Bowsite.com

Shawn

Thanks nehunter!!! I posted on here to get congrats not "well you should of done this".

What are you a tv hunter now ? Are you gonna dance and squeal holy buckets too?..thats a comment you keep to yourself not post for the internet world to see!!!

Questionable hit?? Where did you get that from.

You said it yourself..slight 1/4 to in low light..

I dont know about you but i remember in my bow hunter class they stressed to never ever take a head on or a 1/4 to shot..questionable with a gun let alone a bow!!

I understand feeding your kids but i bet your wife would understand if you told her what happened instead of going home and playing keyboard jockey..as painful as it is ,you shouldve gone for a burger,killed some time,then go back in super slow. YOU OWE IT TO THE ANIMAL!!! Youre the one that knows the number of yotes there..ive taken days off only to come up with fur and bones .and i STILL called it in.its the least anybody could do..

I understand the heat of the moment, but dude!! To me it sounds like a shoulder hit at best.theres nothing written in stone that says a mule kick is a kill shot.

Im only busting your balls cause of your comments.i TRUELY hope you get your deer and every time you look at the rack you remember your mistake and hopefuly learn from it.ya i know im a d#@k, a hole.

I’m hopeful that this one will turn out alright but...

Tell ya, though... I’ve worked an awful lot harder for some animals than for others, but I never felt like I “deserved” any of them... that’s just not part of the thinking. The animal (IMO) “deserves” my best effort and best judgement in preparation, shot selection, etc.

But each animal is a Gift.

.in a years time you went from a questioning young lad to barbara striestan at the acadamy awards"id like to thank all the little people"..which way would you like the rose petals to face before theyre tossed over the sacred ground..you better learn to grow a thick skin if youre gonna get your panties twisted in knots over a couple ahole comments

We're all here to help each other learn and grow in this passion of ours and at times things go south. Learn from the humbling experience....

Now, whats for dinner..

Things like that really force me to evaluate and analyze things and make changes so that it never happens again. It may be poor shot decision, failure to read body language, or crap equipment. The important thing is to take responsibility, learn a lesson, and move forward. I give people a hard time when they don't take responsibility, and blame everything except their own mistake. They fail to learn, and repeat their failures. That pisses me off, so sometimes I come off as a dick. I'm good with that, all I care about is trying to help other hunters improve on what they are doing. This aint no safe space.

Shawn, you are still brand new to bow hunting, this is only your second season. You have had some amazing luck so far, but really it has been more luck than anything else. It's getting to your head a little. It took me 7 years to get my first deer with a bow. And that was with my father, a seasoned veteran as my mentor. He never made getting a deer easy, I always had to work for what I earned. I've always had bad luck. And I never had a chance to get big headed about getting deer. You will make mistakes, you will fail, and do dumb stuff, thats part of bow hunting, and unfortunately thats how most hunters learn lessons. People will give you shit for doing dumb stuff, and people will give you advice on the best ways to improve or evaluate things when you are putting it all out there on a public forum. I think in the long run there is far more good than bad in this type of format. But the bad can really get under your skin. Take it like a man, brush it off, focus on those who want to help, and listen to people who know what the hell they are talking about. Learn your lessons without picking up your toys and going home. That is a failing attitude.

Hope you decide to brush off the dust and get back on the horse, I do enjoy your posts and watching you grow as a bowhunter. Best of luck out there.

My bow was poorly tuned and I rushed my shots and I had everything to do with the outcome.

Keep trying!

Of course he is, but it will cost more for "some" people. It would be very unprofessional to cancel a previously booked venue. The new limit for crossbows is still 100 yards, or not?

I agree some guys did jump on you....dont let the keyboards get to you.. .

Deer are tough mayne he made it.....id go back in a week and look for birds.

You lost me there, bud...

I thought you were agonizing over the outcome, but then you say you’d do it all over again. Really?? Nobody’s perfect, but Experience isn’t worth much if you refuse to learn from it.

For your consideration....

When you take a quartering-on shot angle, you’re playing thread-the-needle with a lot of bone in the mix. That’s why most bowhunters and ALL Bowhunter Ed instructors advise against it.

But then you upped the Ante on yourself by attempting to thread a freaking HUGE broadhead through that skinny gap.

If you want to be able to take shots where bone figures prominently in the equation, you need to match your broadhead to the anatomy.... and an oversized expandable is at the wrong end of the spectrum. I don’t know much about broadheads under 125 grains, but something like a Magnus Stinger 100 would have served you - AND THE DEER - a lot better.

So JMO.... Stop and think about your gear selection. If you want to be able to take challenging angles, you need a head that can power through a lot of heavy bone. If you want a huge wound channel, then you need to pick softer targets. There are plenty of Trad guys out there making quick, clean kills without the benefit of the “pin-point” accuracy that compound shooters like to talk up, yet their broadheads are nothing more exotic than a fixed 2-blade of about 1 1/4”..... such as has been in use for the past however many thousand years.

Anyway, just seems like you’re complicating things for yourself by trying to throw a chainsaw at ‘em.

And FWIW, I’m not a fan of quartering-on angles even when I’m packing a rifle; too much meat loss. Not saying I won’t take it if that’s the best I angle I can reasonably expect to get, but all of my bullets weigh more than your broadheads, and some of my bullets weigh more than your arrows..

Shawn, sometimes bad things happen. In archery hunting, they almost always happen on quartering to shots. They are not worth it... Ever. That said, keep your head up. Keep at it... maybe you get another shot - this or next year.

