Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Ever lose an animal you felt was well hit?

Last evening I had a Doe come half running past me at 25 yards. I took a shot with my 45-70 and felt I connected. I found some hair but no blood and it got dark. I looked for awhile today and finally found it dead. I hit it behind the front shoulder with a 405 grain bullet and the bullet exited through the liver on the far side. Not a drop of blood anywhere and because it warmed up today the deer was spoiled. Made me remember a time my son shot a buck at 150 yards with his 270 and a 130 grain ballistic tip.The buck cow kicked at the shot and took off. We gave it a half hour and had a great blood trail. Even some pink foamy lung blood. That blood trail petered out after a couple hundred yards and we never did find that buck. Sometimes things just don't add up.

No, not yet but close. Not a good feeling at all.

Yes a 5 by elk, but a buddy coming in at the sound of my shot put it down about 100 yds from were I ran out of sign.

Most everyone who hunts long enough will have this happen

I second that idea. Cheers NC

Heard a man tell his son this, “Son you’re not going to hit every deer you shoot at and you’re not going to find every deer you hit...it just works out that way”. He was right.

I’ve lost a few well hit deer in my long hunting career...most to the bullets that I see advertised in this thread.

Decades ago my brother shot a whitetail doe at 150 yards. We both heard the whomp of a solid hit, I saw the dear react to the shot. Two of us searching for 45 minutes found nothing to indicate a hit either where the deer was standing or along the path we saw it run to exit the field.

I think where one hunts affects the risk of losing an animal. We tend to hunt more open ground, most times when we hunt timber there is snow on the ground. The animals reaction to and movements after the shot are easier to observe in open ground or poplar glades as potential follow up shots to take.

One day in Texas my son and I were "tagged out" and spent a day trying help two guides recover a wounded deer (dropped to the shot, hunter felt no need to shot a dead deer again so no follow up) thick, nasty bush full of cats claw i think its called; like wait a bush light. The ground was limestone with very little soil so following tracks any distance was impossible for me, We never found the deer and I ruined a pair of jeans. Our guide was a keep shooting until he's down guy and make damn sure he doesn't get to the bush, fully understand why.

The conifer plantations in Scotland are thick nasty cover as well. When I hunted in Hawaii 50 yards line of sight was quite long.

I speculate that those of us that hunt in open ground or gladed woods often with snow lose less game than those who hunt in the thick nasty with no tracking snow. Just because we can see more and often track easier because of ground conditions and snow.

As said previously; hunt long enough and stuff happens.

not yet

Not one well hit. One poorly hit that I simply could not get anotehr shot at. I'll assume she died. Looked for days and never found her or buzzards...

Since we have NO clue what a bullet does on impact or what path it takes, we'll often never really know.

The weirdest one happened to a buddy, called to help look for a cull 8 that had a specific set of antlers. Piece of lung on the ground. Smaller piece a few feet away. A bit of blood for a short distance, maybe 25-50 steps. We looked for hours. Probably close to 4-5 hours total. Eventually probably 7 or 8 of us. Prior to me having a decent tracking dog.

Buck was seen chasing a doe about 3 weeks later and shot in the neck on purpose. Hole in rib center going in and out, cartilage in both lungs healed over.

Also the last time I ever loaded or shot or let anyone else shoot Sierra BTSP game kings on any animal.

They can be tough animals for sure.

With a dog now, I'm 99% sure if the dog doesnt' find them they are not dead. They may die mile or more away depending on how stupid the shooter was in regards to looking for them right away( last weekend we had a bad case but I'm still not sure the deer is dead or will die). But if the shot, and trail are treated correctly I"ve not seen the dog miss a dead deer yet.

Here I've found a couple of them the next morning. As long as its been 60 or less at night I"ve never lost any meat either, other than what varmints may have dined on.

I will say I have found every one I hit well, eventually. Diving into cedar/pine thickets, brush piles, cactus patches can make it a bit tough.

