Several years ago in ND I was hunting with my dad and my nephew in an overgrown pasture. My nephew shot a nice buck we jumped up at about 150 yds away. We knew the general area where he went down but the grass and brush was thick and 2.5-3 ft high all over. We got to the general area where we thought he went down and started looking for him. All of a sudden the buck lunged at my nephew with his antlers pointed at his legs. It was a quick and violent effort from an adrenalized deer and luckily it came up maybe two inches short due to Trevor reacting with a quick rearward hop. The buck turned out to have been spined about 1/2 way between the neck and the tail. I can assure you there was nothing wrong with his will to live or his front legs as they propelled him a good 7-8 ft. in a single, violent & rapid lunge. He got a quick finishing shot before he could reload for another attempt at goring my nephew. It was an exciting end to a cool hunt with a kid from AL shooting his first deer with his grandpa and uncle present and it all taking place on his late great grandfathers land.
I know there have been some funny accounts of pheasants turning out to not be dead but sometimes the situation can actually get serious. I was hunting another time in ND with my dad and my cousin and we had limited on some nice big late-season pheasants. We were grabbing them out of the back of the pickup to pose for a limit picture with our 9 beautiful birds. Well it turns out that a rooster that my dad grabbed was camera shy. As my dad grabbed the bird by the neck/breast area this big rooster proceeded to spur the $hit out of him on the underside of his wrist. It quickly become apparent why this is the go to spot for people trying to off themselves because the amount of bleeding that commenced was damned scary. The situation was amplified by the fact that dad is on prescription blood thinner. We didn't have a first aid kit handy so we kept packing snow onto his wrist and compressing the area in an effort the get the bleeding slowed down. We always try to keep a first aid kit in the hunting rigs now as you never know what might happen and it's usually quite a ways to medical help.
