Finding blood

Getting to the spot where your deer was when you pulled the trigger and not finding blood can surely ruin the party. But you are correct. There may not always be blood there, even if your bullet passed through. It may be a few yards before you start finding some blood to follow. If your bullet didn’t pass through, it’s almost a guarantee you won’t find blood at the point of the shot. I ve found at least 3 bucks over the years that I shot that I had no blood to follow at all. The key is always to watch where they went after the shot. I always go to where he was standing first and look for blood. If I don’t find any, then I’ll move in to where I saw him last. There are no hard set rules for them to follow, but I find many times they run in a straight line for at least the first 20-30 yards. Once again though, each deer is different, and they may not run in a straight line. The first 3 deer I ever shot all crumpled in their tracks. Since then, sometimes they run, sometimes they don’t. I enjoy tracking deer, it’s part of the fun, but I surely like a good blood trail to follow.

When I’m bowhunting there is normally blood at the impact spot. Rilfe hunting can be 50/50.

With big expandable broadheads you have a huge, clean wound. With a rifle you normally have a 1/2”-1” hole that may or may not have obstruction due to the vast amount of organ/meat/tissue that breaks up and moves around.

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It's disrespectful to the animal

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this. it doesn't make hunters look good when dead deer are found with bullet holes in them. yeah, sometimes you will lose some but gotta make your best effort to find them.

I shot a big hog the other other day and know I hit him at least once if not twice. However I couldn't find blood any where on the lane that he came out on. Was pissed at myself for not head or spine shooting him.

Let him leave while you keep looking and eventually find it and bring it back to the camp. He'll get the point hopefully. A long time ago we had one of those guys. Thought he was the perfect shot and had the baddest gun so if it didn't drop or run less than 20 yards he missed.
We brought back two deer he claimed he missed.

Well then consider yourself lucky. Plenty of deer are shot and killed without leaving a trace of blood at the impact site. My son shot one a couple weeks back. Not a single drop of blood within 75 yds of where the deer was shot. Small puddle where the deer lay dead 75 yds away. My daughter's bow kill was a liver shot. First blood was about 10 yds from where it was shot.

If you look for blood at impact spot only and don't search in the direction the deer traveled for a couple hundred yards, then you are not being a responsible hunter in my opinion. Some will disagree, but I have seen it happen enough to know you will not always find blood in the immediate area.

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this. it doesn't make hunters look good when dead deer are found with bullet holes in them. yeah, sometimes you will lose some but gotta make your best effort to find the

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I always enjoyed the tracking of a deer. When you’ve searched in the dark with just a flashlight and you finally recover the animal after finding a drop here or there, the excitement is on par with the excitement of the shot. Plus I hate the idea of me killing a deer that the yotes get. Backstrap is too hot a commodity to let rot in the field.

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Why is it disrespectful to not look for a wounded deer vs coyote/pig?

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I want to know why it's "disrespectful" to not look for a deer, that you were trying to kill and eat. Did I disrespect the peel from my banana this morning when I threw it on the ground?

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How many of y'all actually find blood right where your deer was standing when you shot it?

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Avid bow hunter here and can say it depends on the shot. I will say around 70% of the time first good blood I locate is about 5-10 yds from where the animal was standing.

Often times, I will mark where the deer exited the field, entered the woods and or passes a tree or bush and start there after checking the arrow for good blood.

Many times you see guys waste 10 minutes trying to find those first few specks of blood in the food plot when there is a highway of blood 10 yds away starting at the edge of the plot.

With that said, if I cant locate good blood on my visual marks, I always go back to the initial spot of contact and get on hands and knees and start looking inspector gadget style.