Killing two bucks

[Couesnut]

I see an awful lot of stories about guys who make shots (bow or rifle) that are good hits. Lots of blood, knock downs, ect. They do the follow up, hours, days, whatever. They belive the buck is dead but can't find it.

Then they continue to hunt, killing & taging another buck. I think this happens a lot.

Doesn't anyone consider stopping thier hunt. Or afterwords thinking about the fact that they killed 2 deer.

I for one would be done. What do you think???

DH

[Chef]

Interesting topic. On our last elk hunt, my Father dropped an elk only to have him get up and bolt after ten minutes of celebration. It was a classic and great hunt up to that point. I had dropped my bull one hour prior and my Father had just come in too see it. I heard a bugle in the distance and called his bull into 100 yards. Needless to say, you can imagine the celebration that commensed.

 

Only to have the SOB get up and run off!

 

Both him and I (me mostly) scoured the countryside (GPS units in hand) for three full days. (took me that long to pack my bull out of that hellhole) My Father never once took a rifle afield again on that hunt. I wouldn't feel right either. Guess it depends on a lot of things, the reaction of the animal to the shot, amount of blood, etc.

 

Merry Christmas.

 

Chef

[CouesWhitetail]

If I thought a buck I hit had died and I just couldn't find it, I wouldn't hunt anymore. I did that on a javelina hunt I had once. I arrowed the javelina with what seemed to be a fatal shot, but we never found him after a few days of searching. But I was pretty sure it was fatal, so I just considered my tag filled and stopped hunting. I hope other hunters would do the same.

 

I suppose there are times when someone hits an animal but they think it's not a fatal shot. That's a different scenario than the one you described.

 

Amanda

[bowsniper]

I kind of think that it depends on your personal situation. For me, I had a dozen unfilled tags before I finally lost one and then shot another a few days later. There is a major responsibility to do everything you can to find the wounded animal. When I lost that spike last week, I tracked him a 1/4 mile, then I tracked him another two hundred yards on my hands and knees before the blood trail gave out. I spent most of the next day doing a grid search through manzanita, before I finally gave up. So yes, I guess that I did do a "twofer", but I did everything I could do to find that spike, and with over a dozen unfilled tags to my name, I don't feel too bad about possibly taking two deer. I do however, feel very guilty about making that spike suffer. I can't say for sure what I would have done if I had been a more experienced and succesful hunter, although I can say for sure that with what I learned on this hunt, I will do things differently next time. I really learned on this hunt how important it is to have the perfect shot for archery. Trying to fill that first tag can make you do some unwise things.

 

Bowsniper

[recurveman]

Personally I would still keep hunting. I've seen and cleaned way to many animals that have been hit and didn't die. I've even seen some animals hit more than once and have arrows sticking out of them. Animals are a ton tougher than you think.

 

Now if you find the animal a few days later you could consider taging the animal and calling it a hunt. Though I would still probably still hunt depending on the hunt. You have to remember that the game and fish takes all of these things into account.

 

I don't think someone is being a better person for not hunting after they shoot an animal that they didn't find. If you hunt enough it will happen. It is just part of hunting. If it really bothers you then I would consider not hunting. If you think the animal was hit that good then you should be able to find it. There have been VERY FEW animals that I didn't find with in a reasonable amount of time if they were hit fatally. I would say that the number of animals not found that were fatally hit were in the area of less than 2-3%. I've easily tracked well over 200 archery hits. Maybe even more. There are very few times you will loose an animal if it is fatally hit and you track it the best you can.

 

So if you find most I wouldn't consider it dead unless I find it and I would continue to hunt. That is me. I've just seen to many arrows and broadheads in animals that weren't mine when I was cleaning them.

 

Later,

 

recurveman

[Rembrant]

It's a personal call.

I believe if you do everything possible to find the animal for a couple of days, and are not able to - that is very responsible. I would continue - and have - kept hunting at that point. I have hunted with Game Warden buddies and wound up in that situation. They were happy with my efforts.

It's the jerks that don't put in the effort when it gets tough that ought to be ashamed of themselves. At that point, it's not a personal call, it's a legal responsibility.

I do respect your view Amanda. Like I said, it's a personal call. I have known more than one person who have accidentally killed more than one animal, and when they found out their mistake - turned themselves in. There are some people with good ethics in the woods.

The late Les Shelton told me a story once about a bull elk with an odd rack that his wife had arrowed right through both lungs - clean pass through. They searched and searched and could not recover. Later during the rifle hunt, a client of his who was a medical doctor, killed that same bull!

After Les told the Md. all about it, the doc examined the lungs and revealed obvious scar tissue through one lobe of each lung! The bull had recovered a double lung pass through!!

