One lung and liver- how long can he live
Whitetail Deer
I shot a good buck at 7:05 this morning, it looked like liver and one lung from a very high angle. The arrow came out the bottom side. Within 2 minutes I thought I heard him cough. When I got down 2 hours later and started to trail I was surprised that 200 yards into it there was no deer and he had not bedded. I gave up the trail and think 2 more hours are in order. That time is almost up. I don't want to push him from a bed, but I fully expected him to be dead shortly after the shot. And he may be. Lots of blood, some with bubbles. I just can't imagine how long he could live. Any thoughts?
Paul, I'll assume you are hunting in IL and have some cold weather (as we have in MN)....Assuming you did in fact get one lung and the liver, I would give him 6-8 hours before taking up the track. The meat will be fine and in my experience there is "no upside" to tracking earlier.
Go get him and keep us posted...we've all been there!
Mark
a good friend of mine shot a buck in KS last year gut and liver with a rage extreme.
26 hours later the buck was still alive - took a follow up shot. it was a really big deer 250+lbs.
time is your best friend, i'd wait till late this afternoon. if he is dead, he aint going anywhere....
my rule was always 4 to 6 hours...he will bed close if you dont push him
Somewhat depends on if you hit hepatic parenchyma, or major hepatic vasculature and parenchyma. Liver and lung hits are not all the same. Good luck!
A buddy of mine shot a big buck yesterday here in PA. He hit it a little back, but not awful. Was cool here so he went to work and took the trail up last evening, 9 hours after shot. Tracked into high grass, and he ended up walking within 10 yards of buck, bedded and head up looking at him. He tried to back out silently, but as he crept away, the buck got up and took a few leaps. He went back this AM and the buck was dead just past where he saw him last.
The shot went in right at back of ribs, angling thru liver and far lung. Every scenario is a little different, take it for what its worth....
Thanks, just needed to hear it again. Waiting til 3 to take up the trail. Hopefully will post a picture later.
It does concern me a bit that he hadn't bedded within the first 200 yards. Go slow. And try to go quiet. I have your bow on the ready if it's still light out but if he's not laying there dead there's a very good chance that you will walk up on him in his bed
You oughtta turn this one into a Live BT Challenge.... Give you a way to pass the time and we can all learn something.
200 yards with no sign of a bed sounds like you either scared the hell out of him or he doesn’t even know he’s hit, but if he got that far without needing to lie down for a minute, he’s not bleeding as hard as you’d like and that means (to my way of thinking) that when he gets up and moves off, there will be little blood trail, if any.
So I’d give it as much time as you can afford; I have a feeling that if you jump this one, you will wish you hadn’t, so better an hour late than a minute early...
I don’t know what your weather is going to do today, but if it starts raining, I’d get on the trail. If it starts snowing, I’d try to wait until there’s not enough snow to cover up the blood, but too much for him to move off without leaving a good track. And if no weather is forecasted...
Can you go back to the spot of the hit and compare to what you’re seeing farther along and determine whether the blood trail is lessening with distance?
Or maybe it’s getting heavier?
If it’s lessening, I might take up the trail sooner so I had more daylight to work with; either that or use the time to go get some bigger flashlights.
But you could also use the time to figure out how far he ran hard, where he started to slow down, whether he stopped to check his backtrail, whether he’s trailing a doe, whether any coyotes have picked up the track....
Because think about it; you now have all day long to study this trail. No other obligations and a very good reason to get this one right. Not that I’d ever wish a long tracking job on Man nor Beast, but when that’s how the chips fall, you oughtta learn everything that you possibly can from the opportunity.
Just mark the farthest that you’ve already followed the trail and don’t go any farther ‘til you’re ready. By then you may know how long his stride was when he started walking and you’ll be able to tell when the strides get shorter, which will probably mean he’s thinking about bedding down....
Or if you can determine that he’s been stopping to watch his back trail and it starts happening more often. Or if you’ve already busted him once...
In other words, don’t just sit there, LEARN SOMETHING!!!
And take a ton of pictures along the way so maybe you can get some good advice. Your arrow, tracks, blood... anything you see or notice...
Good luck keep us updated
Buddy shot this buck today. Note the older exit wound from a 4 blade broad head Deer did not appear sick.
Dang, where was the entrance on that deer?
A little higher. Arrow went just under spine. Did not cut the aorta
Shot a doe on Sunday. High lung to liver & stomach. Shot at 6:45 AM. Found her dead at 9:30 AM.
Not good news here. Before we went to pickup the trail, I went to the east side of my property about 240 yards from where I left off. I have a small clover field with a trail cam watching it and one of the main trails to the ag fields on my east, up a steep hill about40 yards, then field for 3/8 mi to county road and more fields across.