Came in to the lease one night and saw several guys from the neighboring lease out with flashlights looking for one they had tracked from the other side of their lease. One of the guys had found a single drop of blood about 50 yards from our fence and nothing else. I found where the deer jumped the fence to our side, made a loop and crawled under the fence back on their side. 100 yards later I caught the eyes of the deer. Still alive. Called them over and let the original hunter finish it off.

I had one old doe leaving chunks of lung the size of a quarter, but it played out and never found her (young pine plantation thicket). On that same stand a few years later, I had the same thing happen and this doe eventually ran out of steam after 500yds of blowing blood and lung goo everywhere. Never seen anything like it in my 29 years of deer hunting. Maybe the deer in that area were just tough mothers.....(150gr and 168gr Nolser NBT .30cal)

Yep. Two, maybe three.

First was the "maybe". My father and I were hunting heavy brush under thick canopy down in a canyon in the pouring rain. Saw a back. Looked goofy, the horns almost glowed. I wasn't comfortable with the shot but dad was pushing me to shoot so I did. Y' do that at 17-18 I guess. Deer didn't go down. We looked for a couple hours but with it raining so hard, and light a bit dim, there was no blood trail. Gave up. A week later, 5 miles away, I found a dead buck with a bullet hole through the middle. The damned things horns had been painted orange. I suspect that's the "glow" I saw but it is real hard to figure how a deer as apparently solidly shot as that one looked made it 5 miles. So ... dunno. Maybe I flushed it and someone else shot it.

The second was a blunder on my part. I shot a small 4x4 blacktail out in a field with a .25-'06 with 120 grain partitions. After recoil, I saw the deer running off somewhat diagonally up hill and go into the brush a quarter mile away. Rather than go to where the deer was when I shot, I "saved time" by going to where I saw it go into the brush. I looked around for quite a while. No blood. I couldn't find it's tracks with certainty because there were so many more tracks. Gave up, went home. 2 days later I was back in the same spot and noticed buzzards right where it'd been when I shot so I went over to look. There were the skeletal remains of a dead buck stripped of hide and all but a few ribbons of meat, a small 4x4 rack, a bullet nick on a rib on the entry side and 2 ribs with chunks representing about a 2 inch hole on the exit side. Unless that deer I shot went a quarter mile to the timber, then some other direction, then somehow came back to the same spot to die ... there must have been two bucks, one I didn't see.

The last was a bear. I was handgun hunting early in deer season. After the morning hunt I got back to my truck and laid my 5.5" barreled Super Blackhawk beside my 5.5" barreled single six .32 mag which I'd brought to shoot squirrels mid day before going back to hunt deer. I was in the driver's seat of my truck, leaned back, sandwich in hand, and a bear walked by. Without taking my eye off the bear, I reached down and grabbed my .44. Back up a sec .. I'd been talking to JD Jones and bought a bullet mold from him so I was shooting hard cast 285 grain bullets from my .44. I decided if they'd penetrate 7 feet of elephant skull surely they'd penetrate 18-24 inches of bear to do a "texas heart shot". I stepped out without looking down, pistol in hand, thumbed the hammer, lined up the sights on "the little brown spot", and squeezed the trigger. I was anticipating .. well, Marvin the Martian is my hero and I was expecting an earth-shattering KABOOM. Instead, I got a nasty little "pop". The effin' bear dropped, then bounced up and ran straight away at the top of a low ridge about 40 yards from me. This was followed by a long drawn out scream. I was in triple-layer WTF mode ... "pop"? Bear run? Scream? I looked down at my hand ... I'd grabbed the wrong single action and shot that bear right in up the "poop chute" with a Hornady 85 grain .312" hollow point. OMFG. I had hysterical giggles mixed with denial 'cause I couldn't really get my head around what I'd done. I swapped guns and ran up to the ridge top where the bear disappeared. There was no back side to that ridge, there was a 200 foot vertical drop into a jumble of huge boulders covered with brush. The scream was the bear falling towards death. I finally found a way down, looked around for a while, couldn't find it even though I was sure it was there. I came back a couple days later and there were lots of crows and buzzards. I never did figure out where it was, figure it bounced down into a hole between the boulders, some bigger than a house.

