The Missing Mule

I finished up my 2025 bow hunting season with an error. Not just any error either, a simple mental error that no veteran of the sport should ever make. And this is not one of those stories where things look like they’ve gone bad, but the hero finds a way to fix the problem. Nope. In this one, things look bad, and they stay bad: a pure fail. And… maybe I sort of deserve it.

Pride Goes Before the Fall

I have had me some luck. Last season, I accomplished something I never thought would happen. I got a bull moose, a bull elk, a whitetail buck, and a mule deer buck. I got them all with a bow. One shot, one kill for all four.

This season was shaping up just as well or better. I got a bull moose and a bull elk in September, both of them way bigger than the ones I got last year. And I believe it went to my head. Sure, I was quick to say I’d had incredibly good luck, but I was starting to feel pretty spiffy with my deadly aim. When I dropped the moose this fall, dad asked me “How many arrows did you put in him.” And I went, “Hey, hey, hey, do I come into your place of work and malign your reputation and skills? Do I imply that you don’t know your business? One shot, dad. One.”

Heck, I’d even started referring to my bow as Ol’ Painless. I’d release an arrow, see the animal flinch, look around to see what happened, then drop dead on the spot. Yes, even the big boys, like the bull moose and bull elk were doing this on the regular.

My bull elk this year was a perfect example. He came walking in to my cow call like a chicken on a string. When he got to within easy bow range—19 yards—I sent my arrow through both his lungs. It happens fast. One fifth of a second after the arrow left my string, it was already zipping out the other side of him to who-knows-where. I never did find it. For all I know, it’s still flying.

He jumped like he was stung by a bee, and trotted back 15 yards in the direction he came from. He looked right at me. I was in full camo, sitting still, but he’d heard the sound of the bowshot. He was looking at me the way all animals do when they bust you. I could almost read his expression: I know you’re there. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not a cow elk, and I’m about to run for it. You’ll never catch me.

I’ve seen the look dozens of times when I’ve drawn my bow at the wrong time, and my quarry catches the movement, or my arm brushes a twig, and it hears the fabric scrape across the dry branch. The animal startles, takes a brief look, and their gone before I get my chance.

However, all the cards had flipped in my favor in this case, and the cagey bull who was about to take off into the forest was already dead. His body and mind just hadn’t caught on to the fact quite yet. When he gathered himself to bolt, his knees wobbled, and he dropped dead on the spot.

This is how my entire 2024 and 2025 season went. A couple of the animals were startled enough by the unexpected sound of the bow to take off running as soon as they heard it. They went about 100 yards at a full sprint and then died. Given that deer, elk, and moose are a good deal faster than Olympic sprinters, it’s a safe bet these beasts expired in less than 10 seconds.

This is what I fully expected to happen as I drew back on the Mule Deer buck that came walking straight into my field of fire on Nov. 27. I was sitting in a new location. I’d seen Mule Deer running around in the area last year, so I selected a relatively straight tree, attached my climbing stand, and shinnied up. The fork-horned buck came through around 8:30. I spotted him coming, and I was able to get into position with plenty of time to spare.

He wasn’t a big buck, but with all of my other tags filled, this guy represented another grand slam: two bulls and two bucks in a single season. Not to mention, it was my last hunt of the year, and we still had folks looking for game meat.

Maybe that’s why I got ahead of myself. This dude walked right into the perfect spot and stood broadside for me. This is the perfect hunting shot, allowing for an easy and ethical kill. There are no bones or large muscle groups protecting the vitals when the animal is oriented this way. The arrow can pass through a thin layer of hide, and then it’s right in the heart and lungs.

All three of my shots in the season thus far had been more difficult than this one. Each of them had been at an angle and I had to shoot through gaps in thick trees. This Mule was completely in the open and a draftsmen couldn’t have provided a more precise right angle.

