Little back story. Between my two boys, at least one of them has soccer practice almost every weeknight. There's an industrial park, and several empty fields belonging to the city which we drive past to get to soccer.
Several evenings ago driving my son back from soccer at around sunset, we saw about 5 deer in the field with at least one decent buck. There's some woodland with a creek and marshy area butting up to the field. Since I had my bow with me, we got out and stalked the deer, but spooked them, and weren't able to get a shot off.
I've been keeping an eye out this week as I drive the boys to and from soccer. Seems most evenings there's deer out there. Did the same thing yesterday, picked him up, and on the way by saw a buck and doe feeding in the field, near the treeline.
My son was in his soccer cleats, but the wind was right, and we put on a pretty good stalk, however they spooked and moved further in the field. We pushed on through the trees hoping to cut them off. When the trees opened up to a clearing full of tall grass, my son noticed them on the other side. Couldn't range them at first because of the tall grass in the way. They moved along a bit, and we snuck into position behind a big bush, and I ranged him at 40yds. I put the pin on him, said a quick prayer, and let it fly. This was about 7:25PM.
To me the shot looked a little high, but he did the bucking jump move that deer seem to do with a heart shot, so I was optimistic. Watched him run off along a stand of trees and disappear near an oak tree.
Walked over and found the arrow, which had about 8" broken off. Not a pass through, but had some blood on the broken shaft end. Walked a little bit with my son looking for blood, but found none at all. Was able to teach my son about giving them time to bed down and die, not rushing in and pushing them, etc. At that point I knew I'd be looking in the dark. Drove my son home (we live about 3 minutes down the road), got some flashlights, and came back by myself about a half hour later (I know, I could have waited longer).
I was shooting a 2" Swacker expandible broadhead. Since it wasn't a passthrough, I knew blood might be sparse (Swackers open up inside the animal, leaving a smaller entrance wound and a large exit). Found blood maybe 40 yards from where I shot him- good and red, but not foamy, and also not a ton of it
It was a slow track as the blood started getting sparser. Followed it along through the stand of oak, to a little creek that runs through the field. Eventually lost the blood trail, and resorted to just looking around in the dark.
About that time I remembered that I had said a prayer and asked for help on the shot, so I figured "I'm not alone out here, Jesus knows where the deer is" and asked him for some help finding it. Not long after I was shining my light across the creek and thought I saw him. The creek was almost knee deep, and I didn't want to cross it if I didn't have to, but I was pretty confident I was seeing my deer, so I waded across. When I got to within 10 yards or so and knew it was the deer, I called my wife and had her put my son on Facetime, so he could share the moment of walking up on it with me. This was around 9:20PM, so almost 2 hours after I shot him. My son was in bed, but not asleep, so we got to walk up and check out the deer together
Pretty awesome!
Deer was a dandy for a Western Washington blacktail. 5X4, my biggest yet, and big bodied. I called a buddy to come help me with it.
Shot him broadside through the back of the scapula, but the 8" of arrow had shifted inside his chest cavity and worked around parallel to him, going into his stomach. Had some outer lacerations on his heart, although some of that might have been from my knife gutting him
Finally crawled into bed at 1:30 last night, and am feeling super sore today, but it's definitely worth it! I know this is a bit long, but wanted to share the story.
