beautiful doe at like 12 yards and somehow I managed to mess it up.
Shot looked good left and right but was about as high as you can hit without getting into the spine.
she definitely had a little limp but more or less ran until she was out of my sight 75-100yds or so.
I guess all I can do now is hope I nicked a lung and go start searching at first light.
At least it wasn’t a gut shot so if I don’t find her hopefully she lives.
feeling like a bum right now

 

[Lyfter1013]

Don’t have Any experience with that exact shot, how much blood Were you able to locate? Did the blood look “foamy” like a lung shot? Hopefully you were able to get the lung And Are able to pick up Her trail.

 

[DouglasR]

Don’t have Any experience with that exact shot, how much blood Were you able to locate? Did the blood look “foamy” like a lung shot? Hopefully you were able to get the lung And Are able to pick up Her trail.

to be honest I didn’t even look for blood.
the arrow buried up to the fletchings and after she took a few hops it fell out.
The arrow is covered in mostly tallow with a little bit of blood on the fletchings.

 

[Bullshot]

Understand its not the shot you wanted but I bet you clipped a lung or artery and find the deer. Good move on not pushing her. Let us know how it goes.

 

[madtom]

The tallow:blood ratio on that arrow doesn't make me optimistic. I would guess it was higher than it looked and maybe backstrap/just over the spine. Never know though. Hoping to be wrong.

 

[Lyfter1013]

to be honest I didn’t even look for blood.
the arrow buried up to the fletchings and after she took a few hops it fell out.
The arrow is covered in mostly tallow with a little bit of blood on the fletchings.

Hopefully you can pick up the trail in the am and make a recovery. Goodluck

 

[Treeshark]

I’m with madtom- don’t mean to be a buzzkill and I wasn’t there, but first thought is that you may well have been above the spine. If so, silver lining is that the deer has a good chance of surviving that hit.

 

[338 win mag]

We're you on the ground or in a tree? Shot angle could make a difference

 

[DouglasR]

We're you on the ground or in a tree? Shot able could make a difference

I was in a sketchy tree with a million knots that took all of the climber stand tricks I’ve accrued over the past few years to ascend.
with that said idk if I was high enough for the angle to matter that much.
@madtom kinda has me thinking I might’ve shot over the spine.

 

[Gerald Martin]

All that tallow makes me think you might be higher than you thought. Deer have a tendency to drop at the shot and your eye might not have picked that up. My guess is you either find her quickly in the morning or not at all.

I don't recall ever getting much tallow on an arrow that is under the spine through the thoractic cavity. Back further along the tenderloin area, I could see it picking up tallow there, but I would expect you to get a bunch of blood from the artery that is under the spine.

 

[338 win mag]

I was in a sketchy tree with a million knots that took all of the climber stand tricks I’ve accrued over the past few years to ascend.
with that said idk if I was high enough for the angle to matter that much.
@madtom kinda has me thinking I might’ve shot over the spine.

Ok, hope you find it

 

[DouglasR]

I was in the stand circled in red, she ran west towards the way the arrow is pointing.
If she was mortally wounded would you expect her to bed down along the edge of the prairie or head downhill into the woods?
she was running along the edge of the wood/prairie to the west when I last saw her.

 

[Nick87]

All that tallow makes me think you might be higher than you thought. Deer have a tendency to drop at the shot and your eye might not have picked that up. My guess is you either find her quickly in the morning or not at all.

I don't recall ever getting much tallow on an arrow that is under the spine through the thoractic cavity. Back further along the tenderloin area, I could see it picking up tallow there, but I would expect you to get a bunch of blood from the artery that is under the spine.

Agreed, it will more than likely be an easy recovery or none at all with that type of hit.

 

[Deleted member 40728]

I would say downhill. For what it’s worth, I hit a buck exactly as you described one year and it was not fatal. Plenty of blood on arrow and blood within 50-75 yards of shot.
I seen him a few days later cruising for doe and he got shot in gun season and could hardly tell he was hit from healing up so well.

 

[Sagebrushhunt]

I hit a mule deer buck that was high like that. I was able to watch it go bed luckily. It took over 6 hours of watching him before I decided to sneak in and get another shot. It ended up clipping one lung on exit.

 

[jvanhoy]

Good luck. I hope you recover her but unless you had a good down hill angle I would say it’s not a fatal hit. Great job on not pushing it and backing out.

 

[Shangobango]

If you hit her where you described, I have had it work out both ways.

If it caught the artery she shouldn’t go far.

 

[Pucky Freak]

I seriously doubt the deer is mortally wounded. Looks to be above the spine with all that tallow. The blood is likely just from capillaries in the skin. Agree with others that it’s worth following the trail “just in case”, but I would not grid for hours if a brief search for a blood trail turns up cold.

 

[GlockZ]

Although it hasn't happened to me, I did help a fellow new hunter recover a nice first time 5 point buck, and it happened to have a previous wound high on the backstrap, that was infected but appeared to be healing. Looked like an arrow,( the wound had a triangular shape to it), had passed through the top of the shoulder/backstrap. First I've ever seen. Except for the wound and the fact that the buck was now dead, it appeared to be a healthy deer with a lot of fat on him.

 

[DouglasR]

This is what I’ve found so far.
about 50yds from where I shot her.
Currently looking for more blood...