Update to A Very Bad Day

Since that Tuesday night last week, I spent all Wednesday, Thursday afternoon, and ten hours in the woods on Friday looking for that deer. I picked up where I had lost the trail in the dark on Tuesday. I was hoping it was just me in the dark and I would find more blood, but there was no blood to find. I had been marking the trail and it was easy for me to pick up my last spot.

I used a clover leaf recon pattern to search from the spot, out, around and back, then out in a different direction, around and back again. Along the route I was hoping to cross more blood, or find the animal. I searched every ditch, stone wall, deep cover spot, and grassy area for that deer, no dice. I did not even find my arrow.

But on Friday, I wanted to move my treestand before I searched an area across the road from my usual patch of woods, so I started back near where I had shot on Tuesday. As I was setting my stand in a new spot, I saw three or four deer move past me in the oppostite direction I wanted to search. I thought that if the deer was not seriously injured, she would want to rejoin her herd and keep moving with them and so it would be worth checking to see if she was there.

I got out of the tree and slowly began to try to catch up with the deer. Catching up with a moving herd of deer is a counter-intuitive process. In your mind, you will think you have to rush and try to close the gap, but in reality, you have to go very slowly and keep glassing (using binoculars) to try to avoid bumping them. They blend in so well, it is easy to do, and most of the time that is what will happen anyway. But I try to move only a couple yards, then stop and glass. It takes a lot of patience to move this way, but the deer will stop and feed or freeze at a sound for a long time, so as long as I keep quiet and move in the right direction, I can usually get close at least once more.

I followed the deer along a ridge for forty-five minutes or so, and was able to stay quiet and undetected as far as I could tell. The silence was broken by a loud snort from my right and further up the ridge. I had nearly passed a big doe standing just up over the crest of the ridge in some scubby cover. I recognized her immediately and even the snort sounded exactly like the ones I had heard on Tuesday night. She stared at me for a second and I felt like she recognized me, then she bolted. I didn't see an arrow and she moved just fine.

This time of year, deer have elevated levels of clotting agent in their blood to help the heal fast due to the rut and the violence that can accompany the whole mating season. I still feel awful of course about not taking her right down, but now at least I know she survived and is back with the herd.

Deer don't usually snort at you. It is pretty unusual and I though that I bumped a buck in the dark on Tuesday night, but now that I look back and recognized the snort from the doe, I think that I actually bumped into her in the dark and she snorted at me. I could not see her, but I was wearing a headlamp and she probably could have seen me pretty well.

Well, at any rate, the hunt is back on. The herd walking around is up to five now, at least when I saw them this morning. Plus this week should be getting very close to the rut, if it's not on already, and the bucks should be out and running around too. I've got my other treestand set up too, so I have my choice of spots all ready to go depending on which trail the deer are using. I won't shoot at one that is 20 yards out anymore, 15 is my new max range. It's not that I can't stick an arrow where I want it at the further range, it's just that the deer has too much time to move and I can't have that, again.