Where Do Deer Run When They’re Hit?

TJK over on 24hourcampfire.com was wondering if anyone else had noticed that deer all seem to run in the direction they were facing when they are hit. Some agreed, some didn’t. Here’s my take on it.

I’ve had mixed results, and I cannot honestly say that I’ve seen a pattern. Mind you, I’m not going to castigate you for holding your belief. I too, walked into the woods with it an and only gave it up in recent years.

Two consecutive years, same treestand, same day of the year, two similar bucks walked by and caught an arrow from my same bow. One ran downhill the way he came, the other ran forward the way he was facing. The former one ran 20 yards along the trail and laid down. The one that ran downhill disappeared and I scoured the creek bottom, looking for the carcass. In the last minute of light, I spotted him. He had run to the other side of the bottom and tried to climb up the other side. He was about 20 yards up the steep opposing bank.

Some swap ends, some run in a straight line. I have also seen the run in a spiral. One year I had two deer run towards my stand and fall right at the base of the ladder. I joked that my next step was to teach them to run up and jump into the bed of the truck. I’ve taken two more deer from that same stand, and both have decided to run another direction.

The advice we were given by our forebears was often faulty. The underlying problem is that until recently the deer herds were small. It was hard to test any hypothesis when a camp of 20 guys might see 4 deer in a season and shoot only one or two. If someone said that . . .

. . . deer always run in the direction they are facing when shot, . . .
. . . or that bucks force the does out ahead of them to scout . . .
. . . or that gut shot deer always run to water. . .

. . . or a myriad of other bits of advice, we tended to believe them. They were either our father, our uncle, or a writer in a magazine. Just remember that for 500 years Western Civilization believed the sun revolved around a flat Earth, even though there were signs in everyday life to prove otherwise. It sounded plausible, and somebody of authority had said it was so.

Here is a piece of deer wisdom you can take or leave: Anytime you hear “Always” or “Never” in association with deer behavior, deer hunter behavior, terminal ballistics, or any other facet of deer hunting, you can accept the advice with healthy skepticism. I have been hunting deer for over 20 years and here are the only “Always” and “Nevers” I’ve encountered:

1) Deer NEVER come by your stand in the way you expect them to.
2) Deer NEVER cease to amaze me
3) Deer ALWAYS find some new way to confound me, even when they are mortally wounded.

In this case, it makes sense to our ears to hear a simple rule of thumb, and it is easy to discount the instances that do not support it. The only explanation for why it is not so is two-fold:

1) A deer may or may not recognize the direction from which the attack on their body has come. I have had deer turn around and challenge an undershot arrow in the ground. I’ve had them stand and watch with rapt curiousity as I’ve fumbled to reload my muzzleloader.

2) Having had friends who’ve been wounded greivously in battle, I can tell you that gunshots, shrapnel and mines do not put you in the best frame of mind for making decisions. Some of the stories are funny in a macabre sort of way. Suffice it to say that any deer with a double lung shot may or may not be in full command of his senses and may or may not be making rational decisions. A brain starved of blood and oxygen does strange things.

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