I Know This Is LRH... But What Is The Shortest Distance You Have Taken A Live Target?

I killed a caribou at about a foot with a recurve as it fed on the willow bush I was hiding behind.

C-130 Dude said:

Was that guy trying to get back to his Neanderthal roots? Maybe having a big gun on your belt would have givin him a little assurance and let climb down that tree earlier. More power to him.

As a matter of SOP for me, I always carry a pistol when I hunt no matter what I'm hunting or whether it's bow, rifle, shotgun, or pistol. It doesn't matter. ...But spear season, ha!

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Naw, more like Iron Age roots. He's a big time bowhunter and his ranch is bowhunting only. He bought a local sporting goods store and archery proshop in Abilene and renamed the store "into the outdoors" he sold Bows, guns, and knives. Anyway he saw the spearheads in the Coldsteel catalog and decided he would use one to kill a deer on his ranch. He stabbed the first doe with his spear through the window of a double bull tent blind. Then he started throwing it, he got good at it and decided to try his luck bear hunting. BTW that bear was his last spear hunt. He hung the spear up and went back to strictly bow hunting after that. Here is a picture of one of the better bucks he took with his bow on his ranch near Buffalo Gap Texas.

Just got a gopher today @ 3ft with my Daisy pellet gun...

Pastor Gun.zales said:

I live up in the Ozark Mountains and there are trees everywhere here, therefore we get extremely few shots past 100 yds on deer, but that also means that deer can come right up on you in no time without you even realizing it.

My shortest shot that I have ever taken a whitetail deer is about 5 feet! Yep, 1.666 yds with a crossbow. What is your shortest shot?

View attachment 569619 This isn't the doe I shot at 5ft, but it shows how close they get.

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Contact shot from the ground on a big buck that ran up next to me while I was standing in tall geass waitng for a doe family group to work down a a tree line. I had to turn, lean back, and pull to clear the arrow up his side. Arrow ended up verticle in the ground. I have many experiences of bow and rifle shots under 15 feet and as close as 5 feet. I am a stalker and still hunter.

Several years ago in Lima ,Mt I shot a moose at 6 paces it was cold and blowing snow and she stomped and kept listing her head back and forth and walking towards me so I filled my tag. Next day I shot a black bear with a recurve bow at 5 feet

Shortest distance for me on a whitetail deer, was 75 yards. Rifle was my ol' 1903A3 Springfield 30-06, aperture sights.

Back when I was a teenager a buddy and I decided to try our luck with calling foxes with an electronic predator caller (the ones that actually had a big megaphone mounted on top of a tape deck ). We dressed in camo, walked into the woods and set up against a tree…me looking one way and my buddy looking the other way. We fired up the caller and within 30 seconds I spotted a gray fox trotting straight towards me. I let that fox come all the way in (we obviously had the wind perfect without even knowing it) and when he was @ 3 feet away from the muzzle of the Browning BPS 'Stalker' 10 gauge I let him have a dose of Triple B's….. Scared my buddy half to death because he never saw the fox coming in. I was quite proud of BOTH accomplishments!

Closest was a red fox with a recurve bow. I was sitting in a brush pile. Called it in with a Weems duo tone call. Squeeked on the back of my hand at full draw. It would have been impaled on the arrow if the bow had not been drawn. Arrow entered hide before it cleared the bow.

Second closest was with same recurve bow. Shot a whitetail doe through a Y in an old elm tree. The tree was big enough it would take 2 people to reach around it. I was on one side the deer on the other. Probably 3 feet min 4 feet max shot.

Bow was an old Browning Cobra bought in the late 60s both shots occurred in early 70's.

Have shot several deer and a bear from a tree stand that were almost straight down shots with various compound bows over the years.

Deer inside of five yards on several occasions. Closest was coyote running from other coyotes, it was looking back when I shot it with a12 Ga.Turkey load at three feet. Then opened up on the five others that had been chasing it. I was setting on the ground with my 6 year old son at the time, scared the snot out of him. He thought the coyote was going to be in our lap in next second.

Craig Miller said:

I was in an elevated blind in South Texas

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Where were you? I grew up in Freer -- I GUESS that's South Texas...

10 yrds, 17HMR, squirrel

he was then missing a head

3-4 ft approx… sitting on a ridge high up in blue ridge mountains… just at daylight… against a stump. Watching the other ridge.. right in front of me.. (I did not know) was a deer trail that angled up the ridge I was on… buck came walking up it early one morning.. actually scared me for a sec… I don't think I even aimed… just pointed and shot.. I was 21 then. Gutted and cleaned it there.
I had walked all the way up the mountain at 4 am.. walked down to get my buddy.. walked back up.. and we drug it down.. took all day

Those days are over..I'm a little smarter now on where to find bucks that are not on Everest

Pastor Gun.zales said:

I live up in the Ozark Mountains and there are trees everywhere here, therefore we get extremely few shots past 100 yds on deer, but that also means that deer can come right up on you in no time without you even realizing it.

My shortest shot that I have ever taken a whitetail deer is about 5 feet! Yep, 1.666 yds with a crossbow. What is your shortest shot?

View attachment 569619 This isn't the doe I shot at 5ft, but it shows how close they get.

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5 ft. straight under my treestand

One of the closer ones that comes to mind was a buck in some canyon-type country in southern Colorado. I had just finished climbing to one of the upper benches that was sparsely covered in aspen trees and tall grasses. The weather was warm and the climb had been pretty stiff. I had just slowed before I came over the lip of the bench and switched from plowing uphill to sneak hunting. I was sweating pretty good. Too hot, I stopped to take off my old rucksac and shed a layer. I took off my orange vest and hat and hung them on a branch about eye level to me, shed my wool sweater and Pendleton shirt, then and knelt to open my pack and stuff them inside. I think it was the tiny clink of the metal buckle on the flap that he must have heard; suddenly a buck rose up out of his bed about 3 or 4 paces from me! He was staring intently above my head, at the vest swaying in the breeze that was from him to me (rising thermal). My rifle was leaning on a tree at arm's length. Keeping my eyes locked on the buck I verrrry slooowwly reached out, grasped the rifle and got it mounted to my shoulder. Amazingly I got that buck, and the drag was downhill. Back then I had a soft frameless rock climbing pack with limited capacity, and there was no way to strap on meat. I dragged that buck down cliffs and steep hillsides for a couple hours, until I figured my partners might be getting worried where I was, and after I checked in, we all went back to complette the drag. The help was nice.

On non-game, the summer before I hunted a bighorn sheep was one of an over abundance of meadow voles. They are very destructive, and had even been chewing holes in the house siding. There was a spot where about sunset every night they would stick their heads out from under some deck boards to forage spilled bird seed. So I set up with my Diana pellet rifle and went to work at about 6-7 feet. I had to take head shots mostly. When my shot at a ram came that fall, the muscle memory did all I needed for a quick shot.