If you're out there long enough, something will go wrong. That doesn't mean we have to accept something going wrong TODAY. Those past things are a lot of motivation to be even more careful, more deliberate, more calculating, and willing to walk away. I ate my deer tag this year because the shot opportunity I had was too far for the groups my gun was shooting at the range to reliably land in a quick-kill area. "Maybe" is for varmints, not deer.

Tom

Your second story reminds me of one of my own. I shouldn't tell it (I never tell anybody) but what the hell. It was rifle deer season and we were driving the sidehill of a mountain towards our standers. My BIL was directly above me (he wasn't my BIL yet though as I was only 17) and he had already filled his buck tag so he wasn't carrying a gun. All of the sudden I hear him yell "Mike it's a buck shoot"! I turned to see a Spike running down the mountain behind me. I fired five times as he ran out of sight. My BIL said "what the hell did you keep shooting for, he dropped at your second shot"? I said "I seen him keep on running over that way". He replied "he's laying right up there where your second shot dropped him". So he convinced me and we walked up and sure enough there he lay dead. I said "there must have been two of them" and my BIL said "no way, where I wasI had a clear view of the whole side hill below me. I don't know what you were shooting at"?
And I don't either. But I know I saw the buck continue on. Even though he never did.

I lost three bucks in one day on Afognak Island...

First I shot in the neck in deep snow. Dragging him to the beach I found where a brown bear was bedded when I shot... less than 50 yards away. Tied the deer to a huge log on the beach with halibut ground line and went to get the skiff. When we got back the deer was gone, but you could see the trail the bear took while carrying the buck.

A couple miles away I was following the edge of a clearcut and stepped out to the edge on a step knob. Two bucks steeply downhill from me and less than a hundred yards away died. My buddy came out of the woods and looked over the edge in front of me and started laughing.

A bear right below me ran straight away from us and stopped when he found the deer. Only two times I ever lost deer to bears around Kodiak. Carrying a Bob and my buddy was carrying a 223 in an H&K, so chasing bears off deer was not an option.

I took an old acquaintance of mine Bear hunting a few weeks ago. He helped me get my very first turkey about 25 years ago. I recently made contact with him despite not seeing him for maybe 10 years. I told him it was time to pay him back and I wanted to help him get his first bear in return for my first Turkey. He has been Bear hunting a few times, but never laid eyes on one.

I had been baiting up one of my Bear stands for a while and dropped him off. I put myself in a spot where I would hear him shoot if he had any luck. We were texting on and off when I heard his .30-06 Rem pump go off. He called me a few minutes later and said he knocked a decent Blackie down, maybe 200 - 250 pounds but it rolled off and got its feet under him and crashed through crazy THICK woods. I told him to sit tight and not push the bear and I would be there ASAP.

Well, when I got there he told me the Bear came out and spooked a few deer that he was watching. The Bear started to walk toward his stand and I think the fact that he wanted to get one so much got the better of him. He told himself to wait and not shoot, BUT he didn't. The Bear was facing him and walking to him when it stopped for a second and turned its head. He let loose with a neck shot (one of my favorite DRT Bear shots) and dropped the Bear right there on its back. It rolled and ran like its butt was on fire.

My bud couldn't even tell me where the Bear was when he shot. We looked for signs of a hit for a couple of hours and couldn't find anything. I figured if it was a decent hit we would at least find a smear of blood where it went down and rolled. He was pretty sick over it. Thinking he got close to the spine and gave it a good shock. Been back to that spot a few times and never saw buzzads or any sign of a hit.

