Here's the tale of Sunday evening/Monday morning.
Picture a food plot, 60 yards or so wide by 200 yards long or longer. It is around 3/4 acre. and the long side runs north/south. It's bordered on the North by 100 acres of mature woods, with about 20 or so acres of woods to the East too. To the West is a 7 acre CRP field, to the South is more woods.
Wind is out of the North, I have a pop-up ground blind sitting about 5 yards into the woods on the East side of the food plot, about 30 yds South of the North end of the food plot. In that corner is a tree, with a scrape under it. Wind is from the North, and the property to the North is more or less a sanctuary, nobody lives there, and nobody hunts it. The front window is 1/2 open, the crossbow is sitting on a set of shooting sticks, I'm dressed in a black shirt, camo face mask on, inside the blind, sitting in a chair.
20 minutes before end of legal shooting light (1/2 hr after sunset) I see a doe about 30 yds out in the field, durn 'near directly west of me, doing the giraffe look, ears forward, stiff legging into the dirt every once in a while. What the heck? I didn't move, make any noise, nothing. I can't get a range on her with the rangefinder, I just have to guesstimate the range. I slowly get into position, she's broadside. I put the 30 yd mark about 1" behind her left front elbow and squeeze. I blink, and all I can see is her running off and the arrow going about another 20 yds and nosing into the food plot. (Burt coyote lumi-nock). I'm shooting a 2" rage Slip Cam broadhead. I look for blood coming out as she runs off, don't see anything and she runs thru some of the CRP, takes a hard right and into the woods she goes. I hear sticks breaking, what sounds like her going into a circle, a crash, then nothing. Dead deer, right?
I fill out the tag, take it with me, grab the flashlight and go out, figuring there will be blood all over the place and I'll find her asap. WTF?? No blood where she was standing. I know the x-bow is loud, but surely she couldn't have ducked the arrow....... So I go look at the arrow, nope, it's covered in blood. I look all over the food plot, no blood. I go to the edge of the CRP and look, no blood. There's a 30' wide mowed area between the CRP and the woods, I look up and down that area. Nope, no blood. What the heck??????????????????????? I do some walking in the woods - it's pitch black out by now. Nothing. There's a trail as wide as a tractor about 25 yds inside the woods to the North, she had to cross the trail, so I go up and down the trail. No blood.
O.K., I back out, go home and call my neighbor to help. We go back, and look for just shy of 2 hrs. Nothing, no blood, nothing. Crap.................
Temps will be in the low 40's, I'll come back when it's daylight out and do a grid search. I keep replaying the shot and keep thinking that it was a good one, unless she ducked enough to have it go over the spine thru her. But, why were all those breaking branches and sticks, followed by a crash? Why no blood??
I get up Monday morning, grab a roll of toilet paper and I'm out there about 40 minutes after sunrise. I comb the food plot, CRP edge, edge of the woods and the trail in the woods. Nothing - no blood. So, I start to the North of the trail in the woods and start a grid search. I comb the whole dang woods, go thru almost the whole roll of toilet paper marking where I walked - lines about 25 yds apart, and a good 1/4 mile long, back and forth, up and back.
After 3 1/2 hrs I call it quits. I covered the whole dang place and there ain't no deer here - no blood either. I send a text to my neighbor telling him that we didn't miss anything last night and that she's nowhere to be found. I decide to head for home, and walk out near the edge of the food plot. About 40 feet from the edge of the food plot I see this:
That's the exit side. She's laying in a 3' deep, 4' wide dry drainage ditch that was cut into the woods probably 50 years ago. I can't tell you how many times we walked by her. Unless you looked down the ditch in different areas, you can't see down it's length due to the trees and overgrowth in places. She went maybe 50 yds after the arrow hit her. Here's the entrance wound:
I didn't plan on hitting her that far forward on the entrance, but there WAS a pretty stiff north wind blowing. I send my buddy a text, telling him that I found her. I put the drag rope over her head, turn around and see these 3 guys, about 40 yds away and walking towards me, along the edge of the CRP looking for grasshoppers in the short grass.
They walked by at 20 yds. If I would have had the x-bow, I could have filled my turkey tag too.
I get her out, get her home, field dress her, and get her washed out. I think that the majority of the meat will be good, I don't think the flank will be any good. She was laying in the shade, in the lowest part of the woods. We'll see, as she's at the processor now. He thinks that I won't lose much either.
One down, 3 to go. One for my Aunt, one for my cousin who boogered up his shoulder and ribs and can't hunt this year (dislocated shoulder, 4 broken ribs and a punctured lung), and 2 for me.
See that white stuff on the exit side? That's foam from a lung. Why there was no blood trail, I'll never know. The only blood was where she bounded off a tree and a few downed branches as she went down.
