on how tough a Whitetail is then you gotta here this. I've got the pictures as proof. A customer that comes back to me year after year brought yet another really nice 10 pt. to add to his collection. after shooting the bull and hearing yet another deer story I finally got started into the caping phase of this deer.I always skin out the nose and lower lip before going to the back of the neck incision. When I rolled this head over to start the Y cut my finger was cut right through the gloves I used. I could not figure out what this was from so I started to go over the head with a fine tooth comb. I found a really hard spot that had a sharp edge on it sticking out of the the nose on the rt. side about 2 inches up his muzzle. I could not figure out what it could be. I avoided the spot and continued to work on the short incision. Once I got the cape started off the neck meat I noticed a heavy scar right at the base of the left ear on the back side. not really paying much attention to it I proceeded to work the skin off the neck and worked it up to the muzzle and after I came up to the hard dark spot I was in shock when I finally figured it out. Keep in mind this buck was killed the last weekend of our shotgun season.This poor animal had been shot in the back of the head at the base of the left ear with a BROADHEAD arrow and was broken off inside.This had to be there for quite sometime because when I went over the skin at the base of the ear where he was shot, It had actually healed up on the entry wound and hair had started to grow back. The spot that I was cut on was the actual black tip of the broadhead sticking out the left side of his muzzle about 1/4 inch.He had been running around the hills with this thing in him for all of a full month or so. Once I had him all caped I just had to get my camera.I took about 4 or 5 pics of this. Once I got the arrow shaft out of him it measured all of 7 inches Broadhead still intact.I called my customer and told him and he could not believe it. I told him I took some pics of him and showed him when he came to get his mount. He also wanted me to put him on a panel and mount the arrow on the panel with him. Now that is a conversation piece. But anyway, Just thought I'd share that with you all. Was something to see for sure. Anybody got anymore deer storys like this? Sure is hard to believe just how much these things can stand.
Thanks Guys n Gals,
Lance!
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That must have caused some migranes! I've never seen something quite like that But I have had broadheads stuck in sheep horns, and shot one deer that had a broken femor where the bone had snapped and the two broken pieces went side by side and healed that way so he had a short leg. The healed and calcified femor bone wound up looking like a lightning bolt zig zag shape.
I had a buck with the tip of a tine broken off in the skull at the forehead and a deer with a mass growing from his brain thru the skull & abcessed under the skin. Hunter said the deer was standing inside the woods just a couple of feet in the brush and his housedog was barking at it. It didn't move so eh shot it. He never noticed the swelled mass at the top of his head. The skull looked real weird kind of like it was swelled too.
They're a tough animal aren't they Lance. I mounted a bow killed 9 pt. quite a few years ago and it had a broken off browtine. Four weeks after this guy got that deer, he shot a 6 pt. during the shotgun season. The 6 pt had a broken browtine sticking out of the top of his head right between his eyes slightly towards his right eye. After skinning him out the browtine had punched into his eye socket and was lodged about 3/4" into his eye. I did a european mount of this skull with the browtine sticking out. We matched up the browtine to the 9 pt. He had seen both of these bucks together during bow season. Yes, they're a tough animal with a strong will to survive!
About 15 years I shot a buck with a shotgun in NJ and upon gutting the deer out I noticed a lump on the inside of the rib cage. When I got back to my shop and hung the deer up to skin and process it, I looked at the lump, it was a broadhead that had gone thru the liver and pinned it to the rib cage, it was hard all around the broad head and when I shot the deer he was running fine. They are a very tough animal.
I have section of backbone from a buck I shot in 1997 with an old style botkin broadhead embedded in the second vertabra. The wound was just behind the left ear and still fresh. Probably shot the last weekend of bow season, because I shot the deer on the first day of rifle season. The buck was chasing does when I saw him, so a pain in the neck didn't affect his rut. I have the vertabra on display in my shop and is a good conversation piece to bring up other wt wound stories, from customers. Whitetails have an amazing ability to heal the most severe wounds.
a 8" piece of briar stem, thorns intact, up one of the nostrals. All the way up...You could just feel the butt end when you felt up the nostril...It was festered inside so it was there for awhile...
I shot a nice 160" nine point two years ago that had an arrow in him. It was 4" of a carbon shaft, tipped with an expandable blade broadhead. One of the blades was closed. Arrow was lodged in the little pocket of meat on the shoulderblade. Shot him on a drive in a switchgrass field, buck acted fine, only visible damage was a slight festered spot on the shoulder. My dad several years ago found an old 12 ga. slug in a doe he harvested. The slug was mushroomed and still had the plastic wad attached. The slug and wad was completely encased in a carliage type substance, perhaps the deer's body way of healing. Took in a bow deer this past fall that had 1/2" antler tine tip bembedded in head between antler burrs. Gave it to the client for good luck. As for broken legs re-healed, have seen two. One I harvested as a kid, it was my fourth or fifth deer, the other one a good friend got. Mine had a broken/healed front leg, his had rear leg broken/healed. Both deer had huge, not quite football sized lumps at the break site, where the bone had re grown. My deer had a peg leg limp, while my buddies deer's leg had regrown with an outward twist. Both had super freaky racks. A farmer around here a few years back found a real nice buck that had impaled himself on a metal fencepost. It is really amazing to me all the mishaps in a wild deer's life. They are one of nature's better survivors. Cool topic for discussion, although I cringe at some of stories. The more I'm around deer, the more I admire them.
I had one come in last year that had an 8" tine broken off in it's skull. It had entered between the jaw bones next to the neck, went through the roof of the mouth and ended up just under the skin above the left eye orbit. You coulndt even see it from the outside. Corse the deer was bad underweight, killed Jan 31st and it was a mature buck, but it only went a little over 120 lbs. They have a will to live for sure.
Working on one right now that has a 2 inch by 2 inch hole in the bridge of the nose dirrectly in front of and between the eyes. It is a good 2 inches deep. No idea how this deer was able to smell anything as nasal cavity was pretty much destroyed. Customer wants it mounted that way, too.
A friend of mine shot a huge 191 B&C buck with his bow on home video last year. The video got on TV because a big 160 inch 10 pointer came in and attacked his dead deer, and he had to run it off. Anyway, when I caped his deer for him, the nose was almost completely separated from the septum and cartilage. When I pushed on the nose it just completely lifted up and exposed the nasal cavity like it was on a hinge. It had healed up some since the injury, and you could not tell there was any damage from the outside. That deer could not have had much sense of smell. I wish I would have gotten the mount job, but it went to someone with more experience.
that was shot on the second day of NY gun season. The guy shot at it on opening day but only blew one of its antlers off. Luckily for him he got another chance on day two. When skinning this thing I noticed something sharp in the side of the face a few inches behind the nose. I also skin the lips and nose back first. There was a Muzzy broadhead stuck in this deer's nasal cavity. I know it would have never came out on its own. We saved the skull and hung it on the barn wall.