He went from, I GOT MY FIRST BEAR DOWN! To, I am sick to my stomach. He certainly thought that Bear was well hit! I don't think he thought it was funny when I sent him a picture of my daughter with her Bear just a few days later.

You got guts! I'd be the guy deer hunting SE Alaska with a .338 Win Mag and 250 grain Partitions.

You wouldn’t be alone, I’ve saw more than a few Kodiak blacktails fall to 338s and 375s. Killed my first and best with one shot from my 458 Winchester.

I shot a bunch of deer with the Bob over the years... started inching up the bore over the years, but stopped at 30, mostly. Only shot a couple with the Whelen AI and the 375AI. The rest were mostly 30-06, or one of the 30 magnums. The 308Norma killed a bunch and several different 300WMs, and an H&H, but anything from 30-06 on up is plenty IMO. Most bears causing problems are not the big suckers.

No, I found that moose 10 days later, by nose.. Hair, bones, and maggots. No way to see him from more than one step away, and he had only gone about 100yards. It was that thick in there. I took to CNS (or no) shots on moose after that in those kind of conditions.

Nice buck this year.
I shot an Accubond at 3100fps from my 270 through the front shoulders. Dumped him on his nose and he shoved along pushing with his hind feet. He was into the brush so fast that a second shot wasn't possible. I listened for him to pile up and heard a gunshot in the direction he had gone. Shortly after he entered the brush he crossed over onto posted land. I followed him about 120yds and the blood trail was substantial. Came out onto a road and there was a man putting his tag on him. When he saw me he said, My deer. I killed him. I asked where did you hit him? He said, none of your f-ing business where I hit it, You're on posted land. Get off! GET OFF!

Shot my first whitetail in 1953 with a 22 LR. Shot a lot of them since then with bore sizes from .22 to 12ga. I've seen them hit in the shoulders and push with their hind feet a little ways (10-15 yards) The tracks indicated he would take 2-3 jumps and then plow leaves for 5-10feet. then jump a few more and do it again. Blood trail showed that he wasn't going far but I didn't get him.

Yes, I have fed the coyotes and or buzzards on a few sorry occasions. Whether they were well hit or I botched the shot I'll never know because the deer was lost. I will say that I have found enough deer that were shot well that were very hard to find to make me believe that it happens. The toughest ones were cases where I hit broadside deer right behind the shoulder and the bullet deflected and exited out of the guts in one case and in another the bullet was found just under the hide in the offside ham....completely bisecting the deer at a 45 degree angle. Those deer did not bleed a drop, ran a long way, and our finding them was just luck. Had I lost those deer as I very easily could have, I would have been dumbfounded as the shots were close and I had a rest. Every gun shot wound is different. It does not always go our way and blaming the cartridge or the bullet is an exercise in futility IMO. None of them have a perfect track record.

Terrain is everything. For the last 7 years I have been hunting on a lease of what used to be timber company property. A lot of the property was logged off and not replanted so it has grown back in volunteer pines, brush and briars....when you get in that stuff trailing a deer, you can't see but a few feet. A deer that runs into that stuff and does not leave any sign to track is a real problem even if he only goes 50 yards, whereas the same situation in more open country, the hunter could watch the deer fall. I shot a doe this year that probably only went 30 yards but it took me and another guy an hour to find. I busted her with a 30-06 and she ran into the "woods" but I could not see which way she went. I did not have much blood and after it petered out, the deer made a hard right turn. We kept looking in the direction of the trail, walking in the opposite direction from where the deer was laying. A week later, I shot another one with the same rifle and load, essentially the same shot placement that left a trail "a blind man could follow" that I found in 5 minutes. That's hunting in the real world.

The craziest thing is sometimes guys get away with piss poor shot placement without much trouble. A buddy earlier this year shot a little 8 point just ahead of the diaphragm and evidently hit the liver, maybe the back of the lungs. The deer ran no great distance, left plenty of blood and was easy to find. Could have easily been a different story.

I would be scared to look for a wounded bear.

