Cleaned up & photographed, what a memory

[roundball]

At the beginning of the fall 2006 rut I had a really big buck step into view right at very poor, low, first light...he was about 40-50 yards away stepping & stopping a couple times with his last stop in a narrow lane through the trees.

I was sitting down against a big pine, elbow braced down on my ribs steady as a bench rest, put the bead on his heart as best I could see it, and squeezed the trigger...when the smoke cleared from the .62cal Flintlock he was out of sight but knew he was down, just didn't hear him crash.

Took about 10-15 minutes like I normally do to completely clean, dry, lube, and reload the Flintlock then walked off towards the thicket to get him...didn’t see him in sight...and saw no hair or blood around where he stood...started making semi-circle searches back into the thicket to try and cut a blood trail, but nothing. Then spent a good hour in a serious grid search trying to strike a blood trail but still found nothing.

Went back and sat down, replayed the shot in good light then, and about half way to where he stood I saw a thumb size sapling broken / bent over right on the line of my shot...the ball had clipped that sapling and went lord knows where...was sick that I’d missed a terrific buck but relieved that he was all right and I might get another chance...this was the photo I had posted about the sapling in November 2006.

Fast forward 15 months...scouting that area the other day for a new ground blind location before the leaves come out on the trees...working through thick stuff on the left rear side of the thicket 75-100yds beyond where I was grid searching a year and a half ago...this is what I found deep back in there:

 

[jtmattison]

Looks like your ball hit him in a bad place after taking out the sapling?

Too bad if that's what happened.

HD

 

[roundball]

Looks like your ball hit him in a bad place after taking out the sapling?
Too bad if that's what happened.
HD

Assuming it's the same deer that would be my guess...got back into the real thick part of that thicket and went down or laid down...look at the similarity of the genetics of this buck taken out of that same thicket the year before that in 2005:

 

[jtmattison]

Very interesting how one has a crab claw on the right and the other on the left. Both are nice deer.

HD

 

[tg]

Have you ever tried one of those heat sensing devices? a friend of mine tried one on a doe he shot a few years ago, I tracked a very faint blood trail that came and went and he used the sensor, I found the doe but he came right to it with the sensor a couple of minutes later, probably not a bad investment in real thick cover.
we all loose one sometime it is part of the game all we can do is take the best measures we can to retrieve the game, nothing is really wasted as it all goes back into the food chain.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Same thing happened to me. A good buck stepped out on a little food plot and fed toward me as the light faded one evening. He was at 15 yards and still facing me when my front sight started disappearing in the fading light. I put the bead on the center of his chest and touched my TC flinter off.

My gun had a bad hang fire and the buck jumped to the side when the flint hit the frizzen. He ran out of the plot to the west into a large hollow. I waited a little while and went after him, no blood was evident. When I got into the hollow, a deer snorted and ran out of hearing to the west.

I looked for several hours that evening and never saw any evidence of a hit. I came back early the next morning and searched until 10:00 with no deer or sign of a hit found.

Three years after I shot at this deer I took a shot at a good gobbler with my flintlock trade gun on the same plot. It looked like the gobbler made it off the plot with only the loss of a few feathers but I followed the path it ran and flew just to be sure.

About 50 yards into the woods to the east of the plot I found this.

Sure looked familiar. I have tried to convince myself this is a different deer because the antlers are in too good shape for spending three years in the woods but still have the sinking feeling I left this deer in the woods undiscovered.

 

[Mountainman56]

It's too bad but if you hunt long enough and often enough it either has happened to you or it's going to happen to you. It's one of those things we have to accept. I lost one years ago in Alberta. In your case you were sure you'd missed clean. In my case I knew I'd hit him poorly. Trailed him for a couple hours but lost him when he crossed the river. Hiked back to my pickup and drove the 30 plus miles around but never picked up the trail again. I like to think he survived but it's doubtful.

 

[jtmattison]

Little critters will eat those antlers up in no time. I would rest assured that it was not the same deer.

