Bow Season Report, Florida 2010-18

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Bow Season Report, Florida 2010-17

Wind: E light
temp.: l 50, 80h.
moon: 4 days after quarter moon
major feed: 7:15 am, 7:35 pm
pressure: 30.06 steady
humidity: avg. 48% 32 min. 100max.
rain: 0

AM. Hunt:

It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed this morning. Matter of  fact I had already reset the alarm for some more sleep. Then I started thinking about the trail camera being out all weekend and all the big bucks that must have been standing in line to get their picture taken while I was off hunting some place else.

I got climbed and settled in to the stand about 7:00 AM..  About 20 minutes later I notice a deer step into the 5 th. row down to the east. I got the camera rolling and then put the glass on him.....buck! a spike! Well, he did not look like any of the Bucks I had seen on the cam and I finally decided I would take a shot if I got one.

It was obvious he had something other than corn on his mind and he was scent checking everything  as he wandered along. He even did a lip curl.

Once he got beside me he turned to the north walking away from me. I grunted at him a few times without him hearing me and finally had to really get loud to get his attention. By this time he was out about what I thought was 25+ yds. When he stopped broadside, I split my 20 & 30 yd pin and launched!

The deer ripped off thru the pines and into the chop. My first thought was that the shot looked pretty high but was not real worried at that. However, the more I thought about it the more worried I got. The first problem was I could not see my arrow sticking in the ground. That was because it was not there and that is not usually a good thing. If you shoot a deer thru the rib cage where you should, The arrow blows right thru, clean. If it stops in the deer you hit some major bone.

I rolled the video back but it was not a lot of help. Just as I finished that and went to move I heard a deer blow right behind me and turned to see a huge cow horn spike hopping off. He had snuck behind me while I was distracted. Maybe we'll meet again.

Well, I climbed down to have a look at the arrow. It was not at the shot site. I looked up the trail and spotted something long, shinning up ahead about 20 yds. One look with the glasses immediately told me I was probably in trouble. I was in fact my shaft and it was broken off way up near the fletching. When I got my hand on it, it was covered with meat and almost no blood. dang it! how did I shoot this deer in the back strap? No blood means no chest shot. Two of the blades were bent also.

I trailed him off into the chop and never found even a pin drop of blood.

I knew this was not going to be a deer that could be recovered, even with the dog. Nothing about the wound was fatal enough to put the deer down. Barring a bad infection, he will probably over our little meeting.

An unrecovered, crippled deer is one thing that just sucks the wind right out of my sails. When I got to the office The first thing I had to do was review the footage to shed some light on what had happened. I was able to determine the deer was completely at fault in the situation. I had later ranged the deer at 28yds and shot it for 25yds. The footage revealed the the deer had badly jumped the string on me it looks to have been as much as 8-10". I shoot a heavy arrow that weighs 467 grains at about 251 fps. That's pretty incredible a deer could almost duck it completely and he was not even tight when I shot.

I have a real problem with holding low but I am trying to over come it.

After reviewing the video I decided I was going to shake this off and get right back in the tree.

PM. Hunt:

I went back to the same stand this afternoon. I walked in on a yearling already at the stand but that was all I saw tonight.

I'll get back in there in the morning and see what shows. There are  a pile of deer using here. I got a few pic's with as many as 5 deer in one shot and a new 5pt buck that we have not seen before was in there.

Here are a few pic's from the weekend:

Good Luck,
Larry S.