When I shifted my aim point further foreword and lower on the animal.

The not being able to recover them quickly has about disappeared.

The artistic renditions on most educational material about the anatomy of deer and elk illustrate too much lung field behind the front leg IMO.

They also minimize the amount of dorsal spinous process above the thoracic rib area and size of the scapula.

The double lung " meat saver " shot although when it works is a splendid accomplishment. However leaves little margin for error, and will often lead to " liver ,diaphragm ,bowel" involvement.

Aiming too high can cause the shot to go through the back straps, missing the boiler room!

Loosing critters does happen-regardless of the shot/bullet-but it is pretty rare IME. I have yet to see a shot that I felt was a solid hit in the boiler room that I didn't recover, but a few did take some searching.

I have lost a couple critters over the years, but I am not convinced they were hit very well. It's a bummer and you try to learn from the experience to not let it happen again, but you'd be pretty naive to think it'll never happen again. I have seen some blood trails that have run cold after initially looking promising. It is frustrating, but it does happen.

Terrain does play a large part, and I do much prefer more open country for various reasons.

I have lost what would of been my best Mule deer, hit it at 100yds broadside, must of been abit far forward,,,6.5x55 swede, 120gr speer sp.
I saw the blood in the snow and as I was looking for it in the thick bush there he was about 30ft away laying, I couldn't finish him off as there was scrub in the way, he gets up and runs uphill for about 100 yds then doubles back and runs about 1 mile into a canyon with about 45 degree slope, the snow melted and at the lower elevation I lost him I looked all day, then the next day, then the next weekend, no sign of him.
A beautiful buck, its a sinking feeling, but when you have hunted for along time its going to happen.

My hunting partner hit a cow elk broadside at 60 yards with a .444 Marlin. There was a huge bright red blood-splash where she was shot. We tracked her for 3 miles. There were places where she stopped and we could see blood splashes and then she would take off again. and we were following drops. Then - NOTHING. No blood. We marked the blood trail, and the last blood spot and started making circles, looking for blood. We never found any more blood after searching for several hours. The next day, I was walking a fence line about a 1/2 mile away from our last blood sign and found a blood smear on the top wire. She had moved onto private. We tried to contact the landowner to get permission to look for her, but no dice. Called the Sheriff and asked for help getting access, but no dice. The weird thing is that despite the blood on the wire, there was no sign leading up to where she jumped. I still don't know how the hell she went so far with a broadside, bloody-gushing hit from a 265 grain bullet.

No
But have spent over 18 hrs. finding 2 6pt. bull elk & finishing them through the yrs.

I've done it quite a bit. We used to put on drives for bears and the guys liked to shoulder shoot bears with deer loads. I followed Bears shot with 270,308,30-06, 7mm mag, 300 mag. All left great blood trails that ultimately completely petered out. None were shot by me. I found mine because I stayed behind the shoulder.

Almost forgot, the longest blood trail I ever followed on a Bear was shot with a 30-30 at 25 yards. It seemed like we had blood for a mile.

I wonder, if a deer would have been considered spoiled 200 years ago?

A buddy and I were bow hunting one year when we were in high school. Walking side by side down a trail back to the truck when we hear a crashing in the brush getting closer. All the sudden a yearling doe pops out not 5 yards away and locks up the brakes. We both had an arrow knocked and let fly one right after the other. We were both shooting Martin 50# recurves, he shot Zwickey Eskimo broadheads and I was using Bear Razorhead II’s. His arrow buried about 2/3 of the shaft through her chest tight behind the shoulder before she turned and broke the shaft and I had a complete pass through right in the throat patch. There was so much blood it was unbelievable, horror movie amounts of blood. And we followed it for about 400 yards to where it ended, at the water’s edge, on a 3500 acre lake.

All we could figure is that she ran out into the lake and sunk. We searched up and down the shoreline for a couple hours and went back over the blood trail a couple more times but the deer had just vanished.

