How Does a Gut Shot Deer React?
Deer, when shot by a hunter, react in many different ways depending on where they were shot and with what caliber of bullet. When a deer is shot in the gut, it immediately reacts by obeying its fight-or-flight instinct. For relatively harmless prey creatures such as deer, the only real option is flight. After being gut shot, however, the deer’s mobility will be severely impeded. Because of this, a gut shot deer will attempt to flee and enter any nearby brush as quickly as possible, but it will move much more slowly than it normally would. A deer that has been gut shot often takes on a sort of “hunched” posture, attempting to avoid using the muscles that were damaged when it was hit. How Do I Track a Gut Shot Deer? Oftentimes a gut shot deer doesn’t bleed too much compared with a deer that’s been hit in a better area. Instead, many times a gut shot deer will leave behind a trail not of blood, but of partly digested food. This trail will generally consist of vegetation that the deer has
