Interesting arrow sign - how was this deer hit and wounded

Andy Bensing writes:

Here are some pictures of an arrow I found laying in a large, bloodless bed, 750 meters from the hit site, where we jumped a buck that had apparently been laying in that bed for 46 hours. At first I thought the rings on the arrow shaft were rubber bands from an expandable but the hunter was using a fixed blade. The arrow actually had 3 thin rings on it like the skinny one on the left and one fat ring like you see on the right. The missing rings and the broken off pieces of the rings still visible in the photos were destroyed by me as I picked at them trying to figure out what they were. After I determined they were not bloody rubber bands I thought they were pieces of muscle but when I chipped them off, (they were very hard and stuck to the arrow) they dissolved in my fingers like blood when I moistened them with saliva. The arrow was not broken but had been pulled out of the insert, which I assumed was imbedded in a bone in the deer. The shaft was clean with no signs of blood except the rings but there was some blood on all 3 fletchings. There was a small drip of very fresh brown juice on a dry leaf in the bed, and my dog went hot as we tracked out of the bed. The hunter did not see the arrow hit the deer and the easily seen blood he tracked till it stopped at 600 meters was bright red.

Click on the picture to enlarge

I am open to suggestions but after thinking about the whole picture I surmised that the deer was hit in the large bowl just in front of the left rear leg and the broad head likely exited the flank on the other side and reentered the deer imbedding itself onto the femur bone of the far side leg. The reentry into the inside thigh muscle on the far side would account for the good muscle blood trail and its sudden stop. I believe the deer laid with the arrow in him for a long time. The rings were created by small amounts of blood pooling and drying at the juncture of the arrow shaft on the skin. The deer would lay still for awhile, the blood would dry, and then the deer would shift a little which would move the arrow in or out a bit and a new ring would be created. I think the buck eventually worked the arrow out with his mouth and that explained why the blood on the fletchings was thicker at the fletching/shaft juncture but clean on most of the fletching body.

We chased this buck for over a mile and never got close enough to see him. We had to stop several times to get permission to cross yards in the suburban neighborhood. After tracking him as far as we did and with daylight gone we decided to give up the chase. In big woods I would have just kept pushing him, hoping to wear him down or perhaps waited till morning and got back on him again. Tracking at night in NJ in the suburbs with lights is not the best idea. The police show up quick and knocking on doors at night for permission does not work well either. I am sure this large bowl shot deer will eventually die but it might not be for several more days. This call was 1 ½ hours from my house and I had other fresh calls to do in the morning so I did not go back.