I manage a deer lease with 6 of my good friends. We've had this lease membership together for 5 years now and the group dynamic is better than any lease I've ever been a part of. Everyone gets along great. I have very simple, basic rules because I want everyone to have fun and because all the guys use common sense and respect each other.

The issue I have is in the 5 years, we've now had 6 incidents of deer being hit, blood trails followed, and deer not recovered, if the two deer shot this morning ends up following this trend. These incidents have 2 things in common: shot with archery gear and all were shot by 2 of the members. Both guys are decent bow shots and in all cases, they claim they got good hits in the vitals, but who knows?

I'm not anti archery. I love to bowhunt myself. I realize sometimes this is going to unfortunately occur, despite your best efforts. But I have hunted every season for 49 years and have lost 4 deer that I've hit in all that time, only 1 with a bow.

When this happens, the unavoidable truth is a deer likely dies and is wasted. Nobody else will ever have an opportunity at that deer, and it is forever removed from the breeding pool. Additionally, the whole group of us is then taken away from our hunting time to track their animals for hours on end, traipsing through the woods and spooking other deer. This is especially bad given we are in a rebounding year for deer in the area I hunt due to severe drought last year, so every deer is precious. These hunters then continue hunting and sometimes take more deer, which isn't fair to the rest of us who almost always recover our kills.

I realize these incidents happen despite the best of intentions and nobody wants to lose a deer, but I'm thinking about what I can do to try to curtail these incidents, since it has occurred way too often.

Maybe establish a new rule that if you draw blood, that's your deer and you burn that tag? I know this will p!zz off the guys, and I hate to have to do this, but I want to be fair to the rest of the members.

What would you guys do if you were me?

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

Have you checked with Brad, Mitch and Jerry?

barnag said:

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Have you checked with Brad, Mitch and Jerry?

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Haha! I haven't yet.

I also don't wanna be a Brad/Mitch/Jerry, but man, something really needs to change here.

Treat like a paid trophy hunt. Lost animals count as their animal for the season.

Haha you're not. Very valid reasons. I like your draw blood rule. You better make sure you're accurate and put the buck down. If they're not confident just go to rifle to be sure.

I'd give them th option to call and pay for a tracker to try and recover it or burn their tag

Require that anyone that wounds a deer spend the money to bring in a dog? Might make people a little more critical of their shot. And increase the chance that they're actually found.

Some people are just bad trackers more so than bad shots. They walk along a blood trail and as soon as the red carpet dies out they just start randomly stomping through the woods hoping to stumble across it. They bring in "help" to do the same. When that doesn't work, they give up. All without ever taking the time to get down on the ground and follow the trail inch by inch.

OnlyForNow said:

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I'd give them th option to call and pay for a tracker to try and recover it or burn their tag

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Good idea. And make the rule applicable to any deer not immediately recovered, whether shot by rifle or bow. Nobody has much reason to gripe that way.

Bowhunters lose more deer. No question about it. Either you live with that fact, you outlaw bowhunting, or you make the guys take a picture of anything they shoot BEFORE they shoot it and charge it against their limit. By the way, if you have bowhunted for 40 years and only lost 1 deer, you are the exception.

It's a very common rule among outfitters that if you draw blood, you're done. Might keep folks from taking questionable shots. Might also keep people from admitting to wounding deer

Get the number of a good tracker in your area. Make it an expectation that any unrecorded animal, the shooter must hire a tracker within 24 hours or whatever.

Also, see if everyone will agree that blood drawn = animal taken, barring some extreme circumstance that all partners agree warrants an exception. You pull the trigger and make a hit, you are using a tag.

If I was on a lease, I would not be offended in the least by either of those rules. I would expect them.

Sounds like those two guys need to split the cost of buying a tracking dog.

I wouldn't do a whole lot. More rules like you mentioned will cause a problem. You can't hear a bow shot, if they don't find it on their own they'll stop asking for help or looking for blood. If they hear you guys shoot a gun but don't see a deer then they'll assume you did the same. Hunting can be tough… chalk it up to a loss and move on. The only thing I would consider is if you have a good doe population require all hunters to kill a doe before any bucks. This helps get those yips out and good practice.

