Late Bow, Bad Shot Placement, Thank God for Tracking Snow

Late Bow, Nice Doe, Bad Shot Placement, Thank God for Tracking Snow was recorded on 12/19/19 it was a morning bow hunt for a large buck I have been hunting, there are several in my area, or a nice sized doe. I was in the stand a 4’ x 4’ x 5’ high enclosed stand with heat in four cedar trees 25’ up, this is my late season stand when the weather is too cold for me to sit out in the wind. This morning it was 4 degrees F, not so nice to sit outside in the wind, but that is what gets the deer out of their beds looking for forage. I got in the stand and set up my cameras and at 5:00am I heard a deer blow, so I got settled in quietly, and watched with my binoculars. At 5:15 two does and two fawns came in, one doe and the two fawns kept going up the slope, but the one doe stopped, then I seen a large figure come into view, I put the binoculars up and could see his nice thick main beams and his tall brow tines, he and his doe stopped to have some turnips on my food plot and a few apples I had put out, they stayed there until 5:36 am, all I could do was watch as the doe left and the big buck followed 15 or so seconds later both going in the same direction as the does and fawns that were there previously. I figured it was the second rut, the does didn’t take in the first rut, and these were older fawns just coming into estrous for the first time. A half hour or so went by and a lone doe fawn came in and milled around for a while then left. At 7:15am a group of four or five does and fawns can down the slope, a nice doe came right in front of me and a while later her hesitant fawn followed, several others were off to my right, and in front on the food plot. I got all my cameras set up for the shot, made sure my doe was a doe and not a nubby buck or a buck that lost his antlers early, backed my butt all the way to the back of the blind so my top bow limb would not hit the front wall of the blind, I then picked my shot, and took it. I followed through on the shot and saw that the arrow had went through her chest, I watched as she and her fawn ran straight away up a well used trail. About a half hour later I went down and walked to where I’d shot her and found some blood but no arrow. I followed the blood, not a lot, for about 70 yards and decided that since I had not found her yet and the blood trail was not the best so I would back out watch my video footage and decide on a game plan after that. After watching the video which show my arrow was a little farther back that I had thought, I decided to give her some time to bed down and bleed out. At 2:00pm I went back out got back on her trail and noticed that there was a drag path on her right side where the end of the arrow was dragging through the snow, which was easier to follow than the slight blood as I am color blind and have a hard time distinguishing color differences. I went across a field where she had run and would have lost her for sure if not for the snow and the arrow dragging!!! I went into the next woods and as I quietly walked I looked up several times and after about 60 yards there she was laying straight away from me 20 yards away looking over her back at me, I did not expect to find her alive so I did not have my bow, just my gutting knife, a drag rope and a rag. I hung the rag on a small tree and shuffled my feet out of the woods to leave a great trail to follow back to the hanging rag after I would get my bow. I live only 150 yards from my tree stand so at least I didn’t have far to go. When I accomplished several tasks that awaited me when I got home, and a deadfall I had to cut to get to the field with my wheeler, I’d finally got back to where she had been at 3:30. She wasn’t there? She had moved, so I walked slowly with a camera on my bow facing forward to catch the action, and after walking about 30 yards or so past where she had been laying previously, there she was again looking at me over her back, I didn’t realize it but the camera had stopped recording, I made a semi circle around her back to find the right shot. I was at about 15 yards, drew the bow and sank an arrow in the right side of her back quartering up into her chest cavity, her head flung forward and I watched as the lighted nock on my arrow thrust with every beat of her heart for about a minute until it finally stopped and all I could think of was it would have been nice if I could have made that heart shot on the first shot. I thanked the Lord for helping me find her to put food on someone’s plate and apologized for all the needless pain I had put her through.