Using a bow with a Creeper nearby crashes the game

Whenever I use a bow near a Creeper that is close to dying, the game hangs the moment I release the arrow. To close the game, I have to open task manager and try to end the Minecraft task. After a few seconds it returns as not responding. I can end it using the not responding window, but occasionally it returns a message saying Java has crashed and Windows is collecting info about the problem. When I restart Minecraft, I end up showing up where I was about 10 seconds before the bad arrow was fired. It's caused numerous deaths and holes in my world.