Recovery Rates With Crossbow

Crossbow Hunting

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ehntr
Posts: 579
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:42 pm
Location: SW AB on the Continental Divide

Re: Recovery Rates With Crossbow

Post by ehntr »

I'm at 100% with rifle
100% with crossbow
90+% with compound bow
E/M/MOBUI330 (Finn-esse)
E/M/N335 (Finn-bad)
Click "User Control Panel", "Profile", Location: (you don't have to tell everyone you're "in a van down by the river") but for Pete's sake, what state/prov or country are you in?
tcwild
Posts: 117
Joined: Sun Oct 09, 2016 9:07 pm
Location: Holden,mo

Re: Recovery Rates With Crossbow

Post by tcwild »

nchunterkw wrote:I thought I posted to this yesterday but it didn't . ?? Anyway

It's easy to get excited when a deer is close and shoot "at the deer" rather than "at a particular hair on the deer". Aim small miss small is not only a cool saying from a movie, but very important when hunting. I think this attributes to more "bad shots" than just about anything. I certainly like to wait for a broadside shot if possible, but I'm not one who limits my shots to only these. You can make a perfectly good double lung shot on quartering away or quartering to deer. You just need to understand the deer's anatomy, understand what your arrow will do (penetration -wise) and be confident in both your shot making ability AND your tracking ability. Not knowing a deer's anatomy really well, and shooting from an elevated position causes a lot of single lung hits IMO. These certainly are fatal, but a deer can go a long way and you can easily lose that trail. Crossbows and a great weapon to use from the ground - which I think gives the hunter a greater chance at hitting 2 lungs.

As for recovery, I'd say 95% of all "bad shots" are fatal, but the hunter lacks the persistence or skill to follow the trail. Archery hunting is all about creating blood loss. This means the standard operating procedure is shoot a deer, watch it run, follow the blood. Being a good tracker is just as important as being a good shot, because sometimes deer can go a long ways even when hit properly with little blood on the ground. And a whole lot of being a good tracker, is being persistent and looking and looking for that one drop. Sometimes all you need is that one more drop to give you the direction of travel and that results in a found deer.
Very well said.
j.krug
Posts: 6191
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:17 am
Location: Amherstburg, Ontario

Re: Recovery Rates With Crossbow

Post by j.krug »

In all my years of archery hunting I have only lost one deer, a doe.

This particular deer wandered into my bait pile just before last light. I let the arrow fly and the deer didn't even flinch. She put her head up and walked about 30 feet to the edge of the field where she stood for a minute or two looking in my direction but not seeing me up in my stand. I tried to slowly reload my Vortex to get a second shot off but she walked off through the hedgerow and into the next field before I could.

Based on the deer's reaction, or lack thereof, I thought I had missed her? My bow reloaded I sat for the last few minutes of legal light before climbing down to leave. When I retrieved my arrow that was sticking out of the ground and it was tacky in my hand....covered in blood and hair. I quickly walked over to the spot where she stood and there was a huge puddle of blood. I doubt she could have gone far based on the blood loss.

I passed through into the next field, an open farm field with the beans off, thinking I would surely see her laying somewhere in the open field....no such luck. It was dark now and suddenly snowing very heavily which quickly covered up any blood sign that may have been present. I donned my head lamp and began a thorough grid search of the entire field which took a couple hours and yielded no deer.

I gave up and returned the next morning with my dad. We again did a grid search and checked the ditches and the edges of the surrounding bush lots but didn't find her. That is the only deer I didn't recover.

I hunt over open farm land and almost always see the deer go down within less than 100 yards of where they were hit. :)
Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.

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