Slinging arrows from the ground

[BRoth82]

A little background on where I hunt, I hunt in West central MN, in an area that is ranked the 3rd lowest in deer harvest numbers for the entire state. Bow hunting in MN my goal every year is to not pass up a shot on a legal deer (excluding a fawn in the early season, late season you better watch out). I would love to take a big buck, but to me when I look at a deer all I see is Jerky, Hot dogs, Cheddar Brats and hamburger. Funny story about that I told my kids that the hot dogs they were eating came from the deer I shot, the following year I took a doe and showed my kids the deer hanging in the shed, my daughter (5 years old at the time) looks in the chest cavity and has a puzzled look on her face, when I ask her what’s on her mind she turns to me and says in a serous voice, “Dad I hate to tell you but this but I can’t see any hot dogs anywhere”….

The 1st hunt of the year;
I went out to a public that I hunted last year from the ground and seen 9 does and fawns. I also scouted it this past winter and found some great sign, being this was opening weekend and it’s a long walk back into where you can hunt I figure that the pressure was going to be non-existent and that the deer would be bedded close to the food source ( a corn field on private land). I walked the edge of the field and found 2 really good trails exiting the corn about 40 yards apart, I kept going to a low spot I wanted to check out, but the sign was much better on those other two trails so I back tracked and tucked in behind a cedar tree that split the trails in half.
The wind was blowing towards one of the trails so I would have to shoot quick, in order to get a shot off before they winded me. After sitting for an hour or so I had a big doe come out of the corn field about 100 yards away, she milled around in a low area for a while before I lost sight of her, an hour later I heard foot steps in a low spot that had water in it in front of me. I got ready, after 3-4 minutes and nothing coming by, I decided to slowly peak my head around the cedar tree to see if I could see anything. Just as I peaked around the tree a big doe stepped around the other side of the tree about 12’ away, she took off blowing and snorting. An hour or so before dark I had a small buck come out of the corn on the same trail the first doe took, now after the first doe came out of the corn I contemplated moving in on that trail, but thought maybe it was just a lone deer so I stayed put. He turned and headed my way along the field edge and looked like he’d turn and pass in front of me, but he ended up staying on the edge and passing by me out of range.
The 2nd hunt;
I decide that with my new stand and sticks I just got, that I was going to try my first real beast style sit and try to get within 100 yards of some suspected buck bedding, the wind would be a good cross wind for this little island. On my way down to where I wanted to get to I crossed a pair of good trails with some fresh droppings from that morning, I kept checking the wind and as I got on the downwind side of the trees it really started swirling and blowing straight S instead of W/NW. So, I back tracked and found a place to setup on the ground overlooking the 2 trails with the fresh sign, I tucked in the backside of a clump of buck thorn bushes and waited. The area where I expected the deer to come from was a cedar thicket, I could only see a little bit through the brush, so I’d have to be on my horse to get drawn before they got past me. The wind was howling at 20-25 mph with gusts higher, but it was in my face and keeping the mosquitoes away, so it didn’t bother me. It did make seeing any movement or hearing anything almost impossible.
Around 5:45 I caught some movement that was going the opposite direction the wind was blowing so I knew a deer was headed down the trail, the trail he was on would be a quartering away shot at 18-20 yards. As soon as I saw it was a deer, I grabbed my bow and started to draw, he walked out perfectly and didn’t notice a thing. I settled my pin and touched off the shot, I shoot a blue lighted nock and had no idea where my arrow went, I didn’t see it in flight at all, he trotted out to 35-40 yards with his tail down and turned to look back at what had happened. Now I’ve only shot a handful of deer with my bow and never got a chance at a second arrow, but my thought is if it’s still on its feet and I have arrows left I’m going to send them. I frantically scrambled around to get another arrow out of my quiver and nocked before he tore out of there, luckily, he stayed where he was. Most of his body was covered by the tall grass except the top of his back, I know I rushed this shot thinking he’s going to bolt out of the and I hit him high above the spine. He tore out of the grass ran along the field edge and then I lost sight of him, I waited 15 mins and went over to where he was standing and found a splatter of blood, so I knew I hit him. I decided to try to sneak along the field edge and work back to my truck so I could drop off the stand and get my other pack, we’ll as I was slipping along the edge he jumped up 20 yards away and took off.