Had a wounded moose go into a lake,but it floated.

My buddy and I were making a two man Wisconsin drive on a small island in a chain of lakes. He was the driver and I was on stand. A bull moose showed up about 50 yards away and I put the cross hairs behind his shoulder and sent a Hornady 154 grain at him from my M70 7x57. Puff, he disappeared into the underbrush. The sight picture was good and was confident it was a good hit.

I walked over to where I had last seen him and found hair and a small amount of blood. That was it, so I made a couple half circles from that spot, nothing. Heard my buddy whistle on a empty cartridge case and I answered with same. We met up and widened the search area, but multiple moose tracks hindered the search. Finally, one set of tracks looked promising because it looked like the animal would stumble. We followed the tracks to a brushy shoreline of water and could not see where the moose went up or down the shoreline, came back to last set of tracks and figured it went into the water and sank or made it to the other side.

We gave one last look of the area before going after the canoe and check the opposite shore for tracks and I spotted a brown hump in the water. It is at 4 o'clock near the tall thin tree in the foreground of the pic. This moose traveled over 150 yards with a lung shot and a liver hit.

I lost the first two deer of my life this year. The first one jumped the string and was just plain a bad hit

The second was a perfect shot. I watched the arrow go through the deer just behind the shoulder and when the deer jumped it was stuck in the ground centered in the scope. 50 feet or so away the fist blood was about 1/2 a cup of thick partially clotted blood typical of a lung hit. I had good blood except for a very short distance gap for 100 yards to the edge of that property. Better blood for 100 yards across a mowed lawn. Down a hill to a swamp and he was stopping every six feet where he'd stand and bleed about a cup out. lost the trail in the swamp for a bit. Came back in the light early the next day, found where he stood wanting to get over a 4 foot fence but couldn't. Followed decent blood along the fence a couple hundred yards to where I found the last blood. There was only maybe three acres of cover and I searched all of it three times. I searched around the trail back they way I'd come. With that amount of blood on the ground I have never seen a deer not die inside a hundred yards. No sign from the crows or coyotes of a dead deer in the area. My better sense tells me it's dead there somewhere, but I sure as hell can't find it.

Only one with a bow and one with a rifle and both of them were hit very high lung, below the spine. I call it a dead zone which is kind of a misnomer because my deer didn't get dead where I wanted them to if they even died at all. I have had some long trailing jobs in snow that I actually kind of enjoyed, even though I hadn't put the first shot into the deer. I drove out an 11 point to a buddy who hit it low gut just in front of the rear leg. One drop of blood and Bobby gave up on it after only a hundred yards. I took that track about a mile and even through a frozen over trout stream pushing ice out of the way with my gun butt holding my pants and boots up over my head. I jumped it up in that river bed and cracked it again.

One Thanksgiving morning I found a big deer bed in the snow with blood in it with a big track leading out of it. With nothing else to do I took that track for miles and found a bone chip, short hair and drag marks, so I knew I was looking for a leg hit deer. I only saw that deer once that afternoon and got a shot at it, but I hit it real low and far back. Late by then so a buddy and I got on it again the next day. We jumped it up again and one of us cut a bunch of hair across its back with a bullet. I near ran that deer out of blood and thank goodness for all that loose hair as that was what I tracked it by sometimes. I caught up with it again in a cedar swamp and ended it, a nice 8 point.

That deer convinced me that if I could follow one far enough, that I could get it. One late December bow season I had a young doe that I hit from my afternoon stand. I heard the arrow hit, there was some blood and I jumped her up from her first bed that afternoon. Perfect tracking conditions the next day and did we ever go the distance. Miles and every time she put her foot down there was a drop of blood. Strange she didn't look wounded when I'd see her, but there was that drop of blood and I was going to run her out of blood one drop at a time. Long story short, I caught up to her and double lunged her with another arrow because she acted like she just gave up. That first shot had cut a 1" slice above her back hoof never even breaking the bone. Admittedly a lousy shot, but I was glad that I got her and glad that she went down near a woods road in the middle of the National Forest.

