Have told this story at least twice on this site, but it's very relevant to the topic, so here goes. It's kind of unbelievable...

Hunting deer shotgun season in OH. Good buck comes up out of the valley (the famous "Buck Bowl"). Shoot him once (NEF 12 gauge slug gun, 3" 1oz. Fosters), no reaction. Thought I missed somehow, shot him again. All he did was walk a little faster for about 20 yards, then trotted back down the hill. Finally heard him flop, just out of sight.

For some odd reason, I left the gun behind when I went to take a look. I noticed his rack was moving side to side. What the? He starts to struggle. I run to my gun and grab it, he starts getting up, by the time I get back to him he is up and running. I give chase, gun in hand, broken open and empty. After about a 100 yard sprint through the woods, he flops again in front of me. In the heat of the moment, I shoot him in the neck from 3 feet away. He gasps for a minute or two, then expires.

After the adrenaline pump died out, I actually felt terrible. I thought this long, strange, protracted death was all my fault.

Upon dressing him out I find that his heart is half gone, one lung is hardly existent, and the other has a softball sized hole missing. Turns out I did my job, and the first two shots were about perfect. The third and final shot, well I don't know what I was thinking at that moment. I'm sure you can understand.

Anyways, how in the hell did this buck eat two .72 caliber chunks of lead like it was nothing? The first one was like nothing happened, and he acted like everything was just fine after #2.

Now that's tough.

A buddy of mine was a taxidermist and operated a check station,years ago. He said a nice 10-pointer came in and told me to go look at it. He said to be careful as it had a broadhead stuck in its lower jaw.

As I walked over to the deer, I thought how odd it was for the 10-pointer to have a broadhead in its jaw,since this was the second weekend of gun season.

I opened its mouth to find a broadhead sticking from the back of the lower jaw. I felt along side the 10-point bucks head, and could feel the shaft of an arrow that had broken off flush with his head.This appeared to be completely healed over.

Evidently, a bow hunter must have been huntin' from a tree stand, and took the shot as the deer was making its way directly below the hunter.

In disbelief,I opened his mouth again to take a peek,and I noticed acorns all chewed up,trying to make their way to each side of the arrows shaft, into the animals throat.

Deer are real survivors, to say the least.I think the reason they heal so fast may in part be due, to their diet of red oaks.

I have had a few encounters along these lines. I have seen a broad head lodged in a deers spine, I have tracked a three legged deer (hoof, hoof, hoof, hole) that I ended up taking out. This particular deer must have been going at least days because there was no blood from the wound and besides a wobbly trot did not seem much impaired. Two years ago I shot a buck that looked like he was crawling on the ground. I thought he was being sneaky but as it turns out, he was hit by a car and one of his legs was broken off and the rest of him was pretty messed up. I was prepared for the worst when I opened him up but he really did not have much sign of damage other than the leg and I would say 95 percent of him went to the freezer. I have also lost a buck that I know had a solid boiler room explosion. I don't know how he did. I think it was just to piss me off. With pints of blood slushing out of him he made a dash for about 250 yards to the large, fast, and open river. I followed his trail all the way to the last twenty feet where it looked like he belly crawled to the water. It looked like a bloody otter trail at the end. Right into the open, icy water. I felt terrible but had no way to follow. That one was not going to recover, but it sure the hE(( was not going to let me get it either.

I`ve noticed just as many with bullets. Gun hunters wound deer too.

OK, those are just creepy…like the things you'd see in Ripley's Believe It or Not. My story isn't nearly as remarkable.

A few years back I was out during the PA early muzzleloader season (mid-October, antlerless only, in-lines permitted). I had a group of nice does thunder right under the stand, one of which paused briefly after passing. I took the shot, and watched her bound away uphill. An hour's search revealed no sign of her, so I chalked it up to a clean miss.

Six weeks later, I was in the same spot for the "traditional" Monday after Thanksgiving opening day of the rifle season. A group of does came by, and I selected the beefiest of the bunch (you may have figured out by now that I'm not a trophy hunter…just trying to fill the freezer). Upon field dressing, I noticed she had a large abcess on the inside of her left thigh. I cut it away, revealing an entry wound from a large-caliber bullet. Hmmm…

Coincidental? Perhaps. Still, it did my heart well to know that at least she wouldn't have to put up with the discomfort anymore, and that I'd finished the job I'd started.

Happy myles,

Do you have the NA sheep grand slam? Bet that was some good (and expensive) eating. A friend gave me some Dall meat in AK. It was a little tough but, delicious.

I shot a nice whitetail doe about 20 years ago. I loaded it up and took it back to the clubhouse where we discovered she was missing her right foot about where a wrist would be. She was running from some deer hounds (I don't dog hunt, I was up in a tree stand) and as fast as she was running one would never know she was missing a foot. The end of the leg had shin with hair on it all the way around the end of the leg. It looked as if a surgeon had fixed it. There was no infection or bad meat either.

