Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Every seen anything like this ?

At 64 I've shot more white tails than I can remember. And I've had some odd things happen thru the years. This year took the cake.

Took a quick shot at forkhorn and misjudged the angle. Thought he was broadside when he was quarting to the left. My 06 hit him solid on the right shoulder but, due to the angle, exited in front of the left shoulder and blew most of the brisket off. He made the typical 30 yd dash and piled up. I waited about 20 minutes and followed up. A big blood trail.

His eyes were open and now glassy. Tapped them with my barrel, no reaction. Drug him back up to where I'd shot him and laid him backward over a log. Still no reactions of any kind. Started the skinning process by slitting the skin from pelvis to rib cage and peeling back the skin to better gut him.

Then I noticed movement under the rib cage. The heart was still slowly beating! I was appalled! Had I ripped open a live deer? I rechecked his eyes, they were glassy and somewhat sunken in, tapped them again -no reaction. But the heart still beat. I used my knife to remove his heart and end the thing. The whole thing seemed like a Poe novel and for the first time I felt regret.

Has anyone ever had this happen? It sure was new to me and pretty creepy.

O

I'm sure the deer is over it.

points for ripping it out with your teeth!

I have shot several truckloads of whitetails with neck shots. If I had opened them up right away, in many of them the heart probably would have still been beating. Smooth muscle and heart muscle function is pretty much independent of the brain until the blood flow is depleted of oxygen. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it...

The elk I shot this year dropped straight down on the shot and was dead when I got to it. When I started cutting out the first strap the whole animal quivered. Didn't care for that much so I stepped back and put one between the eyes, blowing have the brains out the back of the head. (So much for CWD testing...)

Went back to the straps and they were still jumping around in my hand as I cut. First time I've seen that.

LMAO! That's the funniest thing I've read here in a very long time...

Back when we used to butcher the same day we shot them, the muscles were almost always twitching. Muscle tissue can live for hours without blood flow.

Try this with frog legs...after skinning the frog legs and setting them in water for a while...put a little salt on em.

You never-never-never fry fresh caught frog legs in an uncovered skillet!!

Its worse than frying bacon neked!!

i saw a deer get shot several times this year. the deer, when gutted was twitching the whole time, and the heart was still beating when removed. it quit twitching shortly thereafter.

Caught a bass as a kid and cleaned it. Put its heart on a log and it beat for over an hour all by itself. Blew that little 8 year olds mind!

Though there's different levels of dead, I dont consider muscle activity co requisite with consciousness. Neurons fire as things are winding down. In fact, the last doe I shot was DEAD dead but when I rolled it over there was some weird spasdic diaphragm twitching. Creepy, but I dont think you should feel any worse than on your previous deer.

The heart has what is called automaticity. To simplify it, unlike almost all other organs in the body, the heart has the ability to function independent of electrical impulses from the brain for a limited amount of time.

Never seen it myself but have seen the muscle fibers in the hams trying to expand and contract after being split on deer and elk that I have shot.

I gutted a deer once for a guy who'd never done it before, and when I handed him the warm heart to rinse he about crapped himself.

I have a vest with a game bag that I use when I squirrel hunt.

Had one start to trying to climb out that I had shot earlier in the morning.

My only resurrection experience.

I've never seen it with deer, but I have twice with turkeys and a bunch with grouse.

I saw a guy kill a goose one time that was drop dead out of the sky dead. A half hour later we were back at the vehicles and he took off in front of me. Wasn't long before his Bronco was swerving all over the road before he stopped dead center in the roadway. He piled out with the goose right behind him. Eventually he rekilled it in the ditch...I wish I had a video...

I probably shouldn't tell this one, but here it is. Years back, a group of three young farm boys were road hunting for deer in an old Suburban to help fill some tags for some of the older folks in the neighborhood. They shot a 6 point and loaded it into the truck and were driving to the locker, when it came to life inside the Suburban. They had to shoot it again inside. That would have been something to see.

I had my first truly UGLY experience this past fall....I won't go into details but some deer just don't know when they're dead....

I was hunting with my uncle about 20 years ago, and I hear him shoot, then silence. About a minute later, I hear him start hollering for me from about three hundred yards off through the woods. I run over there, and there he was, straddling a nice 8-point buck, trying to hold it down without getting kicked or gored. He had shot the buck very well, dropped it in its tracks, apparently stone dead- until he went to cut its throat. Then the fight was on. I helped him get control of the flailing animal, and he finished cutting its throat. Blood starts spraying rythmically from the wound, and then quits. The deer is still kicking, although weakening. So uncle unzips the old boy's pajamas, cracks the sternum, and cuts out the heart. The heart was beating when he cut it out. Lungs were taken out by the shot, still don't know why the deer fell out and then came to like that. It was a fairly strenuous experience, and neither of us have seen anything like it before or since. After the ordeal, I asked him if he had poked it in the eye before trying to cut it, he looked at me like I was an idiot for asking and said, "Of course! Who do you think taught you that trick, gooney bird?" I had to admit, he had taught me that when he took me out and I got my first deer. But his name being Dick, I could not resist calling him "Dead-eye Dick" for the rest of the day.

Better than "dead dick-eye", at least.

couldn't help it.