Knocked a middling sized (About 120lb) hog off it's feet with a 50 cal muzzleloader. It was doing the usual kicking and squealing routine while I was reloading, then got up and ran. No blood trail, never found it.

Those hogs are way tougher than any deer that I ever ran into. Some of us went hog hunting down in Tennessee and one of our guys shot a big black one in the neck with a .30-06 and it ran away! We didn't think that Tony had made a very good shot on it until I got that same hog leading about a dozen smaller ones that afternoon at least half a mile away. There was a hole it that hog's neck that you could put your fist into. Extremely tough animals.

I didn't know Wisconsin ever had a Moose season.

Not sure I follow you?

I think a lot of critters hit-whether marginally or not-survive when the hunter assumes they didn't.

No doubt a lot do die and are never found either because the hunter didn't put much effort into it, they didn't know what they were doing, or the critter ran a ways before dying, but I have seen enough and killed enough animals with old bullet and arrow wounds in them scared over that I really think a lot of "for sure" dead animals end up surviving to be shot another day.

You are likely right. There was an old bull elk that would winter near our house each year but I never could find him during elk season. Finally a friend managed to shoot him. They found 4 separate arrowheads with short sections of broken off arrow in him including one that'd been shot straight up his ass, all old and encased in scar tissue.

Tom

One time I was hunting deer in a housing development most times the neighbors didn't seem to mind the report of my 222 but did mind that of a larger gun. While sitting there I had a doe smell me and start to circle down wind while snorting. I took the only shoot at the deer that I had which happened to be a shoulder shot. At the shot the deer took off favoring a leg. Half an hour later I got down from my stand and started tracking the deer. There was minimum blood and I eventually jumped the deer out of its bed which only had a bit of blood in it. I'm thinking that the bullet which was a 63 grain sierra failed to penetrate the deer's shoulder and only caused a flesh wound.

They didn't. I referenced a Wisconsin drive metaphorically.

OK, gotcha.

200 years ago, if a man or men killed a deer and didn't recover it till the next day, would they consider it edible?
I'm pretty sure they would eat it. There's a reason "spices" were so valuable.

You ever eat spoiled meat? It tastes like dog [bleep].

Me too.

But you would.

10 years ago I shot a small buck at less than 40 feet. The 44 Mag revolver was sighted and I’d practiced an awful lot. The load was a stout charge of H110 under 240 XTPs.

At the shot he ran down the hill I was hunting straight away from me, got snagged in a barbed wire fence, flipped on his back and “death grunted”.

I took my time getting my stuff together, and as I flung my backpack over my shoulder to walk down and get to work he jumped up and ran off full tilt, tail-down. I spent that day trying to track him and turned up nothing.

Got several different versions of that tee shirt... some more fun than others.

Maybe, but not sure. What does dog [bleep] taste like?

Why spoiled meat of course.

Yes 3 bulls with a bow that I know were hit well....

I've shot at least 10 times the number of bucks than doe, but doe have always given me the greatest runs.

Mike74: No, thank God, not yet anyways (and I have been Hunting for 58+ years now).
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

As has been mentioned, bullets can deflect after striking flesh. Many years ago, I shot a doe at around 40 yards with a 130 Core Lokt out of a .270. She was pretty much broadside and the only shot I had was the neck. The deer dropped at the shot and upon inspection after hitting the spine in the neck, the bullet had exited the off shoulder. I'm going to guess that the bullet deflected down around 40 degrees. I was lucky in that the bullet hit in an area that killed the deer instantly, but I can definitely see how one could lose a deer due to a similar situation.

That certainly has been my experience with antelope does compared to bucks..............

I have lost two deer that I thought were well hit.