Sometimes animals recover.

Mike

[111]

Once many days have been put into trying to locate a wounded animal and you feel confident with your efforts, then continue hunting. Personally it would depend on how I feel about the hit, blood trail, and how many days are left of the hunt to determine how many days to search. If you happen to come upon it while hunting later then tag it. You chose to shoot the animal, so rack size shouldn't matter in how much effort you decide to put into the recovery of the animal. It shouldn't be a factor, but most hunters including me may stop their hunt for the remainder of the season in search of a trophy animal.

[wklman]

hey couesnut,

 

I had something similar happen to me this nov. on my hunt.On monday afternoon I glassed up a 2 ptr about 3/4 of a mile away and couldn't tell how big he was so I stalked closer to get a better look at him. when I got within 200 yds I lost the buck when he bedded down in some thick mesquite. I glassed the cut I thought he was in and couldn't find him so decided to walk up the cut and maybe push him out. the country was pretty open so I thought if he was big enough when he spooked out I would get a shot at him.Well once I walked up that cut he never came out. bewildered I went to the next cut over and threw a rock into the brush. next thing I know that buck steps out and he's just a forkie but the buck that walks out after him is a monster( I guessed 100 inches or so).I pulled up and did the old look at the antlers and shoot missing him completely.Of course both deer take off and I got 2 more shots at him with the last shot feeling the best but not thinking I hit him.I spent that afternoon and the next day looking all over for any sign of a hit.no blood,no hair no sign of anything. I walked back to my truck that next evening thinking I missed the deer completely. when I was driving out I stopped to talk to a couple of hunters coming in to camp. after a couple of minutes they asked me if I shot at a big buck the previous afternoon.I couldn't believe what they had to tell me.I had hit that deer with my last shot high in the back muscle area. He had ran straight away from and was licking his back while he moved away.To say I was sick was an understatement.knowing I hit him I went back to that area the next day with the intention of finding this buck. That morning while I was glassing 2 does up on a bluff were going nuts wheezing at something up there.I put my binos up there and sure enough here was this buck bedded down behind a rock with just his face showing. I snuck over to within 180 yds and all that I could see was his face.I made my mind up I didn't want take such a risky shot so I moved 10 yds to my right and set up again to get a better shot. when I looked back up there he was gone.Walking over the top as I moved. I made a quick decision to walk around the bluff and glass every spot i could on the way. No such luck he got away again and another day gone.I glassed and walked that thursday to no avail.nothing all day.Friday I stayed home recuperating from such a tough week. the canyon the buck was in was 2 miles from any road with no motor vehicles being allowed in.Saturday morning I was out early glassing this canyon again finding no bucks but tons of does and spikes.that afternoon i walked back to the first cut where i found the buck on monday. The second tree I looked under I saw a huge rack sticking up behind a rock. He turned his head and I knew this was the buck I had hit on monday. This time I took my time and got into a good position about 90 yds away. he gave me his neck and a little bit of chest to shoot at. At the sqeeze of the trigger he got up and I put another bullet in his chest. He ran about 20 yds and piled up. Elated wasn't enough to describe my emotions at finally getting this buck. after field dressing him I found out my original bullet had gone just under the skin on the side of his back.I know this is a long story so I'll wind up by saying that persitance pays off when looking for a wounded or poorly hit deer. by the way the deer is top on page 39.

 

thx Wade

[az4life]

Couesnut

I have to say, It is a moral predicament where the answer could change dependiing on the circumstances. I was a bit subdued in my post about Another hunters successful recent hunt due to that specific question. Others also had similar feelings implied in the thread. I am glad you brought this up on another thread so as not to disturb the other one!

 

I know people who have shot 2 deer in similar circumstances. These people with the highest caliber ethics who would go miles out tf their way to pay for an extra 69 cent taco a drive though gave them by mistake. I also have ended hunts myself when I felt I hit a deer and it could not be recovered. I also know people who have like myself, went ahead and hunted following shooting at deer that I could not confirm were hit or not.

 

When the decision is made based on all information available to the hunter at the time, the individual and the situation will dictate the answer. Tell the same story to 10 people and you likely will get 6 different responses. Dillemmas like this will undoubtably test our morals and ethics. We should all remember, Whatever YOUR decision, it is one that YOU will have to live with, and YOU will have to answer for. Hunting does have it's peronal tests. Your morals and ethics are tested as we see here.

 

I think a real simple test while hunting is, If you are an ethical hunter, you will not fear the game warden. Act responsibly and be responsible for your actions and you will usually be in the right.

 

Wow, this post got pretty philosophical....

