We arrived at our glassing point just as the sun was coming up and the javelina should be emerging from their caves to warm their thin skin on the hillside. After just five minutes, we had glassed up a group of about 15 at 300 yards, and carefully executed the stalk. I closed in on one at 44 yards, and as I took two more steps to get a better angle, I was busted and the desert erupted with the sound of 15 snorting pigs running for their lives (I know they’re not technically pigs, but that’s what we all call them out here anyway). So close, and yet so far!
At least 8 pigs are hiding in this shot alone…and there at least that many more hidden out of frame. It was a good morning for pig hunting!
We hiked up the next hillside to try and re-find them or spot another group, and after repositioning myself I saw this same group of pigs running up and over the adjacent hillside spooked by four horseback riders making their way through the draw. I bombed down the hillside, made the precarious climb through the little canyon between me and them, and began cresting the hill I had seen them running over. A snort and a flash of movement alerted me to the fact that they hadn’t gone as far as I thought, and I was already within range of the group. Knocking an arrow, I slowed my pace and began scanning for any sign of movement. Finally, I caught two pigs feeding behind a bush at 48 yards. I would prefer to get closer on such a small animal, but I had nothing but open desert between me and them.
I double-checked my range, and drew my bow as one of the pigs started moving into the clearing next to the bush. Time stood still, my brain could think of nothing besides this pig, and I settled the pin on his vitals and let the arrow fly. There was a sound of impact and chaos all around the bush as the several pigs in the mix darted around trying to figure out what happened. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to knock another arrow as I saw the pig I had just shot at (couldn’t tell if he was hit or not) re-emerge on the other side of the bush in the open standing broadside. I didn’t have time to reach for the range-finder, so I drew back, intentionally thought through all the steps of my shot sequence, and let a second arrow fly.
This time, I knew he was hit, because he snorted and spun around angrily biting at the arrow. But, as he began to run away, I could see what every archer dreads…my arrow sticking out of his hind quarter. Very little penetration. Not anywhere near his vitals. Unless I got lucky and clipped an artery, this was going to be a long process. I had just wounded an animal, and it felt AWFUL! I’ve known plenty of hunters who have gone through this, I’ve watched them on TV, and it’s always easier to armchair quarterback that situation and hope it’ll never be you.
So, what DO you do in this situation…
Even when everything feels right during the shot, so much can go wrong once that arrow is sent.
Go full-CSI on the scene
The first key step (after texting your hunting partner what happened so he can come help) is to comb through the scene looking for hard evidence of what actually happened. Every hunter who has fired a shot knows how surreal that experience is, and just how funky our memories can get once the adrenaline is gone. Initially, I thought I had hit this javelina twice. When I fired that second arrow, I thought I was simply expediting his death because I figured he ran a few feet and stopped because he was wounded. So, I walked up to the site of the first shot to try and look for blood and/or my arrow. Sadly, I found my arrow in the dirt bone-dry…it was a clean miss.
Next, I walked over to where I had taken the second shot and pretty quickly found some blood. As I began tracking, it was clear that he was not dumping as much as I had hoped. All signs pointed to this being a sizable flesh wound, and it certainly seemed like all his major arteries were intact. This meant that I had a long and difficult tracking job ahead of me.
The point is to resist the urge to charge off in the direction you last saw the animal go. Stay right where you were standing when you shot, get your breathing slowed and your head cleared, and then walk to where the animal was when you shot. Slowly and painstakingly read all the clues you can to get the best possible assessment of what actually happened at the other end of your arrow. Once you have an idea of how good or bad the shot was, now you’re in recovery mode.
Nothing more than a bent arrow and ruined broadhead from the first shot…in this case, not at all what I wanted to see!
Make EVERY effort to recover the animal
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but hunters simply must value the life of every animal they chase. We don’t just run out there flinging arrows at everything that moves, and we don’t just shrug it off if an animal might die at our hands. Once you’ve put an arrow or a bullet into an animal, you owe it to that animal to do everything you can to recover it or re-find it and try to finish the job.
In this case, I tracked this pig’s blood for over 200 yards, and it led me to where he dove off the hillside, down the steep side of a canyon, and his blood seemed to pool up and end at the mouth of one of the many little javelina caves dotting the sides of this canyon. I crept up to the mouth of that cave, peered inside, and couldn’t see the back. Well, now I’m stuck. There’s no way I’m going to crawl into this cave just big enough to maybe squeeze my shoulders through chasing a cornered, wounded animal. I climbed back up the side of the canyon and sat down to wait for my hunting partner. What else could I do? Was this the end of it? Now this pig is just going to bleed out in the back of his cave and go to waste? It’s an awful feeling.
Plenty of blood at the mouth of this cave…not a chance I was crawling in after him!