The Miss

I released the arrow, and I knew something was wrong immediately. The deer flinched, but not the right way. There are two standard reactions when a deer gets hit. If you hit it perfectly in the heart and lungs, the hind end comes up and the rear legs kick out, like a bucking bronco. If you see that, you will follow a short track to a dead deer. Whereas, if the hind end goes down and it hunches, you’ve hit it in the guts. That’s bad news. The deer will die slowly. Worse yet, you’ll have to just let it suffer if you want to find it. If you give chase, it will run for miles. If you leave it alone for a day, it will likely sit somewhere very close by and expire slowly.

If that sounds horrible to you, believe me, it sounds worse to me. Gut-shooting a deer is a hunter’s worst nightmare. We feel sick even thinking about it. And though I didn’t gut-shoot this particular deer, I’m feeling as guilty as though I did just by typing this description. And, cards on the table, I’m reliving the few times I have gut-shot an animal. There are many liars and deniers out there, but the harsh reality is that every hunter has wounded an animal badly. Even when we are methodical in our shooting and adamant about not taking risky shots at poor angles, there is still human error to factor in, and that was my downfall.

I saw my arrow on track to the right spot. Your eye doesn’t always pick up the flight of the arrow, but the backdrop here was a snow-covered field, and I saw its streaking path to the front quarter of the animal. What I didn’t see was the arrow striking fast in the vitals or disappearing into that spot as it ought to. Then there was the buck’s reaction.

He didn’t do either the rear leg kick or the hunch and run. He flinched and bolted. He acted like I’d missed. Like I missed completely at just 20 yards! Even a poor archer can pick a spot on a pop can at 20 yards. This didn’t make any sense to me.

I did what I always do after an archery shot. I lifted my bow up exactly as I was holding it for the shot and made the motion of drawing back the string. I looked at the precise spot I’d been aiming and memorized the location. I took out my rangefinder and confirmed the range at 20 yards. This is less important when there is snow, since tracks will definitively show where the animal was, but it’s still best practice. It maximizes the chances of finding the arrow and blood trail.

As with most screw-ups, there are varying degrees of catastrophe with a poorly hit deer. I’ve already mentioned the gut-shot scenario. That one means you wait a day, contemplate your sins, and then go in to find the poor animal that just died of agonizing sepsis because of your failure.

But there are small screw-ups too. If instead of slicing both lungs for a near instant death, you caught the tail end of one lung, you may still have a dead deer just 100 yards away. But you need to give it some time. If you go galloping down the blood trail, you’ll give him an adrenaline burst that sends him three counties over, and you’ll never find him. So you wait.

I hate waiting, but I sat there for three hours. I figured that with that amount of time a mostly good shot would mean the deer would be lying in a heap nearby.

I climbed down and made my way to where the deer had been standing. But as I trudged through the snow, it seemed like I was taking too many steps. I stopped and looked back toward the tree, wondering if I’d been woolgathering and literally stepped over the tracks I was looking for. I didn’t see any. Looking ahead, I saw some tracks, but they were still several paces away.

You have to keep in mind that a bow hunter practices a lot of shots. I shoot 20, 30, and 40-yard increments all the time, and I knew I’d already traveled more than 20 yards from my tree. That distance is simply hardwired into my feet.

At the deer’s track, I took out my rangefinder and got a reading on the tree I’d been in, which still had my climber wrapped around the base of the trunk: 31 yards. I’d shot using my 20-yard pin.

Those 10 yards are not very significant to archers shooting a fast bow, but they are a big difference in my world. I’m a bit under 5’9”, so my arm span is below average, and that means I don’t draw a bow back as far as other guys. This makes for slower arrow speed. I’m also not shooting the newest bow on the market, and that takes away from speed too. If you take a six-foot dude and have him shoot a relatively new bow, he’s gonna be flinging darts at nearly 350 feet per second. My arrow speed was measured at 283 when I last got it tuned up.

