From before …

On the fifth shot I hit the deer.  It turned, went up, and then doubled back.  The arrow passed through, and we could see blood running down its side, low, probably a stomach shot.  She laid down, and appeared to breath her last.  But she hadn’t, and a hot pursuit then followed.

Continuing …

 … I pulled back.  Even if I shoot … even if I hit, the deer will keep coming.  More important than shooting the deer – is keeping it from going down into the infinite brush patch.  She kept coming right at me, her left side red with the blood from the earlier shot.  I yelled, “Stop!”  It didn’t.  What a complete idiot I must have appeared – as though, even if she could understand English, she would have obeyed.  I shot as it passed by full speed about 10 yards away, and into the brush.  While waiting for Terry, I looked for my arrow.  He said he’d go up to the road, get the truck, and get to the top of the draw and watch, as I go down in.  There was blood on the trail where the deer entered the brush, more blood than before, so I took up trailing it.  In places, more than blood – probably stomach goo and organs of some kind.  I would creep along, laying my bow down at the last drops of blood, or blood on branches or grass, and keep going.  The trail came out into a clearing, and the sign diminished.  The trail bifurcated, no, trifurcated, or quadricated.  I was beat.  I couldn’t tell which way it had gone.  I had exhausted all or most of my water; I hadn’t eaten since way before light; it was mid-day, an unseasonably hot.  I laid my bow down at the last sign and pulled out.  I needed a break, and it would probably be good to lay off and let the deer theoretically die or stiffen up.

            After lunch and a rest, filling our water bottles, and getting freshened up at a nearby spring, I took up trailing the deer again.  Terry watched from on top.  I wanted his extra set of eyes to find blood – but he said he wanted to be able to look down in the draw (in case the deer was moving out ahead of me).  I was able to find the trail again.  At times there was plenty of sign (at least to the observant) … drops of blood on leaves or splashed on branches or brushed onto grass.  In a few places, more than blood.  But in other places, the sign dropped way off.  I had to adjust what I was looking for as the ground and cover changed.  In dust I had to look for rocks and then flecks of blood on the rock.  The blood was dry now, and instead of red, might be just a different shade of brown or gray.  At times I found drops, sometimes big, sometimes as small as the eye of a needle, on branches, rocks, and leaves.  “ … was it blood, or just fungus or something else on the leaf?”  But once one found blood, there was not mistaking … however deer-less it looked now, the deer had gone through here.  I would tie florescent tape to the twig or grass where blood was last seen.  I made may way down, sidehill, sometimes up, through brush, occasionally through the open.  The deer was working her way down the brushy draw, seldom coming out from the protective overhead canopy of brush and trees.  But overhead to a deer, or even an elk, may be thigh or waist high to a person.  So, while the deer could move almost unhindered down the draw, a person, especially one carrying a bow and arrows, or rifle and scope, or pack and hat, could be incredibly hindered.  Sometimes the sign was so scarce … I’d look for tracks, or disturbed dirt and leaves, freshly broken branches or weeds.  At times I wanted desperately to call Terry in – but I silently became aware that I couldn’t … it was part of the hunt, the lesson.  I shot the deer, I would find it.  This was definitely `Skill Level 9’ … or nine-plus … tracking.  Last year I had a skill-level 10 test, when I shot the nice 3 point muley buck – but I failed– I abdicated and let Terry take the lead on the search, … and … I (we) never found the buck.  So now the difficulty level was a tiny bit less – but the reward less also.  I had been learning from the best – but now, it was my turn to go solo.

            From time to time I would look back from where I had come.  The orange markers were in some places only a foot or two apart, in others, several, maybe 10 or 15 feet apart.  The trail was `well marked’ at least up to where I was.  Would I ever find this deer?  It had lost a lot of blood, and other stuff.  In time I had used a lot of tape.  I had now been trailing for hours.  In some places I was on my hands and knees, in some places sliding on my rear, in almost all places I could not stand or walk due to the brush … the few stretching exercises I did every now and then now had paid off.

            At one opening I could see the truck – I radioed up to Terry, so he could get a visual on me.  “If the truck is pointing to 12-o’clock, I’m at 7:30, near the bottom.”  He got a visual on me.  I took up the trail again.  The deer would head down, then sidehill, then down, then up.  I came to a sort of dead end.  The blood led to a bunch of rocks, surrounded partly by a wall of brush.    The deer appeared not to have gone on up, nor out to the left.  To my amazement, it had somehow gone through the wall of brush … brush whose branches were just a few inches apart each.  The brush wasn’t broken, but smeared with blood and fur.  I radioed up to Terry the situation, and the astonishment of it.  I said I’d follow the deer in, but would have to leave my bow behind, and literally be suspended in mid-air in the brush.  And I was … literally suspended above the ground-  the brush was so thick.  As I `fell’ down through, I found where the deer had laid down, bled, lost some intestines on a branch, some other goo on the ground, and then kept going.  And I also discovered why … the deer had evidently smelled the water on the other side, and plunged through the brush to get to it.  The loss of blood and internal fluids had made it desperate for the water.  There were flies, and what the deer had left behind had begun to stink in the heat.  I followed the blood sign downward.  Below me I could finally see the animal.  I radioed up to Terry that I had found it. 

            The deer had died in thick brush and grass and twigs and mud atop what appeared to be a cliff above the very bottom of the draw.  I radioed up to Terry, who indeed confirmed the cliffy-ness of the situation.  I had no alternative but to somehow get the deer back up, away from the cliff, and then either out the side or up straight out of the draw.  The deer was covered with water, mud, blood, and goo.  To my surprise, there was one of my arrows in it, sticking equidistant from each side.  It had been the `self-defense’ (‘Stop!’) shot.  (That’s why I couldn’t find the arrow while waiting for Terry.)  The arrow went in, and out, not but a few inches from the first shot – but higher, and more deadly.  It was this shot that made the more evident blood trail, and quickened the deer’s doom.  And, interestingly, it was the same arrow as the first (pass through) shot.  After finding the arrow the first time – I put it back on my bow with the others – though covered with dried blood, … and when we were pursuing the deer, I knocked it on my bow – thinking - better to lose this arrow on hope shots in the brush, than a `new’ one.  So, in the end, I had shot one deer twice with the same arrow.

            But this time the arrow was bent.  I broke it at the buckled spot to get it out of the way.  Too many stories, one from a trip I was on myself, of hunters getting badly cut on their broadheads.  Amazingly this deer had wound its way through the brush, and plunged through the wall of brush, being three times as wide, with the ends of an arrow sticking out each side.  I considered saving the broadhead, but when I couldn’t easily take down the razor blades, I discarded the whole thing – the last thing I wanted were some exposed razor blades for the extraction that would follow.  Amazingly, I was able to get both myself and my deer up and away from the cliff without mishap (e.g., plummeting over the edge to certain hurt of one degree or another).  There was a swarm of flies and yellow jackets, converging on the deer and in particular the side of the deer where the intestines were coming out.  I cut off the exposed intestines, and when I could maneuver better, quickly gutted the deer, and gave the flies and yellow jackets something to occupy them, `whilst I get out of there’, with the rest of the deer.  I pushed, pulled, and heaved it part way.  Then when there was more room, I took off my belt and dragged it part way.  Then I carried it on my shoulders up and out of the draw – meeting Terry at the road.  The shadows were long; it was now evening; not much time until dark.

            In all, we spent about 30 minutes getting in on and shooting at the deer, probably about one hour looking for it above the big draw, another half hour chasing it, and then I trailed it for another four or five hours.  It was quite a lesson, all `to Catch a Deer’.