2040huck said:

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Bowhunters lose more deer. No question about it. Either you live with that fact, you outlaw bowhunting, or you make the guys take a picture of anything they shoot BEFORE they shoot it and charge it against their limit. By the way, if you have bowhunted for 40 years and only lost 1 deer, you are the exception.

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I've hunted for 40 years, but not bow hunted for that long. I've bowhunted off and on for about 20 of those years, most of the time not taking a shot. I only take very high percentage broadside shots at very close range or not at all with bow. I didn't bowhunt at all the past 2 years, only rifle.

Archery has a greater potential for loss in my opinion. If you're going to have a group where your lease-mates sling arrows, then this is to be expected.

That said, the archers should also reciprocate with appreciation of the impact of those losses on the rest of the group.

Draw blood = punched slot could work but might lead to some hard feelings. Maybe every one gets 1 mulligan. After that, blood drawn counts as a deer towards the allotment.

I can tell you that Brad, Jerry and Mitch would require drawn blood to count.

Blood drawn = that tag is considered used until the last week of the season, assuming there are still deer to be taken on the lease collectively.

They still have a chance to harvest after a time out, and it gives everyone else a chance to harvest first before they shoot twice.

Several years ago, during bow season, we spent a couple of days looking for a deer wounded by an arrow. Lots of blood, and the hunter thought he had hit the deer in a lethal area. We even had hired a dog to track the deer. After 5 days, we finally gave up looking.

After a month, the same buck shows back up, with no evidence of being wounded. The hunter used a rifle this time, and successfully harvested the buck. After skinning him, you could barely see the arrow wound on the front of his hip. It had healed up nicely.

I don't think I've ever tagged out and I've never been on a lease. But I think your rule is very fair and it's the ethical thing to do. If you kill an animal, your tag is gone regardless if you recover it or not.

Might encourage these guys to rethink their setup and practice more

Update, we didn't find either the buck or doe the lease member arrowed this morning. We followed a blood trail for a few hundred yards… no joy. So, we called around and found a local guy with tracking dog. He just showed up, so we're about to go let the dog do its thing.

Exactly.

Hell they don't even have to actually burn a physical tag, but one of their lease/ranch deer quota is gone.

Hope y'all find those deer

A lot of good advice already given. I will echo a few things

-Get the number of a good tracker. Before the season, try to get him a bottle of his favorite hooch and introduce yourself. I have a thread dedicated to this info in the last few weeks. As a tracker myself, if I get a call from people I know, you are on the top of the list.

-If you hunt with me or on my land and you draw blood, you are done. That tag is burned. Anyone that keeps spraying and praying is not an ethical hunter.

Your kidding with the hard feeling against the bow hunters? What is the range at which they can shoot deer? 35-40 yards max? So all the bucks that are out farther then that walk for all your rifle hunters? And your concerned that bow hunters will shoot more than there fair share?

Feel your pain. For many years we allowed friends, dealer/clients, family members bow hunt on our ranch. Lots of those guys/gals were efficient at putting an arrow at a target and/or were not new to a bow.
We would spend many a day and night trailing wounded deer. Finally just quit allowing bow hunting. Made a few mad but in the long run it was good for us and the animals.
We had some wounded with firearms as well but the incident of that was about 1/4 of what we had with archery.

tlfw378 said:

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Your kidding with the hard feeling against the bow hunters? What is the range at which they can shoot deer? 35-40 yards max? So all the bucks that are out farther then that walk for all your rifle hunters? And your concerned that bow hunters will shoot more than there fair share?

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You misunderstood what I said. I simply said that 6 deer have been killed and not found, all by the same 2 guys, all with bows. In most cases, they have later killed more deer. The remaining 5 hunters have not lost any animals. So yes, it's not a "concern" that they have killed more than their share compared to the others; they have in fact done so. And range of shots has nothing to do with it. I'm talking about the % of deer recovered per shots taken and the fact eventually lethal hits have occurred and yet they have then continued hunting and taken more deer afterward, exceeding the number of deer that ordinarily would've been killed.

I'm not at all against bowhunting. I bowhunt myself. I'm in no way preventing or trying to prevent anyone from hunting using whatever legal means they choose. I'm only concerned that a negative pattern is developing. I also realize that occasionally animals are hit and not recovered. The concern is simply that there has been 2 common denominators with the number of incidences and a disproportionate number attributed to 2 guys. If it were 1 or two occasions that would be one thing, but this has become an annual thing.