The first was a 6 pt shot with a 30/30 with 170 gr Federal factory load. I shot it behind the shoulder which left a good blood trail for maybe 100 yards. The trail ended on the shore of a small river which was partially ice covered. A search down stream turned up no sign of the deer over the next couple days. This was particularly painful as even seeing a deer over the season was rare in those days.

The other one was hit with a 54 caliber conical. A doe gave me a nice broadside shot at maybe 25 yards. There was bright lung blood on the snow but it must have been slightly further back than I planned as the deer headed toward the property line, hopped the fence, and made it to the top of a hill before I watched it tip over. That was about 150 yards, maybe a bit more.

The land the deer dropped on was private but the law at the time allowed one to retrieve game if the property was not posted. I decided to walk back a half mile, get the truck, and then drive to the owner's house and drag the deer maybe a couple hundred yards to his driveway. I didn't think this would be a problem as I had talked to the landowner several times in the past during the regular firearms season. Boy, was I wrong. The owner was home but he chewed on me about shooting on his property and told me to leave in no uncertain terms. Before I could get the truck. turned around he had his tractor fired up and headed to where I mentioned the deer was.. Our relations have been pretty frosty since.

I once shot an Antelope Doe in the guts with a .270 because I rested my shooting sticks on a rock and the rock moved as I was pulling the trigger. The Doe ran about a thousand yards and joined a band of about 60 other Pronghorn. I watched it for an hour peacefully feeding along with the others! I went into town to get something to eat and came back. Same 60 some odd Antelope eating with absolutely no way to go after them because they were on private. All the sudden after four hours this truck comes across the prairie and starts shooting out the bed of the truck at a nice buck. The herd of 60 split like billiard balls and ten came my way.I was hoping my gutshot Doe was among them but they all ran just fine. They were passing me at about 80-90 yards and I could see the blood stain on the side. I rolled the injured Doe as it ran past me. It had guts hanging out the offside of it because of my earlier shot and after four hours it ran just as well as the rest. I've never seen an animal that tough!

Only birds.

Two does one year. The first one right in the boiler room. The ranch hand watching with binoculars said she gushed blood at the shot. Puddle of blood at the impact site. But the blood trail slowed down the point that it was impossible to follow. Finally the ranch hand found the place that she started to pump blood again. She had run about 250yds.

The next was a month or so later on a TPW hunt. Busted a doe at about 80yds. Same thing as the first, except I never found her.

.270 with 130gr BT.

only one. grabbed the wrong box of ammo in the dark and got ABC target bullets for my Bob. i was hunting just outside of Bob Petersen's ranch in southern California. hit a nice buck and followed little 1/8th inch drops of blood for a couple hundred yards long enough to know his tracks. blood ran out and i followed his tracks across the California Aquaduct and out into the Antelope Valley.
after 4-5 miles of no blood and him still going like he was heading for Tehachapi i gave up. killed 3 Mohave green's on that trip though.
tracked one my sister shot the front leg off, in the snow, and lost him after 2 days and 6 people looking. found where he rested the stump in the snow until it froze up and no more blood. joined a group and never did find him. Sis still mourns that one.

the more you hunt the more you learn about a hit animal from a rifle or bow and yes we all have got that sick feeling of a lost animal,it happens do the best you can. my worst was a 5x6 bull elk tagged and butchered before I got there by a taxidermist in Wyoming claiming my lung arrow hit that went thru animal with a sharp zwickey broadhead would not have killed that bull i shot that bull I called in at 20 yards,but he as a bowhunter tagged it and put it in the pope and young book claiming he killed that bull with a bow by himself in the big horn mountains,that was 30 some years ago and I am still pissed,oh by the way he`s a sportsman on TV sometimes

Your story sounds compelling but I'm not sure I understand what exactly went down?

I am sorry to say it has happened to me a few times. Things I don't like to think about, I hope it never happens again but I am sure that it may.

Only critter I ever lost after a good hit was an 8 point buck that did $1800 damage to my P'up.

I bet some SOB beat you to it and claimed he hit it first?