I went hunting the morning before Thanksgiving behind my house and had an eventful morning.
The story: I was hunting with my dogwood bow and was using a cane arrow that Sawfiler had given me last year. It had a tradepoint on it, and I'd decided to use it as my #1 arrow until I got a shot. Shannon had also helped with my dogwood bow by shaping one of the tips and I matched the other. That bow has a lot of mojo in it if you recall, it has sprinklings of flint chips from folks that came to the Classic. I was also carrying with me that morning a knife given me by Jon Cook...he had put a dogwood handle on it for me. Anyhow, about 6:45 four does came in and crossed the trail I had come in on. It was obvious that the lead doe must have smelled my track even though I wear rubber boots. They had been heading down to the foodplot I was hunting over, but instead circled wide walking the back edge of my yard to get around me. They never reallly spooked, just didn't like the "smell" of it! About 10 minutes later I heard a sound down in the hollow below me and saw a couple of does running. They stopped and finally eased into a thicket out of sight...I thought I'd see a buck trailing, but never did.
About 7:20am a doe stepped into the food plot. She wasn't feeding, just on the move. She looked down into the hollow where I had seen the two does for a couple of minutes, then recrossed the food plot and stepped into the strip of woods between the food plot and my house. She was walking through and I decided to take a shot at about 18 yards. I didn't lead her as I should have, and hit her what I thought to be about mid-body length and width. I watched her and mentally marked the last spot I saw her. I waited thirty minutes or so before getting down and went to where she was standing when I made the shot. I immediately found blood and tracked her 30 yards or so just to get a feel for the blood trail. I didn't see any sign of guts, but had decided not to track her for a while just in case of a gut shot in which case we usually give them several hours to die rather then jump them from a bed and risk losing them. I called Pappy and told him the details, he said he would run by after he got off work. Don called me to see how my morning went, and he said he would come help look for her as well. Don arrive around 11:00, and Pappy a few minutes later. We started tracking her and she was leaving a decent blood trail. There were times where we loss the blood, but some circling and we would pick it up again. On one of these circling trips, I spotted her laying dead about 30 yards from me. She had traveled probably about 200 yards from where I had shot her. There was sign that she had bedded there and been alive for at least a little while before dying. If I had taken up the trail immediately she would have been spooked and covered no telling how much distance before dying. Very good chance we would not have found her.
She weighed 115 lbs. field-dressed, another good doe for our area. Pappy checked the arrow path while I went for the 4-wheeler. The arrow had passed through the back of the liver and one lung with the pass through shot. The arrow was still sticking in the doe when we found her...minus the trade point which most likely got yanked off when she brushed by a tree. I was excited that the first shot at a deer with my dogwood bow made meat!
Thanks goes to good friends that helped me retrieve the doe.
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