Well, it was a long season, and it's been a few years (in WA, anyway) of tag soup, but finally connected.
Two weeks ago, I missed a 15 yard shot (damn twig) through a small hole in thick brush on a doe aways behind a gate in Vail. This had been my first time ever exploring Vail, and I thought that would be the end of my season, but I managed to get in another day of hunting yesterday. Got to the spot about 730AM and started hiking in. This was on the 30th. The day was terrible - intermittent rain, sleet, snow, and strong wind. The first three or four miles of hiking produced nothing except a potential new spot to harvest chantrelles. The woods were beautiful, though, even in winter, and it definitely just felt good to be outside with my longbow in hand. I hiked a total of almost nine miles by the end of the day, through thick 15-year old cuts, mature timber, clearings, etc. Lots of glassing, a fair amount of shivering, and multiple intervals spent crouched behind a big tree. I spooked two deer that I barely saw in timber, and another group of two that I was almost on top of in the doghair-thick 15-year-old cut. There was sign everywhere.
Towards late afternoon I was heading back down along an old road. Played cat-and-mouse with a spike feeding along the side of the road for awhile, and although he never spooked outright, I think the swirling winds were making him nervous and I just couldn't close the distance before he slipped away. It was about 3PM now and I figured my day was over. I picked up the pace a bit to head back to the car. About a mile or so before I got there, I realized I was coming up on the spot where I had taken a shot and missed a few weeks earlier. I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be funny if..." and slowed down.
Literally, and I am not exaggerating for literary effect, as soon as I had had that thought, a patch of brown materialized into a deer right in the little clearing in the thick, thick 15-year old stuff the road had been winding through. The patch is no bigger than an average sized living room, and was separated from the road by lots of trees, but was still obvious as an opening in the brush with good grass inside. I guess that's what drew the deer to it. The deer had obviously seen me, and took a few bounds away. I nocked an arrow and moved towards it.
It moved again, and I finally managed to line myself up on its trail. It was now steeply quartering away from me, looking back over its shoulder. It was about 25 yards away, the outer limits of my comfortable range with my longbow. In a flash, it went through my head that this was surely my last shot of the season, and that I'd been shooting well with practice all year long. I was going to kill this deer.
I don't remember drawing, aiming, or releasing. But the arrow was away, and the deer kicked out its back legs and disappeared. The woods became silent.
I knew I had hit it but I wasn't sure where. I didn't see my arrow impact, but the angle had me concerned that it was possible I had hit the hindquarters. I knew if I hit the body cavity I was set, because the arrow could do nothing but tunnel into the chest, and quartering away is definitely my favorite angle, but as always, not seeing the impact site made me nervous.
It was sleeting, getting dark, and the brush the doe had run in to was as thick as it gets, and even darker. Though usually I would have waited, I went right to the spot where she was standing to look for sign. There was no arrow, but I immediately saw bright red blood. I stopped again to think. The blood was obviously encouraging but there was still no way to know whether this was muscle bleeding or chest bleeding. No pink froth to suggest a lung hit, and still no arrow. I decided to follow the trail very quietly for a ways to get a sense of what I was dealing with. I nocked another arrow and moved forward.
I lost the trail almost immediately after a few feet, and began to have that sinking feeling. Taking a deep breath, I started over, and realized that I had simply taken a wrong turn, and there continued to be a decent, if not totally obvious, trail. I followed it to the edge of the little clearing, and ducked my head and pushed into the thick stuff. Fortunately, though the "canopy" was thick and almost blotted out the light, the undergrowth was nonexistent and I was able to see pretty well if I crouched just a little. I paused for breath, and looked side to side.
I nearly fainted when I saw the doe, lying at the base of a tree, no more than 20 feet away. It had run a short distance, doubled back, and died on the run. The total time, (again, no exaggeration) from shot to finding the deer was maybe five minutes. I think the doe died in less than 10 seconds. The shot, as it turned out, had entered just behind the last rib, angled forward, and passed through exiting just in front of the opposite-side shoulder, nearly traversing the chest. It took out the aorta and the pulmonary artery, and I think it was perhaps just about as fast a bow kill as can be made, excepting a lucky head shot.
Because the deer was small, and it was getting dark, and because my adrenaline was pumping so hard, I grabbed her, through her over my shoulders, and walked the mile back to the car to meet my father, with a massive grin on my face.
It's a small deer, but she was alone. Either a yearling or recently "abandoned" doe.
With a longbow, for me anyway, they are all trophies.
Deer was shot with a 55# Wes Wallace longbow, 4-fletch carbon arrow, VPA terminator 150 grain broadhead. The arrow passed through completely but the fletched end remained in the deer. Other end broke off and I never found it.
