Just not my year!! my luck sucks

[schmalts]

Well i started off my Wisconsin deer bowhunting with a bang, or a whack i guess you could say. Last night i had a nice 10 point (5x5 for you sheep lovers) work his way towards me feeding on acorns. Just when he gets in the clear at about 20 yards he stops behind a tree, i go to full draw and wait. After about a minute my arms are pretty tired and he steps out quartering towards me so i keep holding..... and holding... and the SOB walks right straight at me. Now he is 10 feet from my tree facing right at me. I am about 25 feet up high looking down as he feeds. I know if i let off he will bust me, or if he gets behind me i will not probably get a shot. So... i did what i have done in the past and decide to spine him. I put the pin between his shoulders and let it go. Whack! he drops like a sack of cement! after about 5 seconds he is up again and stumbling off towards the river. I am fumbling to knock an arrow as fast as i can and all goes quite when he reaches the thicker creek bottom. After about 15 minutes i decide to sneak down and see if i can glass him up lying down and there is no sign of him. I find a couple small drops of blood and decide to back off until morning. This AM i looked with 3 other hunters and find only a few drops of blood and after grid walking the area we find no sign of him.
DAMMMMMMMIT! Hindsight, should i have shot? I think 95% would have in that situation. I have spined many deer with no problem. Now let the debate begin...
I was Using rocket expandables that were 1.5" diameter. This could have been a problem with this kind of shot an maybe why the possible lack of penetration. Lesson learned, i will not try a spine shot on a deer directly below me with an expandable.
What do you guys think? I know it will be easy to grill me as you werent the hunter in this case but most WT hunters i know have spined a deer at one point or another. I have done it 4 times and the deer dropped and stayed down every time. but those times were with a fixed blade smaller diameter. These are all thing a guy don't think about when the time comes..

 

[Nut]

I ain't gonna bust your chops. At least you hit the deer.

 

[Moosie]

I'll bust your Chops.. Between you and me we've brought 0 points to our team this year

To answer your question, I don't know. It's funny how one shot will down an Animal and other shots won't. If it's worked in the past I can't bust your Chops, I don't kjnow many people "TRYING" to take that shot though. I've heard of guys Mising the Vitals and Acidentally hitting that spot and getting a critter. All instincts tell me to shoot them in the Vitals..... Unless it's a sheep you've hauled accross the river for bear bait, then shoot them in the head and not the vitals.. But thats another story

 

[schmalts]

Moosie, they shoud drop and stay down. If a guy misses the spine then it should penetrate the entire chest and exit the bottom of the chest taking the lung and other major arteries with it. A bottom exit hole bleeds like a sieve. In this case.. well i really don't know what happened. Very unusual. I guess i hope he is still alive and will recover for another day. my guess is the expandable hit the vertibra and stopped there. The only good thing about this is expandables do back out easy.

 

[Erik in AK]

Schmaltz,

First off, sorry about losing a hard hit animal, that sucks. I think you answered your own question. Expandables (even the better ones) were intended to hit the ribcage.
The spine is heavy bone even in a light framed animal like a whitetail. A fixed blade head would (most likely) resulted in "Schmaltz's 10 pointer" instead of "My luck sucks"

On the upside, doesn't Wisconsin have a long deer season?

 

[schmalts]

Erik i agree with you all the way. This is the first time i ever tried this shot with an expandable, and the expandables i was usuing was 1.5 inches and thinking back on things i bet that was a lot of cutting diameter to try and break a vertibrea. I love them because they result in a fast recovery in most cases, but you wouldnt want to try and bust a shoulder with one. I just feel that had i used a Muzzy this deer would have been down for the count. like i said, a guy forgets to think about these things when the moment comes and the deer is on top of you. Too bad we cannot go back and do things over. I am not the kind of guy who will miss deer or wound one without admitting it to everyone including the guys here. It happens, and a lot more than guys admit. Maybe we all can learn by schmalts' misfortunes. Lets see... dont try to lead a walking elk, and dont try to spine a deer with an expandable broadhead. I heard my nieghbor blast 3 shots with his 12GA saterday morning and had to razz the hell out of him before he admitted it that he missed.... again..
Yes the season is still young, but there are only so many mature bucks and if this one lives he will definitly leave the area or turn nocturnal so this was a bummer. I was so stoked at first because it would have been nice to take the rest of the season and do something other than wait for the big buck to show up, like small game, and turkey. I have yet to fill my buck tag in the first half of the season.
Oh well, i think there is a bigger one out there according to my trail camera. I was going to post pictures but i left the disk up at the camper :MAD next week..

 

[cjcj]

Your intent was right... sometimes it just doesn`t work out....I wouldn`t get down on myself if i were you.. you could have hit a branch.etc.etc.etc. and had better or worse results.... archery is tough that way....go gettum Schmalts.