Double doe Saturday.

Well I finally successfully stuck a deer on Saturday! To top it off Jay and I both got does at Lochloosa WMA. I haven't talked about it a lot but I have missed, mainly undershot way to many deer over the last couple years. Bought a range finder and I am getting closer but still missing them.
Well here's the story. The mornings hunt had a doe and a couple hogs just not close enough. I wanted to head more toward a hardwood head for the afternoon. On the way in we came up on a fella setting up and headed up and away from him. That put us above the hardwood head, but we had lots of sign, despite it raining every afternoon. We have been setting up a little ways from each other ,kinda to cover different paths. It has worked well one person see's an animal but has no shot the other might. The first doe Jay took came past me first(and I missed it). This time we were able to see each other at maybe 60-70 yards.
Shortly after set up, it rained! again! Not too bad this time. During the rain the wind changed and it became obvious that I had a hog to my left in the protected wet area. It got wind of me and started pacing around in the water. As the rain stopped I guess it decided it was safe enough to go back to feeding. It stayed the whole afternoon there feeding and grunting and blowing bubbles.
So as the day rolled on I got a radio call from Jay that he had something coming in above him. I stared and stared trying to see what he had. Finally I saw a doe, then another one. I watched him get ready to shoot. Unknown to me he had a group of 4 does and had made the decision to take the last doe in hopes that the others would run my way. After the shot his doe ran off behind him and the rest are now running right at me. I remembered to bleat at them and they all stopped. I could hardly believe it. I was already drawn up and thought the one to the left looked like a choice. I shot and off it ran with one other doe. I guess all the chaos had these does really confused because the last one was still standing there. I loaded another arrow and quickly aimed and shot at that one. I heard for the first time, the thwack that people talk about. Called Jay and said I finally shot a deer. Now we have to find them.
This place is very full of water, and I think that helped. We both made note of water sounds to help find them. We both got down to check arrows. I had one clear miss (again) and no second arrow. Jay's arrow showed a good hit, but both of us could find no blood. The first doe of the season a few weeks ago was a real hard trail, because she changed direction many times. Now we had no blood. Since it had rained just a couple hours ago, hoof prints were used along with sounds of where each went. Jay's ran down a water strip between berms to a hill where we found running hoof prints and we spread out from there and found her. Mine bolted into the hardwoods but I heard it cross two water strips then nothing. We found were she went in and copied the water crossings. luckily she dropped in a clearing. We successfully found both deer, and it was very careful study of what happened right after the shot that led to us finding them. Don't give up. I was against getting into archery from horror stories of deer lost. I'm getting over it with my first archery deer.