[Manamal]

Sooner or later as hunters we are going to have to face this very dilemma. I'm no stranger to the situation. Both instances were almost five years ago. The first was an archery javalina, hit high, probably in the gap between the lungs and spine. Who knows, we looked for a day and a half, ran out of blood, and tracks were very tough to distinguish on the rocks. I took a very large boar the next day and felt good about it!! The next time it was an early archery deer hunt. I totally hit this 3x2 muley too far back. I followed up too soon ( 10 min.) jumped him and lost the trail as he went into a canyon. Looked for a couple days and had to come back to Phoenix. I took a 65" 3x3 coues W/ eyegaurds on the Oct. rifle hunt. Felt good about that too!!

 

 

I look back on these instances with no regret because I know that I exhausted all possibilities and scenarios. Since then I have also learned to wait alot longer to follow up after a shot.

 

One thing to keep in mind is to practice with your weapon. If you are prepared, then this sort of thing is less likely to happen.

[galiuro mountain man]

I was faced with this in Aug this year. I hit my buck @ 1230 opening day. I saw it was a good hit, so I sat for 30 minutes because I couldnt see him or hear him crash. After 30 minutes I went to where I hit him and began to look for blood. There was none. I looked for him for a few hours that day, doing a zig zag across hills and canyons around the area. I went back to the truck around dark and kept running the shot through my head. I knew it was a good hit, but I couldnt find blood. The next day I went to the next canyon south, then the next canyon north. I passed on a good 30 yard shot on a bear in the morning and another 90 or so inch buck at noon. I knew I had an animal down out there somewhere. I looked for buzzards and stuff to see if they were on something, but none were hitting the ground. Got back to the truck around dark. The next day I walked all over again, couldnt find it. At 200 pm my dad killed his buck so we packed it out and headded home. I couldnt go the next day, but it was on my mind the whole time. The next day, four days into the aug archery hunt I was back again. As soon as we got to where I had shot my buck, I could smell him. It took about an hour to find him because of the wind, but I found him. I looked at the entry and exit holes, they were in the perfect spot,so I am still puzzled at how he went about 200 yards, and where the heck my arrow went. The only thing I could do was take his rack, and tag it. There are pics of the rack in the bowhunting section of the photo gallery. Now I am ready for the Jan hunt to start.

 

GMM

[.270]

i've spent a lot o' time in the woods in pursuit of somethin' or other. in my experience the 2 hardest animals to put down for keeps, in Az. anyway, are bull elk and whitetail. my dad shot a real nice 6x6 bull this past nov. hit him good twice and he wandered off a bit and went down. he was probably down for good but was still rollin' his head around some and trying to get up some. i could tell by where the bullet holes were that he was gonna die soon, but had my dad thump him one more time. he was so excited and shook up that i had him shoot him in the chest, instead of trying to hit him in the neck. i've seen quite a few seemingly fatally wounded bulls get up and run off. always been able to track em down and get em, but it's always a mess when it happens. they never run to an easier place to retrieve em from. with elk, their size equals to a lot of toughness and resilience. they have a real tough will to live and escape. if they're down but still breathing, get close enough to blast him again, in case he gets up. if there's any doubt, shoot him again with what you know is a gonna be a fatal shot. with coues, i think the problem with them is because they're so small that it's easy to hit em in a place that might not be fatal for awhile. like a gutshot or blowing off a leg or whatever. they're so small and not real tough that even a gutshot will knock one down sometimes and a guy thinks they're hurt a lot worse than they are. before he knows it, they're up and running or will crawl off and be hard to find. with coues they're small size can make em hard to find too. i have a friend who is a heck of a coues hunter. several b&c heads and he hunts hard a long way from the road. he had an interesting observation about finding wounded coues. they're so small and can flatten out so much, that he's found that they're usually right there, hid in something so small or in grass or leaves so low that you'd never think they could be there. he shot a big coues some years ago and couldn't find it. spent all day looking where he knew it was and could not find it. as it was getting dark he decided to give up for the day and come back. said he walked a few steps and tripped over it's legs covered in oak leaves. it was right there, but had burrowed in the leaves in a place that he felt there was no way a deer could hide there. as far as wounding one, losing it and keeping on with the hunt, it's up to the guy. if you've made a real honest effort to retrieve it, i mean hours or even days of searching, go on and hunt. learn from it. if you're a chronic gushooter and have had that happen multiple times, learn to shoot better or get a different hobby. and don't feel bad about shooting something again. you lose a lot less meat with an extra bullet hole than you do if the whole deer gets away. Lark.

[couesdiehard]

Pretty darn well put Lark!

couesdiehard