Shawn,

As I read this I picture the location where you stuck an arrow in the deer. You said four inches are missing. Is that four inches including the broad head or just missing shaft? If it is only shaft, IMHO, the wound is deep enough to kill the deer. I am skeptical about you not finding blood. That is, if the arrow penetrated enough to hang in him, some blood had to escape the wound. The arrow breaks usually in two ways. Either it was in the shoulder bone and snapped as the leg raked by a tree, or, it snapped as the piece inside the rib cage was sheared by the motion of the shoulder bone. Your best location for finding some blood is where he landed after leaping the wall. The downward motion should thrust drips/drops down to the ground. The blood will be teeny tiny and sparse. You might try some hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle to turn it white and more visible. However, the foaming action will destroy the drop/drip and mask the shape of the drip, which should show you the direction it was traveling as it hit the ground. So go slowly and use the hydrogen peroxide only as a last resort to locate blood. If you get anxious and ahead of the blood, you could miss a turn in his direction. DON'T GET AHEAD OF THE BLOOD. On hands and knees, drip by drip, find and follow the blood. Since he was running, you can expect blood to be spaced maybe ten feet or more between drips. His weight must have disturbed the leaf mat and blood should be near that spot.

I'm available to help if you want/need me, west of the Connecticut River.

The point I was making is that a wound bleeds and just as some is on the shaft, some makes it to the ground. If there is an opening in the chest cavity, the deer may die before healing can occur, especially in the area where a moving leg keeps the wound open. Breathing will be difficult, but blood loss is needed to produce death. If the point is inside, it should continue to damage lung and he will hemorrhage inside till death. He will want cover and water.

The point I was making is that a wound bleeds and just as some is on the shaft, some makes it to the ground. If there is an opening in the chest cavity, the deer may die before healing can occur, especially in the area where a moving leg keeps the wound open. Breathing will be difficult, but blood loss is needed to produce death. If the point is inside, it should continue to damage lung and he will hemorrhage inside till death. He will want cover and water. When you follow blood, you are following that deer.

I'm talking about teeny tiny flecks of blood, probably starting fifteen to twenty yards from where he was hit. That's why I suggest his landing spot over the wall. Your memory can be fifteen or twenty yards off, been there and done that.

I think you've grown as a hunter in the last couple of days. When you first posted this thread and people told you their opinions, you went defensive right away and clamed up in your shell. Now you are engaging in constructive conversation and that's good.

You are a cool well liked guy in the site and would hate to see you go cuz you can't handle criticism. Learn from this and you'll come out a better hunter.

I'll tell you what I thought about the thread in person at the dinner so you can punch me in the face.

Bob, I suppose you could be right. Carbons are new to me and I'm thinking how it is with aluminum. Because the shaft Shawn showed has a special section to collect blood, and I don't actually know how much is missing, I'm thinking he lost only the broadhead and insert. A wound that opens the lung cavity pushes blood out with each breath, regardless of how much penetration there is.

Personally, I’ve never seen blood on a part of the shaft that hadn’t been in past the skin...

I'm thinking that to break at that point of the shaft, the distance between the point and the break must have had some support/resistance to the break. If you missed the leg/shoulder bones, then they did the shearing of the shaft protruding from the chest cavity. Think of how anchored the point must have been, to allow the shaft to bend and break so close to the point.

I shoot full length beaman ics hunter arrows 32"..slick trick 125gr head..i think the length is 1 1/4..thats a 33 1/4 over all length..

A couple of yrs ago i took a shot at an absolute monster 10pt..he stepped out at broadside 35yrds while i was kneeling on the ground .as i released he ducked and spun now its a hard 1/4away..i saw the arrow hit shoulder..50yrds later i found my fully bloodied arrow -10"...does that mean i have 10" of penetration(hehe) or 1 1/4 penetration and 8 3/4 arrow sticking out? I tracked this deer for 3days off work plus had people looking for birds..a wk later i saw him with the shaft in him..this yr the shaft mustve finaly worked out and hes a bit gimpy but fine..

1) If the head is laying on the outside of the shoulder (or leg bone) against the bone,when the deer ran and the arrow catches a sapling or what ever, it would probably force the back half of the arrow out towards the deers ass ripping skin and muscle causing a tear. The arrow would probably just fall out whole without having anything behind it for resistance.

2) If the head is in bone it probably go in the same direction but only tearing skin, maybe muscle...

3) Inside shoulder it might lodge between shoulder and rib, possibly breaking a rib in the process with the outside force.

A pretty easy cheezy way to look at it is ...hold a pencil straight vertical, now take another pencil and go horizontal with just the point against the verticle one and apply force....what happens....

1and 2 with that little bit of shaft left, the blood should just be running down the deers leg( its not like it hit a gusher) And God knows how far apart the drops would be.

3 probably the same thing but possibly internal bleeding.

If that head in any way ,shape or form hit lung,then the blood would be steadier drips with every inhale/exhale.and as we all know with blood filling the lungs ,there would be coughing and a splatter eventualy..

Thats where getting on your hands and knees and crawling around like a baby comes into play..finding the direction of travel by looking at the leaves and touching every single suspect leaf..standing up and looking around imo will not tell you anything...

But what the hell do i know, im just the crazy old guy mumbling in the corner

Great video. I always liked Dan's productions.

Looks to me, with the buck head down, he severed the carotid artery and the blood loss to the brain was immediate.

He is lucky that the deer was hit in the spine and dropped.