thoughts please..

[kujo65]

So saturday afternoon i shot a nice buck with my bow and keep in mind it was my first shot at a live animal. My left and right was perfect but i knew the shot was high. after the shot he trotted off maybe 50 yards and stood on a hill and i tried grunting cuz it was the only thing i could think of doing at the moment he then proceeded to run off but never seem that startled i did my best to calm my emotions and climbed down and found my arrow covered in blood and found quite a bit of blood where he had stood on the hill i decided to back out cuz i wasnt 100% with the shot i came back 5 hours later with a buddy and we followed a blood trail for 200-300 yards and it went dry marked the tree with green tape and came back the next day and combed the woods and never found him....so has anybody shot a deer high like this i understand there is a cavity below the spine and right above all the organs but i was 25 ft in a tree and figured with the angle i would get the back lung....i just cant believe the blood we found and too not find the buck i was shooting a rage 3 blade broadhead too if that helps and i had a clean pass through.....just any thoughts or past experiences would be great just need some kind of closure....sorry if it got long winded

[sticknstring]

The spine dips pretty good straight up the leg. Not real hard to slip over it, especially if you know you hit high. Truth be known, there is no "void" under the spine. The lungs reach right up to the spine. Sounds like you found a fair amount of blood, wich isn't commom with a backstrap shot, but can't be ruled out. Hard to say what happened, but if I were to guess, I'd say you went over vitals and the deer should be fine.

[leech~~]

Lots of stuff to hit, but a anginal downward high shot can miss a lot on the top as well. If you could look at this same picture head on you would see some pretty empty spots on both sides of the spine you may have just nicked?

[Scoot]

The spine dips pretty good straight up the leg. Not real hard to slip over it, especially if you know you hit high. Truth be known, there is no "void" under the spine.

Stick is right- there is no "void". Most of the hits that people say are in the void below the spine are actually above the spine.

There's a good chance, IMO, that you hit lungs, but high. Deer can go a long time on a high lung hit- even a high double lung hit. They will die, from what I've seen, but they can make it a long ways.

All that being said, there's no way to know. We didn't see it and it's hard to say. Also, some arrows simply don't go where the shooter is convinced it hit. The elk I shot this year was absolutely not hit where I was 100% sure I hit it. I've seen people describe their shot many times and the location of their arrow has, on some occasions, been way off from their description. People's confidence level in their description seems to be completely unrelated to where it actually hit too. I'm not saying you are wrong on where you hit it, but it is definitely another possibility as to what happened.

[Bear55]

Yep no void and sounds like a arrow high in the meat, they will bleed a lot at first and then it will shut off. The deer is probably fine.