Are deer tough...

[wisconsinteacher]

very!!!! My dad shot a 1.5 year old spike last weekend and did not make a great shot but we were able to track and get the deer. When I went to field dress the deer, there was a hole in the front shoulder. Dad did not hit the deer there and shot it 5 minutes after sun up. The hole also had no blood and it looked old. When I got the deer home and skinned it I found a bullet on the off side shoulder next to the hide. The bullet went through both shoulders breaking bone on each one. After I took the front shoulders off, I put an arrow shaft through the hole and the bullet went through both shoulders and just under the spine. The bullet is a .308 cal what weighed 116 grains and was .976" at the widest point. I can not believe the deer lived. I am guessing the deer was shot a few weeks before dad got it. (youth season or poacher) There was no blood shot in the shoulders but I did see some scar tissue on the lungs. If you were to tell a kid where to aim, and they hit it there, you would say, "dead deer". To say deer are tough is an understatement.

 

[SJB358]

Without a doubt. They take some serious punishment sometimes.

 

[DrMike]

Oh, yeah, they can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. Strong will to live.

 

[truck driver]

All wild animals are tough with a great will to survive. I once blew a ground hog literately in half and it drug itself to it's hole before I could get to it.

 

[JD338]

They have a strong will for life.

JD338

 

[Elkman]

That's a real unusual event. Sounds like the bullet did it's job. Just not enough horsepower, bigger is better sometimes.

 

[D21ALASKA]

I shot a deer back east about ten years ago and when I dressed her out I found a broadhead with about an inch of shaft still on it on the outside of the heart all covered with a mass of scar tissue. It must have been there for at least a year or more, it was an older doe, and the deer was as healthy as can be. To say the least I was fairly amazed that this deer was even still breathing. Couldn't find any scarring on the hide so don't know the angle the shot came from but either way, yes, DEER ARE TOUGH.

 

[bbearhntr]

I had a similar experience to the one above. I shot a buck a couple of years ago and while butchering it found this broadhead high in the ribs just below the spine. The wound had to have been there for at least a year because there was no evidence of an injury on the outside of the hide. I couldn't imagine carrying a broadhead under my skin! :shock:

 

[DrMike]

I had a similar experience to the one above. I shot a buck a couple of years ago and while butchering it found this broadhead high in the ribs just below the spine. The wound had to have been there for at least a year because there was no evidence of an injury on the outside of the hide. I couldn't imagine carrying a broadhead under my skin! :shock:

I hurt just thinking about that. Every step the broadhead had to be cutting muscle.

 

[sask boy]

They can definitely go through a lot. My son shot a decent buck this year that was carrying another hunters bullet. Unfortunately it was a 223 which is illegal to use here in Saskatchewan.

Blessings,
Dan

 

[1Shot]

I deer hunt in east NC where shotguns, buck shot and running with dogs is legal. I have nothing against that because I understand the culture and the lay of the land which is so thick that many places you would never see a deer if a dog did not get it moving. My buddy and I only still hunt on our land but on the land next to ours they used to run dogs before it became NC wildlife land. I have killed a number of deer and while skinning them out you would hear buck shot falling out of them onto a piece of metal we had laying under where we hang deer up to skin. I have found buck shot inside the chest cavity that did not hit a lung or the heart. The one that astounds me at how much punishment a deer can take and still live happened to my hunting buddy. We were hunting in the evening 2 hrs before dark over a peanut field. About an hour before dark this buck comes into the field right at 300 yards from my buddy. He is shooting his custom Rem. 700 Heart varmint barrel 25-06 with a 100 gr Sierra Game King at around 3400 fps. He shoots the buck and he drops like a stone and raised his head one time then lays it back down and never moves again. Since you can shoot more than one deer a day in this area we always stay in the stand until dark. When it gets dark my buddy gets the truck and comes over to pick me up and we load the deer I have shot and we go to get his. We have to park the truck about 100 yards from where his deer is laying. My buddy is in front of me as we walk to his deer and when he gets about 10 yards from the buck it jumps up and runs about 100 yards and goes into the woods like it has not been touched. There was a spot of blood in the sandy soil about the size of a basket ball that upon digging down in this spot the blood went deeper than I could get my 32" sleeve length arm into the hole. There was not another spot of blood that we could find and we did not find that deer. Fast forward to the next year. My buddy shoots this buck in the same field and while skinning and processing it we find that it had been shot high and at the back edge of the left shoulder and we found the jacket of a .257 BT bullet just under the hide on the off side just behind the right shoulder. The lung on the left side was missing. This was the deer my buddy shot the year before and it had lived even after having one lung hit. What makes this even more astonishing is if you have ever seen what a Sierra 100 gr Game King will do to a deers insides you could not believe that any deer could live. This one did.

 

[SJB358]

That's a crazy story 1shot.. Yeah, that is tough!