Interesting stuff. My brothers first bull elk had a broadhead stuck in the front shoulder, the skin was all healed over it and everything. They are alot tougher than I am...

I shot a nice 10 pointer last year and when I went to dress him I noticed he was already wounded. When I cut open the spot I found a broadhead in the shoulder. As I countinued to dress the rest of him there was another broadhead in the spin area. My wife's step father hunts that area as well with a bow and I remember of atleast 1 story he told about how he hit a 10 pointer clean and never found him. Well he is hanging on my wall now HAHA!

shot a doe last season that hads been peppered in the hind quarters with 00 buckshot. there was 11 pellets in this deer so he had been hit at least two times.

Last year I was hog hunting in south texas.I shot two large boars and a medium sow. The smaller of the two boars had two nine mill mushrooms in its right hind quarter, a broadhead, and a 12 ga slug in front left shoulder.

I have seen a few Whitetail bucks NOT React at all to fatal hits. I don't mean run off w/o reacting, i mean no reaction, didn't miss a step!

I helped a buddy of mine drag a nice buck off the mountain and butcher it a couple of years ago with several injuries. It had a broad head between two ribs that was an old wound and a fresh bradhead scar in the neck that was well on its way to healing. It also had 5 .22lr bullets in it 4 in the neck and 1 in the shoulder. That really pissed me off because I knew that those came from some spotlighting road hunters that I knew of in the area but never got caught in the act or with evidence enough to bust them. I myself have killed two does with several buckshot under the hide and one that appeared to have been hit by a car based on the broken bones and road rash.

A buddy and I found out just how tough whitetails were back in '04. We were out on his farm for the first day of pa archery. We were out real early in the morning overlooking a field of blade grass when we heard the crackling of twigs and saw a deer coming out of the woods in front of our stand. It wasn't quite light yet but as the deer got closer we could see that it was a good looking buck. My buddy waited for the buck to turn so he could take the shot. The buck turned perfectly and he nailed him. The buck ran off up into the woods where he came out of. We could hear him tearing through the brush until we heard a thud. My buddy knew he made a clean shot when we saw the nice blood trail he left us, until the blood somehow stopped. We looked all over the place for that buck but we couldn't find him. During muzzleloader season my buddy went back out to the same stand where he encountered a large buck standing at the edge of the woods. He aimed and took the buck. While buchering the deer he found an arrow head lodged in the deer. It turned out to be the buck that we lost a few months earlier. That just goes to show you how tough these animals are. They will go through hell to survive another season.

The first buck I killed had so much scar tissue in his left rear quarter that much of the meat was inedible.

In 2004 i shot a trophy whitetail that scored 173 3/8. when butchering it up i found a broadhead and 4 inches of carbon arrow in the spine. the backstrap was junk. i dont know if he wouldve survived the winter with that injury but i found the guy that shot at him earlier in the bow season. he couldnt believe it. i stil have the spine in the freezer dont know what to do with it. boil it or not. i dont want it to fall apart. any ideas?

31 year ago this coming Nov.one week after my Dad went to his final hunting grounds, I was in the swamp at our old camp when I spotted a nice size 8 pt. coming straight at me and then turn broadside at50 yards.(he was limping big time).one clean shot put him down. When we skinned him out we found he had more scares than Carter has peanuts.
We put his age at 6-8 years. one old& tiered buck.
I still have his rack on the wall.
Don

Back in the nineties, I saw a three-legged doe for four consecutive years at the feeder in front of our camp. (We don't hunt near there.) She produced one healthy fawn each year. Her right front leg was gone from the elbow but was completely healed. Don't know what caused her to lose the leg or what finally happened to her.

I've killed several bucks with buckshot or .22 bullets lodged under the skin with no sign of infection. They are tough creatures.

ive seen alot more deer wounded with a gun and get away then i ever have a bow

Went looking for a wounded buck a buddy had shot with a .300 mag, in the same area, found a buck that matched the description limping. Assuming this was the buck we were looking for, went ahead and took him out. To our surprise, this was a different buck that had been shot in the pump station with what was probably a .223 FMJ, the bullet did not expand and the wound was a couple of days old. Perfect shot placement, even when the bullet didn't expand it should have easily killed him. Couldn't believe that buck was walking around after taking a bullet through BOTH lungs. From an anatomy standpoint, this is nearly impossible.

I think the weirdest/pre-wounded animal I came upon happened to be a wild hog. I only shot at it once and it ran off in the distance. Later, upon recovering it, I notice that it had a large cut on its hine quarters. Looked as if, someone tried to cut the hog with a knife.