Minutes later, my brother-in-law came jogging towards me from the other side of the hill, and was intensely motioning to get my attention. He pointed across the canyon and said, “is that him?” I looked across and sure enough, 70 yards across the canyon just standing against the wall of rock was my javelina. (Apparently, he hadn’t actually gone into that cave, but he continued to the bottom of the canyon and back up the other side…it was nuts!) He had finally gotten the arrow out of his leg, you could see the blood in his fur, and his limp was terrible. As if I didn’t already feel awful, now I was just feeling sick watching him struggle over there. For a second I thought, “70 yards is my last pin, I could just take my time and send another arrow…he’s not really going anywhere.” But, my brother-in-law rightly argued that we’d have a better chance if he kept an eye on the pig through his binos while I tried to cross over and head him off to get closer into range.
I took off down the back side of this drainage hoping to intercept his slow pace across the hillside. While navigating down one of the steeper hillsides, I sent a boulder crashing to the bottom, and I immediately looked up to see if the pig had noticed. Sure enough, he mustered another surge of adrenaline, forgot about his wounded leg, and started booking it up that hill. I took off even faster, got to the side he was on, and called my lookout to see where he was. He had disappeared from Zach’s view in some thick brush, and he never saw the pig leave. I crept up to where that was, and…nothing. He wasn’t in there, he wasn’t nearby…I started gridding the area and continually looking up the direction he was heading. Somehow that wounded pig gave us the slip. Zach crossed over, we picked up a couple blood spots and trailed the very small blood trail and fresh tracks for another hundred yards or so. We spent at least an hour criss-crossing that hundred yard-section, flagging each little spot of blood, and trying to follow this guy.
Eventually, we knew we had nothing left to go on. He had outwitted us, and the blood trail had dried up. There was nothing more we could do. It felt awful, but the only thing left to do was to accept that we were not going to find this pig. The only thing that made that option even remotely palatable was the knowledge that we had literally done everything we could. From the time I let that arrow fly to the time we accepted defeat, nearly three hours had passed. The only thing left to regret was the fact that I didn’t send that 70 yard arrow when I had the chance. As long as you can honestly say you did everything in your power to find that animal, sometimes there’s just nothing more you can do than move on.
Followed this for hundreds of yards, down a hill, across a canyon, and eventually it dried up. That was one elusive pig!
Do you punch your tag or keep hunting?
Now, this is the most controversial and personal decision in this whole scenario. You’ve wounded an animal, it has gotten away…are you done hunting or do you start looking for another animal? There are so many factors involved and it’s honestly an ethical question that has to be answered based on the parameters of that specific situation. Ultimately, the question comes down to if you truly believe that animal is going to live and recover or if it’s fatally wounded. You’ve paid for a tag that allows you to harvest an animal from the herd in that unit. Just because you didn’t recover the body, if you’ve killed an animal, you’ve technically pulled one out of the herd. To determine if you think the animal will live or not, that really comes down to reading all those clues we talked about earlier. Did you gut shot him? It will be a slow, painful death, but that animal will expire sometime down the line. Hit him in the rear quarter or butt (like I did)…well, that depends.
It was clear from the slow trickle the blood trail became that I didn’t clip an artery on this javelina, so he probably wasn’t going to bleed out. Since I got to see him a second time when he was across the canyon, I could tell that his leg was thoroughly messed up though (that’s what a two-inch hole from an expandable broadhead will do in the middle of your leg). If I had hit a deer or elk in that same spot, I would feel fairly confident that they’d be limping for a while, but they’d recover and do alright rejoining the herd. But, since we’re talking about a 30-pound javelina with smaller bones, and thinner skin and muscle tissue…I just don’t see a scenario where that little guy bounces back. He’s less mobile now, he’ll have trouble fighting off predators, maybe even finding food or water…I just can’t confidently say that pig is going to keep on trucking. For all those reasons, I decided that afternoon that when Zach and I went up and over the next ridge to glass the last couple hours of daylight, I was only glassing for a pig that Zach could stalk. Unless I somehow turned up my wounded pig, I wasn’t going to draw my bow again on that javelina tag.
The morning started off with such promise and excitement…it’s a shame it ended the way it did.
Get back in the saddle
This experience has brought a fresh dose of reality to my bowhunting world. I know this in my mind and I’ve harvested an animal with my bow before, but it’s easy to forget how different it is to try and execute the perfect archery shot when a living animal is in your sights instead of a foam block. I need to be even more practiced, more automatic with my shot sequence…and honestly, I’m thinking it’s time to invest in a 3-D target. It’s still not the same rush as a real life hunting scenario, but it will look that much more similar and make it feel less foreign when I’m in that situation.
Sadly, seasons are winding down here in AZ, but I can feel that my confidence is a bit shaken. My son has a rifle javelina tag right now, so hopefully we’ll get him on one, and I’m going to spend some time predator hunting in the off-season. But unfortunately, I won’t have the opportunity to draw my bow on a live animal until the fall. All I can do now is keep my practice going through the off-season and try to enter the fall more dialed than I’ve ever been before. I’ve heard plenty of people say that if you bow hunt long enough, you’ll eventually experience this miserable reality. Somehow, I thought it would never be me…but the truth is it can be any of us. Keep practicing, do everything you can to prevent the situation, but if it ends up happening…don’t beat yourself up too much. Follow the steps I outlined so you can honestly say you did all you could, and then it’s time to get back in the saddle. Only this time, a little wiser, a little more cautious, and hopefully…a little more effective.