Strangest place after the shot
Whitetail Deer
Where is the strangest place you have ever found your arrow after shooting an animal.
Mine was a few years ago. I shot a buck right at daylight and watched him go down. Didn't spend much time looking at blood or for the arrow that morning. Came back a few days later cause I really needed that arrow back. Didn't have a lot of money to spend on arrows at the time. The point of impact and the place the buck died was only about forty yards. I walked back and forth about a hundred times knowing that arrow had to be there. I practically brushed up against it every time I went right by it looking at the ground. How it came to be stuck in that stock of corn is beyond me. As you can see I had a really poor choice in fletching colors. They blended in perfectly.
The place that surprises me most is in the animal. Lol
In someone’s hand. Was in the stand one evening when grouse landed in a tree near me. I shot it & the arrow sailed off to who knows where. Couple hours later at prime time I heard footsteps coming walking & pausing like a deer. I got ready for another shot. Pretty soon I see this guy walking along stopping to look in the treetops with my arrow in his hand. Said he was walking & found it sticking in the middle of the trail. What are the odds?
Good thing it wasn't sticking in his head
Yeah I suppose. I should not have had to worry,it was a 600 acre farm. Was a trespasser out for an evening walk.
“Good thing it wasn't sticking in his head”
Lol! My thoughts exactly!
75 feet of water.
This is unreal.
Shooting off the back of a houseboat with fiberglass carbon arrow bow fishing. Boat moored to side of cliff. depth off back of boat 75 feet.
shoot down into water line breaks because i did not push the line release on a zebco spincast reel mounted to the bow. arrow gone.
next day fishing off back of boat with minnow and sinker on the bottom. Reel up and have the arrow hooked by the barb.
How one hook caught one barb in 75 feet of water the next day is crazy.
insane coincidence.
My leg. Passed through a deer and stood straight up and lucky me I walked right into it and it jabbed me in the inner thigh. That could have went bad.
6' high in a tree 100 yards down the blood trail
Shot at a bull that was on the edge of a steep drop. Clean miss. Bull and arrow gone. About an hour later at least a quarter mile below my buddy said look at this. 7 feet up in a 3 inch spruce was my arrow. Didn't make me smile as I was still bummed about the miss.
Was on an Idaho elk hunt many years ago. Buddy & I were on this cliff overlooking Montana. He said “ I bet you can’t hit that dead Douglas fir down there”. I took out my grouse arrow & aimed at this tree maybe close to a half mile & a couple hundred feet below. Just before I released he said you need to aim higher so I raised upwards maybe another 10 or 20’ & let her go. Seconds later we heard the crack. We had to walk right past on the way out. He said looks like you missed & I said look higher. There about 25’ up & dead center was my arrow. Passed by there about 20 years later & it was still there.
About head high in the middle of a sapling. I had passed by it, given up and was walking back to look again. I unscrewed the broadhead and pulled it out. Sapling was about 2/3” in diameter. An inch left or right and I would never have found it.
The strangest place??
I shot a buck a little high, through the scapula. My lighted nock was right up against the fur. I watched the buck run approx 60-70 yards and drop.
Walked up to my dead deer, and the arrow was gone. I retraced my steps and followed the blood trail from the deer, back to where I shot it, numerous times, and I never found my arrow..
Shot a doe and didn't get a complete pass through. I could see the arrow dangling out the off side. While following the blood trail I found where she marked the fence crossing for me. Look closely and you can see the arrow is actually woven through the fence.
Scrappy, that’s a head scratcher for sure !
In another deer. Shot a buck through the heart and arrow ricocheted off his off elbow exiting and hit another buck in the 12 ring. Killed them both. I had waited for the 2nd buck to pass by so he was out of range before shooting. Didnt matter the elbow deflected it perfectly. I had 2 tags. Still have the film here somewhere.
Shot at a 4x4 mule deer and saw the arrow hit low near his feet. Went to recover the arrow and found it laying on the ground exactly where I saw it hit. Could not understand how this could be but I did see the buck limping as he walked away after the shot. The broadhead was a Bodkin or Zuicky (don't remember). I followed the trail that he had taken and saw him laying down in a stand of aspen so I sneaked in and shot him in the spine. Upon examining the deer, I found a couple of marks between the toes of his front hoof where the broadhead had struck him drawing no blood at all. I then realized that I had taken this buck after shooting him between the toes. When I had a couple guys come to help pack the deer out they asked where I hit him and when I told them they stopped dead in their tracks. They thought that they were going on a wild goose chase. This was the strangest arrow recovery I ever had which occured many years ago.
Not real strange but my favorite…
Not real strange but my favorite…
Clearly I'm not the only person that finds arrows in strange places. Or like Basil in strangers hands:):)
Shot a doe in PA one year from the ground, arrow zipped thru her, figured it had to be in the field…couldn’t find it. Following year went to go sit the old car at the field edge and the arrow was sittin in the car layin across the seats. Musta went thru the doe and right into the car.
Shot a Bobcat that was facing me at 10-15 yards between the shoulder blades it then did a forward flip and a couple of barrel rolls before running off about 40 yards and dying. Arrow ended up halfway back towards my tree and the broadhead pointing towards the tree.
About 1993. Sauk Co. WI. A buddy and I are whitetail hunting, each in treestands about 100 yards apart. If we look closely we can see each other between the trees & branches. I watch a buck walking in his direction and then hear him shoot. I see the buck running in my direction with my friend's arrow protruding from the rear end of the deer. The buck passes me at about 25 yards, I draw, aim, and release. My arrow buries itself in the deer's chest. We wait a while, then start trailing. We recover the deer after about 100 yards. It is his deer, he drew first blood. But what is unusual about this is that we recovered both arrows about 50 yards down the trail, both laying side by side about 2" apart in the runway the buck was on. They were perfectly parallel to each other and exactly "even" matching nock to nock and point to point.