Man, now I was really kicking myself knowing it would be much harder to find him, so I marked where I was standing so I could come back to that spot later. While I was sitting in my truck, I sent some pictures of the blood I found to Lockdown and asked what he would do, I agreed with him that I should give the deer a couple hours at the least just to be sure. I headed home to grab a friend to help look for blood and my game cart in case we found him. It was a little over 3 hours from the time I shot when I got back out there to look for my arrow, even with lighted nocks I could find either one, figuring they buried in the grass we moved over to where the buck jumped and ran off. The grass/flowers/thistle he was in was shoulder to head high, we found a couple drops of blood where he entered the grass and started to follow the trail, it was crazy hard to find a drop of blood in that junk, it took us close to 20 mins to go 10 yards. We would find a drop here, then go 10-15 feet and find another drop, at first he was following a faint trail then we came to a point where there was just a wall of shoulder high weeds on all sides, we looked all over and couldn’t find another drop of blood. At this point I knew the direction he went so I headed that way and right on the edge of the tall crap was my arrow, it had some blood and fat on it. The blood looked like muscle blood, when he got out to the shorter green grass he started bleeding more and it was easier to see, we covered 30-40 yards fairly quick, until he headed straight into the tangle of cedar trees. My buddy looked at me and said no I’m not going to crawl through that crap.
I ended up crawling on my hands and knees I would find a pool of blood ever 5-10 feet where he bedded, then after 10-15 yards there he was, he was stiff already, so I figure he died shortly after I jumped him. My first shot hit low and back, taking out part of the stomach, diaphragm and the offside lung, my second shot hit high above the spine. It ended up taking us close to an hour to get him out to the field edge, I was back home with him hanging at 11:30pm, man I was bumped but beat at the same time. When I told my daughter this morning that I found him, she smiled really big and said “Dad you know what that means right? We’re having heart and tenderloins for supper tonight!!!!” (She’s my little meat-eating machine) That right there put a huge smile on my face.

Here’s a picture that shows how the hunt went down,
The blue line – my access route
The lowest orange dot – where I wanted to setup in a tree
Upper orange dot – where I ended up standing behind the buckthorn
Purple circle – suspected buck bedding
Yellow dots – where I found beds in the past and where I think the buck was bedded
Purple line – the bucks travel route
Red dots next to orange dot – Where my shots were taken
Green dot – Where I bumped him
Final red dot – where I found him
Orange arrow – the wind direction
I always try to look back at a hunt and figure out what I could learn from it, here’s my bullet list from this hunt;
1) Slow down and make a good shot
2) If you can’t see where you hit the deer, error on the side of caution and back out for a couple hours
3) You can kill a deer on the ground in an area that has very few deer
4) Don’t walk past good sign, to get to unknown sign
5) Dragging a deer through head high weeds sucks
6) A gut shot deer stinks really bad when gutting, also on that note be careful if it’s bloated when field dressing. There are fluids under pressure and can spray out and cover you in nastiness.
Thank you to everyone here on this forum that shares stories, and helps out it truly is a remarkable group of people, and Thanks to Lockdown for helping me out with beast tactics, offering to come down and help track, I’ve never met you before but consider you a friend.

This is my first real write up of a hunt, so please feel free to give some advise on how I can improve.

The second picture is of the exit hole, my entrance hole was at the same height but about an inch or so behind the last rib. He was quartering away at a good angle

[Hawthorne]

Good write up ! Congrats on a nice buck

[stash59]

[IndyDawg]

Congrats! Sounds like you had a heck of a hunt. Way to stay with it and track him down.

[Lockdown]

glad it all worked out!! Congrats again!

Have to say the hot dog comment made me laugh

[Huntress13]

I laughed at the hot dog comment too. Kids can be so funny.

Great hunt and good recovery!!

[creepingdeth]

great job and story!!

[Edcyclopedia]

Spectacular!

[Jackson Marsh]

Congrats broth!!

Way to stick with the track job

[WV Bowhunter]

Congrats!!

[walleyeralph]

Nice story and deer.

[oldrank]

Great job...that's alot of hotdogs !!!

[jwilkstn]

Congrats! Love the hot dog comment

[mipubbucks24]

Congrats great story and a great deer! Your daughter made me laugh. Kids take things so literal. Way to get you some meat and thanks for posting!

[Ack]

Congratulations!