Deer hunting- what should I have done?

'Smoked a deer' FFS another arm chair hunter.

You may have come close to the heart, but didn't hit it. I've only had one deer run more than a few yards after shooting them, missed the heart and hit both lungs, found it bedded down around 200 yards away pink froth on nose, and I shot it again through the upper neck, end of it.

If you aim more carefully next time, and actually hit the heart, it won't live more than a minute, if even that, as with no functioning heart an animal cannot get enough oxygen flow and will go unconscious in a matter of 30 seconds. They can still run a ways before collapsing if no central nervous system is hit or no front shoulder is it, but most of mine have never gone more than 50 yards. Stalk them before shooting to get closer shots, or wait till one gets closer next time, or else practice more with your shotgun or get a rifle, if you want quicker kills.

Don't feel too bad though, most deer don't get such a quick death, but are often dragged down by dogs and eaten half alive after a paralysing neck bite, or else starve to death due to bad teeth or lack of food. Humans are one of the few animals to kill their food before beginning their dinner.

It's always best to let them die without you around. Unless it's thrashing around after a bad shot that maims or cripples it, a kill shot like a lung, neck or heart shot is always going to take a little time for the deer to die. If you had approached it, it would have terrified the deer and made it try to escape. You did the right and proper thing, wait it out so it can lie down and bleed out without stress. Who knows, it could have managed to get up and run a few miles before dying and you might not have ever tracked it and recovered it.

What you "should do" is not worry about it. If you hunt- you kill. If that turns out to be a problem for you, then don't hunt anymore. That does not make you a wuss, it makes you smart. No need in stressing yourself over something you do not enjoy.
I quit hunting in 82. Not because it bothered me, but because it bothered my pretty young wife. I did think about it for a long time. I decided to keep the wife...and never regretted it. I still shoot often, but only paper now. I have just as much fun, and no mess.

I doesn't sound like the deer was smoked if it ran off and didn't rapidly die.

you need to practice shooting and take a close look at a deer anatomy diagram.

Dustin....never take advice from someone too spineless to even use a screen name.....you did ok....the deer wasn't suffering as bad as some do.

smoked??? Watch a lot of TV?
So here's my question for you. You can see the deer thrashing around, so you have a shot. Why didn't you take it?
You only wait a half hour (or whatever) when bow hunting. (Which is why I no longer bow hunt. Something about clean instant kills.....)

If you actually hit the heart WITH A SLUG, the deer wouldn't have lasted 20 feet or 20 seconds. Smoked? Read some Hunting Magazines to polish up your BS act. You have a genuine interest in hunting or you won't be in here. Get a 243 and some range practice. Then go out and make it real.

I cannot stand morons like you mate ...... have you no conscience for the life you have taken and what right have you to take a life .......... like I said .......... just a Moron

You did fine, a good hit will cause a deer to bleed out. More shooting isn't always the answer. As for all of the responses about whether or not you hit the heart - as soon as you gut the deer you find out what got shredded and what did not, so it isn't even a debate. You gutted it, you say heart shot, it was a heart shot.

There isn't a whole lot more you could have done in the situation. Had you approached too soon, he might have gotten enough of an adrenaline surge to make a run for it. Even when hit well, animals cling to life - a deer that is dead on its feet can run a long way before the signals to the muscles finally stop. Or it could charge at you, or thrash around and hit you accidentally. By staying in your spot, you eliminated many of the things that could have gone wrong.

You did fine.

The mean reason I was taught to wait - is so the deer does not use it's last ounce of energy to do a Hail Mary run of leap into some place that would make salvage of the meat a living nightmare.

If the thing was running in small circles or dragging a busted leg or screaming, etc etc - here you would obviously want to put it out of it's pain. Yours didn't do that - so yes - you did perfectly correctly.

Here's the thing...you go down to it too early and you're:

1) Scaring it more...give it some peace in its last moments. Letting it bleed out a little longer alone is not always a worse thing than ending it quicker but scaring the bejeesus out of it as you approach and come up to it.

2) Often they'll use what strength they have left to dart off to where you'll never find them (knew a person that did this and FOUND CHUNKS OF A LUNG, and still the deer wasn't around...they can do amazing things off adrenaline). Losing the meat, and therefore essentially having killed without any valid end result. Most anything that makes a high probability of you losing the meat is pretty much by default unethical hunting.

So in other words: what you did was fine. This is killing...sometimes it will be unpleasant for the entity being killed. You try to minimize that, yes...but you don't sacrifice the meat in the name of cutting off a few minutes of bleed-out time. That would mean a wasted kill...and that's worse.

perfect thats what you want is them to lay down an die calmly.