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Another remarkable, well-documented case of a buck surviving seemingly mortal wounds occurred in 1988 at the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge in north Missouri. Veteran archer Curtis Taylor collected a P&Y record buck with a 127 %-inch rack. On closer inspection, the deer also toted two other broadheads, four lead slugs and a number of shotgun pellets. Yet the 205-pound buck seemed to have weathered the arsenal of hunter projectiles well until Taylor collected the trophy.

Wayne has seen whitetails that survived after having pieces of their spines and lungs shot away. Even more impressive to him is the whitetail's ability to survive severe leg injuries. He has inspected deer that were hit by automobiles, rifle bullets, shotgun pellets and broadhead arrows. Some animals have had legs completely cut off, compound leg fractures and broken ribs, yet they still survived. Often the fractures mended with misaligned bones, but the deer seemed to do quite well in the wild.

Wayne and his biology crew once inspected a doe that had a perfect broadhead "X" through the chest cavity in the high lung area. The shot looked to be perfect, but no damage had been done to the lungs. Apparently at the exact instant of arrow impact, the deer had just completely exhaled, deflating its lungs. Thus the shaft zipped through the deer without mortally wounding it, no doubt baffling the archer who had made what he surely believed was a killing shot.

It's instances such as these that leave many bowhunters dumbfounded and disheartened when the blood trail they believe is short leads to no downed game. Such tales also can leave listeners believing bowhunters kill and lose many more deer than they do.

For example, a paunch- or stomach-shot deer is the ultimate horror of every hunter, because almost all sportsmen believe an animal shot there will die slowly. Moreover, most hunters believe the paunch wound is always fatal to deer because infection is inevitable. Wayne, however, says otherwiseat least when arrows and broadheads are involved.

"Frankly, if I were a deer, that's one place the paunch where I'd pick to be hit by an arrow," Wayne explains. "There is no question some deer shot in the paunch survive, probably a lot more than most hunters ever dream possibleespecially from an arrow wound which is so clean. The biological reason for this is pretty simple: Deer, like cows and sheep, have evolved a protective outer lining around the paunch that helps plug small holes that naturally poke through intestines because of the rough, sharp forage the animals eat, like briers, straw, twigs, browse, etc. This lining is a fibrous, net-like, lacy substance that looks like cheesecloth and covers most of the abdominal viscera. Its purpose is to plug holes poked in the wall of the intestinewhich is precisely what it does with the wound generated by a bowhunter."

Unlike shotgun pellets or arrow wounds, Wayne has seen very few deer survive a high-powered rifle bullet to the body. He has inspected deer that lived following rifle bullet wounds to their extremities, but the fatality rate of animals hit in the body by a rifle projectile is extremely high, he says. This may be one reason why some people's perception of bowhunters is that they cripple many deer, since those shot with an arrow in the body that doesn't pierce a major organ may heal, survive, and so are never found, while a rifle-shot deer struck in the same place will die, though it may not be recovered by the hunter until much later. When another hunter harvests the arrow-hit deer and the broadhead wound is discovered, some people mistakenly believe many deer are shot by bowmen, but die later without recovery.

 


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