A group of us had went on a 5 day bow hunt in Illinois at the end of October. I ended up shooting a nice buck on the morning of Nov 1st. I did not put a great shot on the deer, hitting him a bit back and low. Around 2 hours after the shot, I went to look for arrow and blood. There was not a sign of anything, no blood, hair and no arrow. I was fairly confident that the shot would prove to be fatal, but with no evidence my chances of recovering the deer were pretty slim. We backed out and gave the deer around 12 hours before heading in to look. In the meantime we had about 8 hours of consistent rains, making my hopes of picking up any sign vanish. We searched the area for a couple days while trying not to ruin the hunt of the others that were on the same property. Needless to say, I came back to ND with my Illinois tag still in my pocket. Well fast forward to sunday morning, I woke up to a voicemail from the gentleman whose property we were hunting! While they were looking for another deer, they stumbled upon the buck i had shot a month earlier!! I cant even begin to describe how happy i was that they had found him. It was like a huge weight being lifted of your shoulders. Hopefully my little story here makes sense, i'm still shaking just thinking about how lucky I am!!
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