Last season I shot a doe at 75 yards with a 308. One shot and she went down and stopped moving. As I was taking pictures I saw antlers moving through the woods toward me. I picked up the rifle and saw a six point buck walking toward me. The antlers were not as wide as his ears, so I decided to let him walk away and leave him for next year. As he was quartering away from me at about 25 yards, I realized that his left foreleg was opened up and dripping blood. I figured that whomever shot him would be tracking him, so I decided to put him out of his misery. I hit him with the 308 right behind the shoulder expecting him to drop. Instead he ran down the nearest hill and out of sight. I followed the blood trail to the bottom of the hill where it had expired. I marked it's location, then went back to the doe, filled out a kill tag and field dressed her. No one came by looking for the buck. I went down the hill to the buck and field dressed it. The first shot had been from the front, and went along the bottom of the foreleg and into the abdomen; a classic gut shot. What a mess! Since I put the last bullet in it, and no one had come looking for the deer, I used my second kill tag for the buck. I took them to the local DEEP check station; the biologist there said the buck would have died a lingering death from infection had I not shot it. Only two of us have permission to hunt the 80 acre woods, I spoke to the other person who hunts there; he was still at home drinking coffee when I shot the two deer. Can't figure why someone would not make an effort to find the deer and would leave it to die a painful death from infection.
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