On compound bows, we have sites that have “pins”—metal tines with glowing dots at the ends—that show us where to aim at different ranges. Guys shooting 350 feet per second would have almost no gap between a 20-yard pin and a 30-yard pin because the arrow is going too quick for it to drop much in those 10 yards. Most of them would only use one pin for that distance because there will only be a few inches of vertical drop. My arrow is dropping more like 11 to 12 inches in those yards. This isn’t a problem; it’s still deadly to any animal on planet earth, so long as you choose the right pin.

I found my arrow, a small tuft of hair, and a few drops of blood. The blood was bright red, and there was no smell of gut on the arrow. Sounds weird, but you sniff the arrow to determine a gut-shot. There is no mistaking the smell of an arrow that touched the digestive system.

The tracks told the tale. He ran away startled. There wasn’t a drop of blood after a few yards, and it never started to flow again as I followed the trail leading off the property. I’d shot under his ribcage and grazed his underside.

I was somewhat heartened by this. I mean, it’s bad news for the end of my season, but it’s good news for the deer. Not only will he be fine, he probably won’t even get much undo attention from coyotes with that wound closing right up. He’ll come out of it scarred but smarter. He’ll be showin’ off with the does later on:

See that, ladies? Close brush with a hunter. Yeah, he thought he had me dead to rights… but I dodged it. Guess what’s got four hooves and won’t be daylighting next hunting season: This guy!!

This miss due to range would all serve as a great excuse if it weren’t for the fact that there’s someone in charge of ranging animals, and that’s me. I did what I often do in a new spot. I ranged a number of places where the deer was likely to show up, and I memorized those distances. But this deer was in the open, and that can be deceptive. One small fold of land that you don’t see can be the difference of 10 or 20 yards. That’s what happened to me. It was deceptive enough so that I ranged it wrong even after the shot. I should have ranged him in the flesh. This is a lesson I’ve learned before, and I should have thought about it before drawing back and taking aim.

Coping

I wish I was better at this part. I know there are hunters who take a wounded deer in stride and don’t give it a second thought. I don’t want to be that guy. But I don’t really want to be me either. I am inordinately distraught by these things. I felt physically ill, and I cursed myself over and over, especially before I determined that it was a superficial wound. Back in 2013, I gut-shot a doe, never found it, and dad had to talk me out of giving up bow hunting for good.

I was tempted to keep this one a secret. No one had to know. But the guilt, and the prospect of lying by omission, forced me to spill it. That's partially what leads me to write about it too. If I write about my hunting successes but omit the failures, I am no true storyteller. I forced myself to text both dad and the Brokeback Bowhunter.

Dad replied: Show me the hunter who hasn’t wounded an animal. It’s part of the deal, but we all hate it. That’s the toughest part of the hide; he’ll survive. Perfection is not realistic.

Brokeback replied: That’s one of those shots that keeps you humble. Can’t be drivin’ nails ALL the time.

Both were gracious and true messages that helped me move on, but the best one came from my wife. She saw how shaken I was when I came home and told her about wounding this deer, and she simply said, “You’re allowed to make mistakes.” That’s the one I repeat to myself.

I can imagine some folks reading this would think this is an awful lot of fuss over a wounded animal that is likely fine by the time I typed out this story, but most hunters get it. Odd as it sounds, hunters are acutely concerned with limiting animal suffering. I know this from the downcast faces and regretful tones of every hunter who’s told me about a time they’ve wounded an animal. I’m just thankful to have grazed rather than gutted that buck. It’s easier to live with.

It’s been a few days since then, and I have gear to stow. Stands, packs, and clothing will all go into storage, and I’m likely to think of the missed opportunity every second that I’m doing it. Over the next nine months, I’m sure I’ll occasionally dwell on the perfect season that I missed by just a few inches. It’s 272 days until bow season opens again, but who’s counting?

But I’m also going to try to keep in mind that it’s been a stellar year. I could have hung up my bow after I shot my first arrow. That Briar Bull is far and away the biggest critter I’ve ever taken down.

And all in all, this is a lot of antler to pull out of the woods in any season. The final day may have been bitter, but the year was sweet. Very, very sweet.