Any of y'all remember that episode of Bone Collector where T-Bone shoots a huge buck in Mexico (or S. Texas), I mean it appears to be a double-lung center punch, and the deer runs off like it's going to crash. Well, later that morning, something like a mile across that land, Waddell shoots that deer (it came in to his set like nothing was wrong).
Yes! That was the craziest thing I've seen. That deer should have run 100 yards and tipped over. He smoked (it seemed) that buck.
I killed a nice 8 point back in '01 or '02 that had been shot the week before by a buddy. The deer came out crossing a road and he shot, the deer fell over for a minute or two and then drug himself out of the road. When we looked there were two perfectly spaced, parallel drag marks where he went out of the road and into the cutover. Very little blood. We couldn't figure it out. Fast forward a week or so on a Thursday afternoon and I'm a half mile from where he shot the deer. Right at dark, a nice buck walks out and is hobbling terribly. The deer could barely move in a straight line much less, laterally. As I pull the trigger on my rifle, I flat pull the shot. Deer runs off back into a nasty cutover. We searched all night and came back the next day to no avail. I had a loc-on in that cutover that was 35ft tall that really allowed me to see down in it I decided to hunt it the next morning (Saturday) really just hoping to see buzzards. About 8:00 that morning the dang deer stood up 50 yards from me, where I assume he had been laying since Thursday afternoon, and I finally put him down. It was truly a mercy killing.
My buddy shot him through both front legs at the knee caps (the drag marks in the road) and I punched through the flank area with my shot on that Thursday afternoon. It was not much of a celebratory kill as that deer had suffered badly for a week or more.
Another one I've seen is dad shot a good 9 point in the top of the neck at 15 yards with a 7mag. Deer was killed a couple weeks later rubbing a tree with a big chunk out of his neck but was healing nicely. Killed about 750 yards from where dad shot him 2 weeks prior.
