I was heading out to hunt with my flintlock this morning when I saw a friend of mine beside the road. I learned he had arrowed a small two point but it would not go down. He had moved back out of the area and was waiting. Good enough I thought.
We spent all morning watching the buck thru binoculars. His breathing was very labored, foaming at the mouth, and obviously uncomfortable where he had bedded. He would get up and move a little, limping badly. At time his head would wobble and nod. 5 hours watching this buck and he was still up.
We were able to move up to one point where he had lain for several hours and could not find a drop of blood. I asked again where the buck was hit. I was told low in the left side of the chest, angling forward to the right shoulder. The arrow was found broken off and blood all the way to the nocks. I looked at the arrow and there was blood all over it and in the fletching. I made that arrow 5 years ago of tight grained douglas fir and had mounted Zwickey Eskimos on them.
We decided to drive to my place and get my bow and some arrows with broadheads. When we got back an hour later, the buck was gone. We moved up slowly and fanned out. No blood, no sign. We quartered for some time before finding the buck uphill. Dead.
The entry wound was a little farther back than I would have liked, but the right upper legbone was like a paper bag of Legos...all busted up. We carefully field dressed since no one could account for the broadhead. We found that the arrow had nicked the front of the stomach, angled forward to pierce the very bottom 2 inches of the right lung, but did not exit the right side after shattering the bone. I pulled the heart from the gutpile and this was what we found:
Just another half inch, maybe less, and one of the bottom chambers of the heart would have been opened up. As it was, the pericardium sac surrounding the heart was full of congealed blood.
The arrow was about 550 grains, shot from a osage bow with 55 lbs of draw weight, from a distance of a whopping 7 yards. Never found a lick of blood outside the body, despite a ruined lung. Likely the chest cavity was filling with air and the lungs were collapsing, causing the deer to pant deeply. I examined the nostrils and inside the mouth and there was no trace of blood. Sometimes even lung shot deer don't cough up any blood. Thank God we didn't have to track this deer.
