Hunting story:

I've been watching this great looking buck for quite a while on my mom's Hill Country ranch. He's not enormous but he's got a great rack and he's the biggest one I've seen on their property. He would be my biggest buck to date for sure if I could get him. Pic attached from a few weeks ago. I've got a new bow this season, a Lift 29.5 at 75 lbs and I'm running the SEVR 2" mechanical. I sat in my Barronett Big Cat ground blind on Saturday morning to hunt, and the buck thankfully showed up at daylight.

At some point, he is standing perfectly broadside at 30 yds, and I knew that was my opportunity. I drew back from my seat, stood up, and put the 30 yd pin on him for a lung shot. I let the shot go and immediately felt good about the shot. The arrow passed through him and fell out the other side, and he turned and took off running.

After 30 minutes, I walked down to check the arrow. There was definitely some blood on the arrow (not much), but the arrow was mostly clean looking but sticky. No blood on the ground. Panic. Why didn't the results match what my eyes told me had just happened?

I carefully walked where he ran to, and found some blood here and there. The blood trail led me 150 yards around the edge of the creek with some heavier pools in some places, and then vanished. No more blood, and wide open space all around. He was nowhere to be seen and it looked totally hopeless. We gave it a few hours and then searched the surrounding area with extra people and a drone too. No sign of him and no clue where he went. I had a pretty awful night trying to sleep knowing that he was out there somewhere.

Sunday I looked again and did not find him. First animal that I have lost. I packed up the kids and all my stuff at noon and started my drive home. 2 hours into my drive I get a call from my mom that they found him! My stepdad apparently saw buzzards over the neighbor's place next to a pond. He followed the buzzards and found my buck piled up in the tall grass 250 yds farther from the last drop of blood I tracked. Coyotes had apparently found him too.

I talked to my taxidermist and he agreed that I could still saw the head off and make a good shoulder mount out of it. My badass Mom and stepdad sawzalled the head off, bagged and iced it down Sunday afternoon, and dropped it off to the taxidermist this morning Monday.

Mom took lots of pics for me and they were interesting. The entry wound was the front edge of the left shoulder and the exit was low stomach on the right side. If I draw a straight line, that means he was quartering hard towards me when I fired. Which is crazy because my eyes said he was perfectly broadside. What I believe happened was that he rotated towards me just as I shot, or while the arrow was in the air. I've never had one react to the shot this way before, but then again this is the first bigger buck I've shot at.

So we recovered the animal for a shoulder mount, but my cooler is empty and definitely no sense of victory from a marginal shot. Bittersweet, but now it feels much better knowing what happened to him, and also to my shot. That should be good for my sanity, because I've got a Kansas hunting trip coming up in early November.

not always the outcome you want, but a lot better than some other outcomes.

also, beautiful clean classic animal. A+

He's a beaut!

Im sure your shot was fine. Shooting 30 yards, they can move. And sometimes a lot! And not just up and down. We cant just aim low and expect it to fix the problem either. They can make a broadside shot turn into a quartering, a double lung turn into a stomach or shoulder. Foks shooting golfball sized groups at 30 yards gives a lot of false confidence that all will go well. The only thing you can do about it is accept the risk that its going to go bad at some point or keep shots inside 20 yards.