From: kdw@icd.ab.com (Kenneth D. Whitehead)
Subject: Re: Bowhunting wound rates
Organization: Allen-Bradley Company, Inc.
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 19:20:30 GMT

Bob Black writes:

 >His 50% wounding rate figure has been confirmed by many others.  Well
>   into the discussion you yourself even accepted it.  So why would you now
 >  call such results completely inaccurate?

Bob, I think you need to go back and take another look at what Benke
said.  I believe the 50% figure that you describe as "wounding rate"
actually applies to unrecovered deer.  Further studies I've seen
in "Deer and Deer Hunting" and "Bowhunter" have addressed this issue
(sorry, I don't have the magazines anymore;  I never thought I'd need to
use them as sources for making a point), and it was pretty clearly pointed
out that simply because a deer was not recovered does not mean the deer
was merely wounded, or that it took a particularly long time to die,
or that it suffered in the process.  Sometimes they're just real hard
to find as the result of their survival escape and evasion techniques.

Of course, most hunters hate when that happens (a shot animal isn't recovered), 
because it's a waste of a resource (from a human point of view, anyway), but 
I believe your position on this has been "scavengers need to eat too", and I
agree with you on that.  Nonetheless, I do know hunters who have been so
demoralized after shooting and losing a deer that they stopped hunting.

HOWEVER - There are many things about Benke that tend to brand him as something
of a yahoo/slob hunter, including the fact that he shoots penned animals
in order to prove a point for a book he is writing for profit, can't shoot 
well enough to bowhunt but does so anyway, and promotes the use of poisoned 
arrows rather than learning to shoot or keeping his shots within his effective 
range. (BTW, I believe that you've referred to SCC as a "sedative";  in fact,
it is a paralytic agent which shuts down the respiratory system causing
the animal to smother.  Eye-witness reports of the effects of this drug
on deer are pretty unpleasant, indicating a far more traumatic death
than with deer I've seen killed by broadheads, although I don't know why 
this would necessarily be the case.  Imagine it this way; compare it to a person
fainting from loss of blood as opposed to being smothered with a plastic
bag over their head.  Lots more kicking and thrashing around with the
latter, although I can't say that this means anything other than being 
visually dramatic.  But given a choice of the two, I'd take the former.)

Don't take this the wrong way, but I am a little bit concerned that
you are willing to take Benke's word as if it were Gospel, citing his status
as an "experienced bowhunter", while all the time discounting the opinions 
and experiences of the many bowhunters you "know" (in the electronic netland 
sense).  I sure wish there was something we could do to convince you that we, 
not he, are the norm!


>....and IF you never give up on a trail (which is not really that
   relevant IMO).

Oh, but it is VERY relevant.  As I indicated above, if you read Benke carefully,
I believe that you will find that the "wounding" rates actually apply to
unrecovered deer.  It's not always easy to find them, even if they only run
50 yards, and they can do that in just a few seconds (until the blood/oxygen
going to the brain runs out).  The mere fact that a deer is not found (he
could well be lying dead behind a log someplace and you walked right past him)
does NOT mean that he's limping around the woods taking several days to expire,
but Benke would categorize such a circumstance as a "wounding loss" and
you, not having any firsthand experience with hunting, wouldn't understand
that fact.  Slob hunters are notorious for not following up on their shots; 
they're the ones responsible for most of the unrecovered deer.  But most of us 
aren't slob hunters.

I'm very concerned about unrecovered deer; perhaps you saw my last posting
under this title, describing how I passed up a shot at a trophy buck at
4:30 on the last day of bow season because I didn't like the angle of the
shot.  I could have killed that deer, no question about it, but I don't
know if I could have recovered it.  From the angle of the shot presented to me,
there was a good chance I would have hit him in the shoulder and taken out at
least one lung;  if not, the arrow would have slipped in behind the shoulder
blade, zipped through the liver and paunch, and exited as a gut shot.  He would 
have died, but not very quickly;  liver shots are fatal in a matter of minutes
(often MANY minutes, as many as 20, from experiences I've had following up
on deer shot by friends of mine);  gut shots in a matter of 3 - 4 hours.  
And they can go a long way before they go down, and they'll head for the nastiest 
terrain they can find to avoid being found.

So I waited for a better shot, one where I could take out the heart and/or
both lungs, putting him down in seconds, causing a quick death due to
bilateral pneumothorax and massive exsanguination; but I never got it, so 
I didn't shoot.  (To be real honest, part of the reason was that I didn't 
want to have to come back here and tell you I shot one but lost it!) ;-)

There are many ways a hunter can actively ensure that he/she will recover
a hit deer, including use of a game tracking device, learning to be/hunting
with a good tracker, or enlisting the help of friends to find the deer.  
And most importantly, not giving up until you either find the deer or
the proponderance of evidence indicates that the deer was either not hit or was
not seriously injured and will probably recover.

In 1989 and 1990 I hunted with a fellow named Bob Foulkrod (I'm sure
some of the bowhunters on the newsgroup will recognize the name) who has a 
lodge in Eastern Pennsylvania.  Whenever anybody shot a deer, the procedure 
was as follows: 

1) The hunter was NOT to follow the deer unless the deer was down in plain 
sight.  After a period of about an hour, Foulkrod and the hunter would
go out and Foulkrod would track the deer.

2) If they could not find the deer, the next step was for EVERYBODY IN CAMP
to go out and look, lining up 10 yards apart, and sweeping back and forth over 
the area until the deer was located.  This was either done during the mid-day
break after lunch, or after supper, using lanterns (believe it or not, the 
latter is actually easier when it comes to locating and following a blood trail).

3)  If the deer was still not recovered, after the rest of the hunters went
out on stand in the afternoon or the next morning, Foulkrod, the hunter
who shot the deer, and anybody else who had already taken a deer would go out
and do it all over again.

One day, 12 of us went out after lunch and swept through a swamp, covering nearly 
a square mile in a monsoon-like downpour looking for a shot deer.  We spent over
two hours searching, and unfortunately the deer was not recovered, nor was it
found later when they went back out to look for it.  I calculate that approx.
48 man-hours went into searching for the deer before the search was called off.
In the two years that I hunted with Foulkrod, this was the only deer that was
lost out of a total of 14 shot.  

Well, that's my experience;  I think you can see why I don't have much regard
for the opinions of Adrian Benke.

Ken




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