Reaction After The Shot

[airedale]

The one certainty when a Deer is hit with a well placed shot with a decently constructed bullet or arrow head is that it is going to die. The big uncertainty is their reaction after the shot, using Forrest Gump's analogy "Shooting a Deer is like a box of chocolates, you never know how they are going to react" would not be a stretch. Almost every Deer I have ever taken has been targeted and hit in the heart-lung area just behind the front shoulder with a wide variety of hunting weapons and some of the reactions to those shots can and have varied widely. Many dropped in their tracks, some humped up a stumbled a few steps and keeled over while others would make a dramatic death sprint anywhere from a few to several hundred yards even though they were shot in the identical place with the same gun and same bullet at the same range, crazy ain't it?

The most amazing feat of tenacity was a small four point buck I shot at a distance of less than 20 yards with a Marlin 95 45-70, a cartridge that played a large part in decimating the American Bison which will easily weigh over 1000 lbs, yet this 125 lb Deer hit perfectly behind the front shoulder sprints several hundred yards through the woods before dying. What makes that even more puzzling is the year before with the same rifle and almost the same distance I nailed a similar 6 point buck hitting him in the exact same spot behind the front shoulder, yet he drops where he stood. The point of all this is for a young hunter that may give up too early, if the crosshairs-sights were on the right spot when your gun went off remember they all do not drop in their tracks and that even though they make make one of those ungodly long sprints that seems impossible to do that Deer is going to be dead somewhere. It maybe tough to find sometimes but it can be found with persistence.

 

Al

Edited November 6, 2016 by airedale

[outdoorstom]

Great post......very true!

 

[stubby68]

          Walking out one afternoon we see a doe feeding in field at 60 yards. My dad shoots deer takes of running no sign of being hit.It was an all out run across the field for about 300 yards then she stops and starts feeding. We are standing there like what just happened. all of the sudden she flips completely backwards summer Sault style and lays there dead. When we dressed he out the heart was blown up. You never know how a deer wilol react.

              Guy I work with was hunting his first year. Shoots  6 point. He asked me to teach how to butcher his own. I showed up at his place only wound I saw in hide was low front leg. He said deer went down and no second shot. got hide off and sure enough 1 hole lower leg no sign of anything else I looked it over csi style to find anything that could have caused instant death ,nothing but a dead deer from lower leg hit. And by lower I mean below knee

[turkeyfeathers]

Good post. The jump with with legs spread , hunched down and studder step , falling over right there , death run with tail between their legs. They find a tree to curl around , a blow down to crawl under, dead on their feet and amazed at what they do. Last years buck was shot at 20 yards tops with ML , 100 grains of 777 and 250 grain shockwave   Touched off shot.  Deer continued to stand there   I grabbed quick load from pocket all the while keeping and eye on him   No sooner do I start to manually shove the load into the front end of the muzzle stuffer I see him tip over. He never moved after shot. Just stood there . Thinking there's no freaking way I missed. And then " timber " 

[The_Field_Ager]

As some know, I had a mature Buck run for a half mile on what was either a liver lung combo, or indeed a double lung. Now I now there was a scoffer or two, but think about it. I can walk this half mile in about 10 minutes. A deer can run it in probably less than two. A half mile is a bitch to track, but isn't actually a whole lot of real estate if you are running at full pelt, or even trotting at speed with 4 long legs under you.

His reaction was something of a small skip and disruption to the slow trot/walk he was doing when shot.

I believe his age, toughness and will to carry on was mostly what spurred him.

[airedale]

21 minutes ago, turkeyfeathers said:

Deer continued to stand there   I grabbed quick load from pocket all the while keeping and eye on him   No sooner do I start to manually shove the load into the front end of the muzzle stuffer I see him tip over. He never moved after shot. Just stood there . Thinking there's no freaking way I missed. And then " timber " 

Had the exact same thing happen to me with a Caribou standing out in the open at about 50 yards eating, I let him have one with a 338 Winchester Mag and he just stood there and continued eating, I thought I had to have missed. I was about to give him another one and I could see him in the scope start to get shaky in the legs and all of a sudden he dropped.

Al

[NFA-ADK]

So far all the deer I have taken run after the shot, one actually charged me.   (I don't think he knew where I was.)  The other thing I always try to do after the shot is keep your eye on the deer as long as possible.  Most well placed shots in thick cover will have your deer drop within 100 yards.  Double lung/heart shots. 

Otherwise like Papist stated above sometimes even a well placed shot can have them go an excessively large distance from the shot location especially if they can still run!  Any rule made can be broken by deer!

[ATbuckhunter]

Ive had deer drop in their tracks, tuck tail and just run before they drop and some do the mule kick. All resulted in dead deer, but its interesting to so how different reactions can be. These are incredibly strong and resilient creatures that we are all hunting. 

[Buckmaster7600]

My craziest one was a SZ doe I shot about 15 years ago. She was broadside and I put a 150gn Winchester silver tip through her heart and a lung at about 15yds. I was on top of the mountain when I shot her and she ran 600yds down to the road, crossed the road went another 500yds and layer dead in the creek at the bottom. After the shot she picked her head up flicker her ears and started bounding off tail up like nothing was wrong. It was a ridiculous drag up to the road on a deer that should have been in a pile a half mile up the hill. She bled good and there was snow so I had no trouble finding her. To this day I still can't believe how far she went and how little reaction she had at the shot. I shot a bunch of deer with those bullets and never had to track one very far except her.


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