I'm simply asking the question of what is a fair way to address this.

Unfortunately, we never found the 2 deer from this morning with the tracking dog. We found one of his arrows broken in half about a half mile from where he shot.

6 deer in five years by two guys is WAY too high of a shot but not found.

What about the other bow hunters in the group? Have they not lost any deer shot?

INIGO MONTOYA said:

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6 deer in five years by two guys is WAY too high of a shot but not found.

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You have to let bow shot deer crawl up somewhere and die. It takes time. Make sure they know this. 1 hr minimum. If you starting tracking them too early they will spook and run a long long long way. Ask me how i know. 1 hr minimum. And if you dont have coyotes around give him 2 or 3 hours then track.

JS makes a good point. Find out the details of their searching. I usually wait 20 minutes with bullets. I can see an hour for arrow since it does much less internal damage. So make sure they wait long enough.

Also you and you hunters should dive in the YoUtube for tracking videos. Make sure you are doing it correctly

tlfw378 said:

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What about the other bow hunters in the group? Have they not lost any deer shot?

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The only other bowhunter in the whole group is me. I haven't lost any deer since we formed this lease group. Then again, I also haven't taken any shots with my bow yet on this lease simply because I try to only shoot big mature bucks, and I simply haven't encountered a "shooter" yet while bowhunting. I also only take high % broadside shots at no more than about 25 yards. Consequently, I haven't killed many deer with a bow. I'm perfectly fine with my self-imposed limitations because although Im a pretty good shot, I'm a poor tracker due to the fact I have difficulty distinguishing between red and brown, making it tough for me to follow blood trails. When firearms season starts, I switch from bow to rifle.

The other 2 bowhunters I'm referring to have chosen to bowhunt exclusively all season. They occasionally rifle hunt, but only when the weather is really nasty and the wind is howling.

Again, I'm not ranting against bowhunting; I'm simply saying a pattern has developed and 2 guys are responsible for 6 lost deer that were mortally wounded in 5 years while the other 5 lease members haven't lost any deer during the same time period. The rest of my group notices and have made subtle comments about it. So, I feel I need to address it in some way to be fair to everyone.

I appreciate everyone's input.

JSKolache said:

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INIGO MONTOYA said:

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6 deer in five years by two guys is WAY too high of a shot but not found.

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You have to let bow shot deer crawl up somewhere and die. It takes time. Make sure they know this. 1 hr minimum. If you starting tracking them too early they will spook and run a long long long way. Ask me how i know. 1 hr minimum. And if you dont have coyotes around give him 2 or 3 hours then track.

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Yes, both guys have bowhunted for many years, and both know they must wait for a long time between the shot and retrieving their deer. I don't know if they are waiting a full hour or not, and perhaps that's the proper amount of time. It's certainly possible that pursuing too quickly could be a contributing factor if not the main problem. I will be sure to discuss this with them.

So many things possible that it is impossible to give a definitive opinion without all the facts. Maybe suggest video the shots to be able to analyze the quality of the shot. This would help know how long to wait before tracking or attempting to track the deer. I think most times a deer isn't recovered it is more to too early pursuits. Impossible for o know from my arm chair. Maybe they aren't any good shots, maybe they are not taking ethical bow shots, maybe they don't have their bows really sighted in. Maybe they shoot at deer too far away. Maybe the deer are moving….a video would help eliminate almost all questions.

Thaddeus Beauregard said:

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in the 5 years, we've now had 6 incidents of deer being hit, blood trails followed, and deer not recovered,

all were shot by 2 of the members.

Both guys are decent bow shot

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I know that me mentioning they are good bow shots seems like a contradiction, but they really are…at least on targets. I'm not with them when they take shots at deer so I don't know if they are taking marginal shots; I can only take them at their word. I've hunted with them for years and have seen them shoot a lot. None of us are novice hunters. We've all been hunting for at least 30 years minimum each, and all of us have killed a lot of deer. All of us are in our 50s and 60s, except for 1 guy in his 40s, and have been hunting since we were teenagers. One guy is constantly sending me videos of him sniping squirrels in his backyard out of his office window with his bow.

While I'd obviously like to know the source of the problem, I'm not really trying to diagnose the why so much as address the need to reduce the incidences of mortally wounded lost deer in a fair but effective way that promotes personal accountability.