Never seen anything like this

For a rib shot I think the worst point of entry on any big game is a liver hit. I tracked a huge 14 pt my Father shot as it jumped our field fence with his 300 Sav. Easy peasy 75 yard shot. "Oopsy Daisy it got away" I was told.

Well over 3 miles into the wettest biggest green swamp I've ever walked in. Into area's I had never been before. Always heading straight South and sometimes in circles it walked. A whole night and a whole mornings walk to which the animal laid down a half dozen times only to be shagged up time after time. Trickling dark red blood here & there nearly all the way. Hot and sweaty.{And so was I.} Dead only 10-15 minuets. When I found him. It had pumped so much adrenalin that frying its steak later in the evening caused those seated at the kitchen table to up and leave the room. The word STINK is surely lacking in description what I quartered_de-boned_ and hauled it and its antlers out on my back late that afternoon.
That animal smelled so bad as I butcher him in the field._ I kept checking for any light shade of green through-out its interior and under its hide. Nothing did I uncover so to give me a excuse to leave it for the birds. Did a good job of gutting. I never cut anything but what I was suppose too.

I remember my Mother soaked all my clothes I wore those two days in a Wash Tub in Mrs Murphy's soap out in the back yard till the following morning. I ended up in our sauna for two hours and cooked to a dark pink wrinkle look before my Father quit walking in on me and he re-fueling that Damn wood stove with dried Birch than spilling a whole pale of water on the rocks each time. Almost 60 yrs ago and I still not only remember the experience I can still smell that nasty Buck. uff-da!!
 
That is an unusually long run for those conditions. Deer sometimes don't know they are dead until loss of blood pressure puts them down. I do think there is a difference between deer that are on alert and he clueless ones I usually shoot.
 
Like the OP, I shot a buck at about 50 yards with a 30-06 180 gr. round nose factory round. The deer popped straight up in the air, fell to the ground, got back up and started running downhill. I pumped another round in, held on the shoulder and pulled the trigger. Click. I cycled again. Click. Hell of a time to find out that the clip was able to wiggle down far enough where the bolt didn't pickup the next round. Slammed the clip and got another round in, hoping I'd get another shot. Nope. Went over to where I had shot the deer and found bone, blood, lung and meat blown into the brush like a horror movie. I sat down and pondered why the deer hadn't stayed down for half an hour, then started tracking. The deer ran downhill for 75 yards, blowing blood from both sides, hit a tree and fell, got back up and ran uphill another 100 yards. On the way up, the blood trail started petering out. At the top of the hill, the deer jumped a fence and went out into a hard-packed field. No more blood, no more tracks.
I started making circles from the point where I had lost the tracks for about 45 minutes. About this time, the land owner showed up because he had heard the shot and came out to see what was up. I took him back to the scene of the crime. He agreed that the evidence showed a double lung shot. We went back to where I had lost the track and we both did the search-and-rescue pattern to the end of his property. Nothing. I had to give up.
This was the only deer that I ever lost. An extremely painful experience.
 
A deer can cover 500 yards very quickly, as you no doubt found out.
The run was reflex action, he didn't stop till his brain quit functioning on
the oxygen he had left.
 
And that right there is why I use the phrase "the animal gets a vote" anytime the discussion turns on why this cartridge or that bullet didn't perform.

Amazingly, the first deer I saw pull a similar feat was hit with a .270 pushing 130gr bullets not once, but twice, and didn't flinch. My friend thought for sure he missed and his rifle must be off.... until he checked and found a drop of blood where that deer had been standing... and found it after running a long way piled up in palmettos. Both shots through the lungs, not much more than an inch apart.

You did it right... you made a great shot. There's nothing you could have done better. Some will argue the CNS shot with either brain or spinal cord, but those are smaller targets/lower percentage shots. The animal gets a vote!
 
That's cool Reynolds357 about having a 16 year old dog. I imagine saying goodbye won't be easy with that one. I have two dogs, not for hunting though. The lab/pit bull we have is as dumb as a stick!!!

On the subject of liver shots...iceberg had 2 experiences, obviously in both cases I didn't hit where I was aiming. The first time it happened was a little doe. She dropped like a sack of hammers. As I walked over to her (this time it WAS a rookie mistake, I was 17) she jumped to her feet and ran away. I tracked blood, and I mean lots of blood, for over a mile. The trail ended at the river. The trail was full of coyote prints. I do not believe it was a gut shot. I've never made a gut shot but I hear they hunch and run and don't bleed much. This was a bang flop with a ton of bleeding.

The second time was a big buck (big bodied anyway). This hit turned out to be dead centre on the liver. The liver was blown into pieces. The buck dropped instantly, tried to get up twice, and was dead. Eyes glazed over within 5 minutes of hit.

For any of you familiar with boxing or fighting in general, you know how emphatically a perfectly placed left hook to the liver drops someone...but also how a less than perfect attempt at this doesn't really do anything and leaves you're head open for attack. Seems about as risky when hunting!
 
I recall one doe that I shot (with a .270 if anyone notices the recurring pattern) that was quartering away from me. Bullet absolutely vaporized the lungs and most of the heart (I poured most of them from the body cavity) and the thing still ran a couple or few hundred yards some of it through some heavy brush.

I have also shot deer with the same rifle that have fallen in their tracks. Once I managed to get both deer that were together because the second one just stood there. Another time I had to wait as I only had one tag and the small herd (7-10 deer) seemed baffled that their companion had suddenly fallen.

I hunt normally along a small ridge on my property. This is Michigan so we are talking like 20-30 feet higher than the gully / creek area the deer walk in. I think if the deer can place the sound they do make an effort to run from it - the deer from the first example I had jumped and was already moving when I shot it.

If they cannot place the sound they try to get some clue where it came from. A rifle shot, that close and at the business end of the barrel, is probably much louder than the sounds they are used to and often enough seems to disorientate them. Even deer that jump at the sound that are with others often only run a short distance back the way they came before pausing and seeming to try to orientate the direction of the sound.

I'm amazed at the damage a deer can take and not drop in its tracks but I think it may have to do with how ready to run or disorientated as to the direction of the sound they are when they are hit. Perhaps those deer that are hit from further away (most my shots are within 30 yards) can tell where the sound came from easier.
 
It's rare but it does happen. And not just with deer. Men sometimes can take more damage than is medically possible, and just seem to "not notice for a while".
 
This post reminds me of a similar post I saw on a Ga hunting forum years ago. Hunter had been hunting almost a mile walk away from his truck. He didn't shoot anything one morning so walked back to the truck only to find a shooter buck very near it. He shot the buck and it took off running back towards where he had been hunting. The buck ran almost all the way back to where his stand had been. So, even though he wound up shooting the deer very near the truck he still had to drag it all the way back from deep in the woods.
 
Ha! That's ironic isn't it? Life seems to work like that. I know for myself many times now after spending many hours many days just waiting quietly in the bush or walking miles of trails and tree lines, you know, doing it "right" and working hard, in end up filling my tag after seeing a deer just standing there in a field from the road. Of course, I get off the road and walk in a ways but the point is the whole thing seems almost shamefully lazy and counterintuitive to the supposed wisdom of hard work paying off.
 
This buck I've told about here actually saw me first, was looking right at me at the shot, and appeared to be on high alert. He knew something was up. Do you think that has something to do with it?
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I think you could be on to something. A blown out heart won't pump blood or circulate adrenaline but the deer could have already been wired by seeing you or the does nearby.
 
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