Recover More Game by Simply Refusing to Give Up

A sharp broadhead in the vitals can be incredibly lethal. Most often, the animal falls quickly and close to the shooter. But all archery shots are not perfect, and some truly bizarre outcomes occur, even when an arrow seems to hit the mark exactly.

Take, for example, a nice 4x4 mule deer my friend Wes Hart shot three years ago. Wes stalked that buck near sundown and nailed him with a 35-yard shot. The deer bounded 125 yards and bedded with the exit wound clearly visible, just in front of the shoulder.

Wes waited until dark, but the buck’s head was still up. He drove home and gave me a call. Late October temperatures were dipping below freezing, so we decided to recover the animal at dawn — the meat would still be good.

Imagine our amazement, nearly 12 hours later, when we spied the deer on its hooves and hobbling toward a farm field where no hunting was allowed. Fortunately, Wes made a quick stalk and finished the animal with a double-lung arrow.

An autopsy showed his first broadhead had sliced the top of the left lung and the front of the right lung. The G5 broadhead was still sharp after the pass-through. The second arrow drilled both lungs dead-center and the buck dropped almost instantly.

Just because you penetrate the chest does not always mean instant death. Lungs hit on the edge, or a single-lung hit, do not necessarily kill right away. In my experience, high lung hits can be especially unpredictable.

In our case, we spotted my pal’s wounded deer for a quick conclusion. In thick or broken terrain, a badly hit but still moving animal can vanish quickly. At that point, the best you can hope for is plenty of blood on the ground.

Just last year, I stalked a dandy, 6x6 muley buck in Montana. It was mid-October, and the brisk evening breeze was cold. I stood for more than two hours waiting for the bedded deer to stand. When he finally did, I was shivering so badly I could barely draw my bow. The distance was 45 yards, normally a chip shot with my Bear Alaskan compound. The buck was quartering away, and my arrow hit about six inches farther back than I would have liked. Cold muscles never help accurate shooting.

The buck dove over a ridge, and I ran to the top just in time to see him walk over another hill. Then it was dark. I knew the broadhead had definitely drilled the off lung, but the deer was still on the move, so searching in the dark made no sense.

When I returned at dawn, my pocket thermometer said 26 degrees, so the meat would still be good. But locating that deer was not easy. Half an hour later, I was still circling at increasing distance from where I’d last seen him. I could not find one speck of blood. The sun chinned over distant mountains, and I started to worry, since the day promised to warm up quickly.

After canvassing every foot of ground inside 300 yards, I sat on a stump and tried to second-guess the buck. The only cover nearby was across a small valley and up a series of small hills. Contrary to popular belief, badly wounded animals often travel upward, especially if there’s thick cover in that direction. I tried to think like a deer, walked 400 yards to the hills and started tramping terrain.

Forty-five minutes later, I spied an antler above a log. My buck had staggered more than a quarter-mile and flipped upside-down in a jackstraw mess of deadfalls. The meat was cold, and as I’d suspected, my arrow had centered the far lung. Paunch material on the entry side and thick fat on the exit side had prevented external bleeding.

With most solid arrow hits, a diligent follow-up will find your animal in time to save the meat. The key is never giving up, and getting friends to help you look if they are available. Sometimes, however, the search takes a less positive turn.

A couple years ago, I wrote in this column about a massive elk I shot in the paunch. I found that bull six warm September days later, after hiking an estimated 50 miles. Magpies and the odor finally led me to the big 6x6. The elk had collapsed in a thicket 2.25 air miles from the hit site, undoubtedly boosted along after he smelled me on a constantly shifting breeze.

In another turn of bad luck, I shot a beautiful Alberta mule deer just before dark in 2018. The buck was hard-hit but managed to jump a fence and stagger into a maze of deep coulees as my guide and I watched. The November weather was bitterly cold, and not knowing how far he might go, we opted to search for the deer the next morning.

We found the buck less than 300 yards from the hit site, but big Canadian coyotes had found him first. There was not a shred of meat left — just lower legs, hide, bones and the head. Bears, coyotes, magpies and other scavengers have to eat too, so hunters need to follow up every hit aggressively to ensure they get the meat instead of the critters...

One good example is a 6x6 elk I shot in the evening a few years ago. The bull stopped 30 yards away in dark timber, and my arrow deflected on a pine twig I did not see. The elk galloped away with the arrow visible on both sides. It looked like a liver hit.

I waited an hour and followed skimpy blood to a fence 250 yards away. The bull had climbed a hill and jumped the barbed wire into a cattle ranch where I did not have permission to hunt. My friend and rodeo roper Tommy Moore knew the owner, and he secured permission for me to follow him. The next morning, I started searching beyond the fence.

Blood petered out on a steep slope, and I began grid-searching the area. Two hours later, a coyote streaked from a draw above a large stock pond. I raised my binocular and there was an elk antler, sticking out of the water! The bull had dived in and expired about half a mile from the hit site. The coyote could smell the bull but could not get at him.

A little later, my pal Tommy managed to rope the antler and we dragged my animal to dry ground. The meat was excellent, kept cold by the deep pond.

I’ve had three arrow-hit animals die in water, something I believe they do in a last-ditch effort to escape from predators. On hardcore follow-ups, you never know what you’ll find at the end of the search!

Chuck Adams Big-Game Hunting Tip

Most often, the search for an arrow-hit animal is short and sweet. Even when it’s not, you can find almost any mortally wounded archery animal provided you look long and hard.

If searching for blood, body fluid and tracks does not do the trick, you should make an initial body search within 200 yards of the hit site. Follow established game trails first, and then grid-search every foot of terrain. From there, it becomes a tedious process of expanding the distance — first along likely travel routes, then in other directions. Dense cover multiplies the difficulty.

Wounded animals often move into the wind so they can smell danger ahead. They commonly climb or side-hill instead of taking an easier downhill path. In my experience, they go farther than you might expect before they drop, and sometimes veer in unpredictable ways. Moving a quarter- to a half-mile is not unusual for a deer, elk or bear hit in the liver or paunch.

In a worst-case scenario, a carcass can be located by smell or birds such as magpies, ravens or eagles. After a few days in moderate weather, the stench will get your attention.

Nothing goes to waste in the woods. Hopefully, however, the game wears your tag and the meat spends the winter in your freezer!

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