BWCA deer heart Boundary Waters Group Forum: Hunting in the BWCA
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brantlars
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12/24/2018 08:19AM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)

I was cleaning a deer heart this morning for Christmas dinner. I found this small stick lodged in the septum. The deer was lung shot with an arrow and the heart went straight from the deer to my pack. Heart was completely in tack..no punctures. Any idea how it got there? It was a dead piece of branch that was slightly decomposed.
 
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gravelroad
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12/24/2018 09:30PM  
It’s not impossible for me to believe it was the result of a puncture in the chest by a branch while running in the woods. SAR dogs and other dogs that run through the woods off lead are vulnerable to this type of injury. I can easily imagine the wound - it’s the survival that amazes me in this instance.
 
brantlars
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12/26/2018 07:11AM  
that's about the only thing I can come up with too. It would have had to happen awhile ago as there were not wounds. The only other thing I can think is that it got sucked into the deer from the arrow wound when it fell to the ground..but that seems unlikely too.
 
12/27/2018 10:03AM  
Thats an interesting one. I can envision how it might end up there but I can't imagine it happening without visible signs of trauma. If it was from a puncture from a stick that broke off you'd expect to see some sort of scar tissue or other sign of damage. When something foreign like that gets lodged inside the body there is usually some sort of scar tissue growth around it to seal it off. I think it would be awfully rare to find a stick or other foreign object found anywhere in the body of deer without the body reacting in some way to the foreign object. Also survival would seem to be a very rare thing in the case of it being in the heart.

Where did your arrow enter relative to the heart? Was the stick completely encased inside the heart? Any chance it could have happened during field dressing?

Lastly are you 100% sure its a stick? Could it possible be something else?

I'm really just grasping at possible explanations as that is a baffling discovery.
 
brantlars
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12/30/2018 05:02AM  
I am sure it was a stick..peeled some bark off it. There was no scar tissue anywhere and the arrow did not hit the heart. It must have happened while gutting. It was a healthy doe, 150lbs. You wouldn't think a deer could survive long with a stick in the heart.
 
yogi59weedr
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02/09/2019 09:01PM  
Deer heart for Christmas dinner ....gotta love it... how do you prepare it.
 
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