Shot a bull at 50 yards once standing broadside to me, made what seemed to be a perfect shot. He went out to about 70 yards and laid down on the dam of a small tank and expired a few minutes later. I had called in a bull for my buddy a few minutes earlier, so we went to and cleaned his bull first. Came back to mine and on inspecting/dressing him out could not find my arrow or entry wound anywhere. Further inspection revealed that the knock of my arrow was barely visible sticking out of the bull's anus. Hit it dead center! All we could figure was a milisecond after I released he must have whirled around to get out of there. Heck of a way to die.
I shot an Alaskan caribou back when the Mulchatna herd was still around. As I recall a guy could get 5 tags back then. I had 3.
I was at FD on a good bull walking past in a group- waiting for the others to clear. They did but it seems the arrow ricocheted off a shoulder and into the guts of another bull behind and past him about 10’. Gut shot the second one and he went down a split second before the first- both in about 6 seconds.crazy fast.
Back in 1968 l shot a grizzly over bait in B.C., it was legal then. The bear ran off. We checked the bait area for blood and the arrow. No arrow. Found the bear 60 yards away. Still no arrow. Two days later l went back to the site to hunt wolves. Climbed up into the stand and there on the bait was the shiny Easton X7 like someone had placed it there! No way l could have missed it the day of the shot. The only explaination that sounds reasonable is, a small animal picked it up along the blood trail and happened to drop it there, then or a Raven dropped it while flying over the site. And no, there were no roads or people within 75 miles of our cabin.
I shot at a muley buck and my arrow zipped about 1" over his back and into the saplings behind him. He ran off and stopped 100 yards away. I bleated with my mouth a couple times and called him right back to where he was the first time I shot. I made a good shot, but he ducked it and ran off. My arrow caught a tiny bit of fur and kept going.
When I went to look for my arrows they were on top of each other, forming a cross with almost perfect 90 degree angles.
Biggest surprise for me was a long time ago bowhunting in MI in the area of the Little Manistee River. I got up on a higher bank and shot at a leaf down on the floodplain of the river. That arrow literally disappeared into the ground. Didn't realize how soft the ground was.
"Biggest surprise for me was a long time ago bowhunting in MI in the area of the Little Manistee River. I got up on a higher bank and shot at a leaf down on the floodplain of the river. That arrow literally disappeared into the ground. Didn't realize how soft the ground was."
reminds me of something that happened to me a few years ago. i was hunting a stand i had on the edge of a cedar swamp. sometimes before i get down from my stand...i will pick out a spot on the ground and take a practice shot. i carry a blunt for such shots.
long story short, the ground surrounding my stand was soft...almost spongy. i didnt realize just how spongy it was until i took a practice shot at clump of moss...and watched my fletching disappear completely...never to be seen again.
That’s penetration. What type of head were you using
"That’s penetration. What type of head were you using"
a blunt.
darn good thing i wasnt using one of those single bevel broadheads...i could have caused an earthquake. :)
The soft ground reminded me of the time I took a shot at a roll of alfalfa. Never shoot a rolled bail on the round end. Even at about 60 yds, not enough density to stop it. Good thing it was just a field point so some cow didn't get hurt.
My hunting buddy and I were hunting in Old Mexico 30 years ago. We were shooting old slow bows and the buck he shot jumped the string and ran off with the arrow through his backstraps. It was 8 or so inches out on each side. We started tracking, not expecting much as we clearly see the arrow placement. A couple of hundred yards out we find the arrow, on top of a bush, about chest height. The deer came to the same stand the next day and a well placed arrow put him down. Yes, he had holes in the backstrap area.
My son shot a fall turkey in western KY a few years back. The broadhead hit the turkey in the neck, just below the wattles. The arrow hardly slowed and was apparently lost in the thick brush beyond the gobbler. After a fairly thorough search no arrow was found. A week or so later passing through the same area, there laid the arrow about 4 foot off the ground, on the branches of a small bush. It was not stuck in anything, just laying there like someone had placed it there by hand.
My first year with bow I saw a young buck bedded in a small field of October Goldenrod... during the summer I would mow trails in the field to easily access my stands... I crawled on hands and knees circling the bedded buck, I stood up came to full draw and whistled. The buck stands up completely broadside so I let the aluminum Lincoln log fly... buck acts hit and enters the woods at a very slow walk, I walk to site of hit and 4 feet behind the hit, the bloody, tallowed arrow lays perfectly horizontal atop the Goldenrod. Never did find the buck which was very disappointing, but boy I was thrilled at my first shot at a deer with my 1982 Brown Bear. scentman
One of the weirdest I ‘ve seen was a buddy shot a whitetail with a mech head. He was not very high in a tree, 35y shot so about a 15 deg down angle. Arrow hit center body maybe a tad high, the arrow ricocheted straight down into the ground.
Blood everywhere, never found the buck….until someone shot it a week later in rifle season. My farmer buddy said it was acrazy wound channel only clipping one lung.
Was bear hunting in ID and ran across an arrow with a sheetmetal coc head. Point was bent over 90 degrees. Carried the arrow out with me and was walking back to the truck on a logging road an saw a partial skeleton. It had a crack in the scapula which is where I then placed the arrow. Figured someone would get a good story out of my finds.
Terry
