Was this a right judgment call? Coyotes find the buck that was left overnight in the woods.

Ray Holohan, a UBT member from Illinois, wrote:

I got a call the other evening from a friend who had just arrowed a buck and was concerned about the hit. He came over with the arrow, which was covered with blood, but he had not seen where he hit the deer. He thought he had hit a little far back. I looked at the arrow - the blood was bright red and did not have any smell to it. The buck had ran a good 1/4 mile through a frozen chisel plowed field over to a adjacent hedge row where he lost site of it.

We discussed all the reasons why and why not we should go after it, from property line issues if we bumped it, up to coyotes if we let it set til morning. We finally decided to let it sit til morning. We went to the hit site first thing in the morning and could not find any blood on the heavy frost since it was 6 degrees. We decided to start the dog on the other side of the field near the hedge. We started Razen walking parallel to the hedge hoping to cut the trail. After a short distance we found a deer tail, then we saw a lot of hair at this point we looked into the hedge row seeing what was left of the buck, "not much". The coyotes had done their job. I apologized for making the wrong call. But after further examination  we noticed that the entrails were still steaming and the carcass was still warm, we noticed a wound bed about15 ft. away full of blood. I think the coyotes had got to the buck in the early morning hours and jumped him from his bed and finished him off. We were able to see the exit of the arrow and it was pretty far back, making me believe we might had made the right call.

We were able to save the head and cape for mounting, but while moving the head around for pictures the antler popped off. Had the buck had one more day he probably would not have got shot.