I thought I'd pull, the chip and look for blood even though I "knew" the deer was dead in the woods west of there. I found blood going east. At the field edge we could find no more blood. We looked for a double back at all the trails going back in to the west. Nothing. Then we grid searched the only ditch in the cut bean and picked corn fields. Nothing.
I did have a pic of a deer that is going east in front of the camera. The only time of day the sun gets on the lens, I'm sure it's him, but can't confirm it by the photo. Shot at 7:05, went by the camera at 7:37.
The arrow had no guts on it, Just blood stem to stern. No meat like you'd expect if shot through the backstrap. I saw the wound open as the arrow entered. Definitely farther back than I would have liked but I wasn't panicked by it. I've shot about 95 whitetails with a bow, I know that our eyes can play tricks on us.
The deer was 8 yards from the tree, I was about 18' up, so a very high angle. When he ran off, less than 2 minutes, I thought I heard him cough several times.
I am disappointed to say the least. Thanks for the words of encouragement, I guess I didn't put the arrow where my eyes told me I did. If he made it across the field, which I think he did, then trespass laws won't allow me over there, There are 15 houses another 1/4 mile from the road, after more field. There wouldn't be any way to get on enough properties to do any grid searching over there.
I hope I was wrong and he's not fatally hit.
Sorry to hear that, it’s no fun. I’ve been there.
Bohuntwr909... crazy. Shot is high but that is crazy!
All you can do is your due diligence searching for him which it sounds like you did. Good luck going forward with your season.
Thanks T Mac and Grousenut. Some days a guy feels like he can't do anything right, it stings but I'll never quit. I've been at it for 43 years, I wouldn't know what else to be but a bowhunter.
Bowhunter09, seeing that wound makes you wonder how one ever dies!
6 hour for liver is my rule of thumb. One lung and they can still live.
Did you happen to find any of his beds with blood in them?
Mark
Just a thought, but if the blood will still be there in the morning, you might backtrack from last blood to first.... never know what you might learn... it’d be something else to find out that the blood that pete red out on you was from a different deer, wouldn’t it?
I've had a couple of really decent shots get away, not a fan of 1" cut bh's
Personally I would do "everything" I could to recover the deer. I don`t think he will survive with that hit....when they cough they are in dire straits. I think he`s dead...you just have to find him. My 2 cents only....if I was a adjacent landowner I would be more pissed off to find a dead deer on my property than to find someone found it and removed it. Of course...attempt to contact the landowner first ....but if it was me.....
Some years ago, Judd Cooney did some research on single lung hits. His finding was, most of them survived if allowed to rest. Only the ones that were pushed hard had problems. I shot a deer late one evening in Alberta, single lung. Took up the trail the next morning and got video of him feeding with a group of does. Wound was plainly visible.
Bottom line is, none of us know what the outcome will be of a wound or for that matter, what exact damage has been done. High entrance and low exit are always tricky-one of the best reasons to not climb so high. But if it were me, as long as I have blood, I follow it. My dog has taught me a great deal about blood trailing and especially about deer that double back.
" Arrow went just under spine. Did not cut the aorta"
Are you sure it went under and not over? Maybe it's just the angle of the pic, but that hole looks too high to have gone under - especially if you assume that it was shot from an elevated stand.
But is is farther back, so who knows... Maybe it passed just along the margins of lung and liver where they press up against each other on opposite sides of the diaphragm?
One thing for sure is that (me bein' me) I would have been conducting a serious post-mortem on that one to figure out how the heck he survived that hit
Deer was butchered and the wound channel was below spine. Meat was taken by gutless method so can't say much more. Wound appears a few days old. No sign of infection. Deer went 200 yards after the lethal shot. Hard to figure.
Clipping 1 lung vs a Liver/Lung hit are different stories. A Liver hit is usually fatal in time...couple that with a Lung hit and you should have a dead deer. If you have hunted long enough and know a deer`s anatomy you KNOW what you are hitting. Most NEVER discuss it but there are many ways to kill a animal with a arrow without a broadside shot. Every bowhunter should know the ins and outs of the deer anatomy.
" If you have hunted long enough and know a deer`s anatomy you KNOW what you are hitting" When you release the arrow you know where you want want to hit but you never know that it will work out that way. Too many variable when shooting at a live animal. Even if you do hit the animal your eyes can deceive you.
At that steep of angle you may have only hit the top back end of one lung. As you know a deer can go a long ways with that wound, but I do think it is dead or will die. Sounds like know it will die too. If you can keep following it along cover hopefully you will find it, albeit farther then expected.
@BOHUNTER - thanks for the follow-up
