As some of you know I went to Wisconsin to try to win the "Joshua Cup" but failed miserably at that but there is a bright side to it and here it is !!
Meet my neice, this was her first year hunting and managed to out do all of us that hunted this year. This deer aparently ran the gauntlet right before she shot it cause we could hear shots from far away and get closer as he got closer. well my brother was sitting just 20 feet away from her on a finger ridge and couldn't see what was about to take place. This deer apparently came into the creek drainage she was overlooking and fell into the creek, thrashed around a while and finally managed to pull its self up onto the bank and bed down behind a blow down, meanwhile my brother could hear all this happening and didn't want to get up and ruin anything for her in case she was in a stare down or something so he stayed put, now this deer layed there for about a half hour from what I am told (an eternity for a new hunter) finally he got up and she pulled the trigger and off he went.
They called me on the radio and asked for some help tracking, so we went back through the whole senerio ie. where were you and where was he when you shot etc... and we found blood
he was hit. Well we looked till dark following the smallest of blood drops on the forest floor and it came to an end and no deer at the end
so we decided to come back in the morning and take up the trail again which was nonexistant so we just decided to grid search the entire area.
My brother and her stumbled upon her deer not 75 yards from last blood, talk about relief but when I got there the gutting job had been done already by the resident pack of wolves and the tenderloins and liver and heart were gone and part of the muscles on the front of the hind quarters was shreaded and apparently when this poor deer ran the gauntlet one of the shots blew of half of one of his hind legs and maybe why he had such a hard time getting himself out of the creek, but we were able to salvage the front shoulders and back straps and some of the hind quarters.
So it was a success no matter how you dice it up even though I didn't fill any of my tags or even see a deer, to be a part of this young ladys first deer kill was priceless and would do it all over again in a heartbeat !!!
Thank You Josh !!!