HD

 

[roundball]

Little critters will eat those antlers up in no time. I would rest assured that it was not the same deer.
HD

You know...and I'm not taking issue with you personally...I've heard that for years but to be honest I've found a shed here and there over the years, some a couple months old, some white and obviously 2-3 years old and have yet to find one with any chew marks from rats, squirrels, or whatever...mine was laying there over a year and doesn't have a mark on it yet I know there are squirrels in the same woodlot

 

[doulos]

Rest easy roundball. I have to agree with HuntinDawg. I dont think the rack you found would be that old Roundball. I have found a lot of deer lost by other hunters in a thick creek bottom I hunt. And by summer time there isn't a trace left. Just my opinion

 

[paulvallandigham]

I have similar experience to Doulos. We had the carcass of a cow found in the woods where our BP club was renting ground, and reported it to the landlord. He knew exactly when that cow died. It was less than 6 months before. In the Fall, when we found the bones after a couple of frosts, almost nothing was left. Only part of a jaw bone, with teeth, and the jawbone had distinctive teeth marks of meadow voles( Mice) on it. By the next Spring, the remnants of any of the ribs and vertebrae were all gone. Genetically, the two racks may be related, but I suspect one is the ' Son of ____" the other, or a brother. I also believe that deer died this past hunting season, and not 15 months ago.

Tree squirrels do not eat bones. Some species of ground squirrels will, but mostly its field mice that eat all the bones. Thank goodness they do. The surface of the planet would be miles high deep in the bones of all the creatures that have lived on this planet over the past 4.5 billion years!

 

[jtmattison]

Lots of little critters eat bones and antlers. Mice, porcupines, skunks, and moles are just a few.
We found a deer carcass one fall that someone had apparently poached and just cut off the head. It was a heavy bodied buck.
The following spring there was barely a sign it even existed. Just a few bone fragments left.

HD

 

[roundball]

I dont think the rack you found would be that old

Yes, no question in my mind its over a year old...don't know where you're from but my experience here in North Carolina is that this boy wasn't just killed in November or December, and particularly during cold weather months at that...skulls don't get that 100% totally purged out on the inside and bleached out white in just a few months around here.

 

[Mountainman56]

I have to agree with Roundball. A great deal depends on what time of year the animal dies as well as the climate. Got a coon laying beside the road out here been there for a week and a half and nothings drug him off yet.....go figure. In Canada it takes a lot longer to get down to a skeleton than it does in Texas that's for sure and I doubt if 15 months in a thick secluded spot would get you a clean skull like Roundball found. However even in 15 months in Texas just cause the bones ain't there don't mean they're gone but more likely just drug off.

 

[Osprey]

I've had some here that had obvious chew markings on them in a few months, not eaten but worked on, and tree squirrels will eat them (neighbor had a pet grey squirrel for ahwile, kept giving it pieces of an old shed antler and that squirrel loved to gnaw on them). But antlers last longer than people think, I've found several that were 2-3 years old without a mark, and I knew how old they were because they were sheds from a very distinctive buck.

That last skull looks to be a couple years old easy, the skull is way too rotted off to be very fresh and the anlters just have that old, chalky look.

 

[Mulebrain]

Roundball,

Get a metal detector and go over the area where you found the rack :thumbsup:

You should be able to locate the .62 ball, unless a Condor ingested it :grin:

Anyhow this would go along way to help solve the mystery!

 

[doulos]

I dont know you could be right Roundball. Im not trying to be dogmatic or insistent in any way. Its just that up north in my neck of the woods Ive just never seen anything last that long out in the woods. This was in a heavily hunted area next to property I owned so I was there quite often. This was also before the coyote explosion in our area. So I dont think these lost deer were dragged off. I was sometimes stunned by how little remained of a deer when I would go back to the carcass. I was actually hoping what I had experienced would ease your mind about losing a buck.

 

[Dave K]

Last year, I salvaged the rack off of an 8ptr. that was not recovered by the hunter that shot it.(yes, I got a permit from the game warden) The complete skelton was still there 1 week ago. There has been a very little bone scattering, which really surprised me. We do have a very good pop. of coyotes also, actually I was hunting them when I walked over this skelton again. I do know,that a 6 weeks after the deer was killed, the coyotes hadn't touched it yet, but the possums had. This is in west central Ohio.

 

[Flint311]

It happens to the best of us and I know you did your best! It what should be done with respect to the animal. At least you found the horns for a display and reminder (for all of us) to take the best shot and follow up on it. Heat sensors can fail, picking up birds, rocks, or anything that retains heat. I've seen for a fact that bear fur does not let out enough heat to pick up. Not sure on whitetail. Like you said, though, "What a memory"......

 

[smo]

I have found several sheds in my lifetime, of which some were stained from lying on the ground for extended periods of time ,others were chewed on.I think it has alot to do with the area, depending on weather & the numbers of critters in the area & what their needs for certain types of minerals are.Kind of like a horse eating bark off a tree they don't always do it, but they will.Just my two cents :v