I thought that I'd revive this thread……with a miss that I still can't or don't want to believe!
It was October of '87, my second year of hunting in Wyoming after my job transfer landed me in Kemmerer, Wy.
I had made a few friends that were locals, one being a guy that worked for the Forest Service. He and I hit it off pretty good, when I went to him to register my bait location in the forest for my first bear hunting experience!
During one of our visits, we were talking deer hunting……when he gave me a tip that would ultimately haunt me the rest of my life.
He told me of a deer that some forest personnel had seen when they were doing a controlled burn, earlier in the summer. They had seen a deer that he referred to as "a dandy"! He told me exactly where the deer had been seen, and gave me a general layout of the area.
A few days into the deer season, found me at the little basin before daylight on my first day off from work.
The location was a small grassy, relatively flat basin/bowl of a few hundred arcres, with a pretty steep timbered ridge to the north and east. The timber started with a pretty open band of Aspen about 40 yards in depth just as the ridge started upward….with moderately thick conifer all the way to the ridge line overlooking the basin.
After daybreak I slowly started still hunting the ridge, working my way through up and down several times on a diagonal ……trying to cover as much country as possible.
Noon found me about 50 yards from the Aspens as I was walking west through the basin grasses, paralleled them on my right. Suddenly, from just inside the Aspens a deer bolted from it's bed, running to the west in the typical bouncing (like on a po-go stick) run that is typical of a spoked Mule Deer.
The deer was very large bodied deer with the largest rack that to this day absolutely dwarfs my little 27" buck and anything I've seen to this day!
This would be an easy shot of 50 yards or so, on the deer bouncing at a slight angle away from me…..almost a broadside shot! I felt very confident with this shot, as throughout the summer I had shot many Jack Rabbits on the run at similar distances….probably having about a 40+% kill rate.
I quickly brought my rifle to my shoulder, told myself to aim at the last rib…..with the bullets path taking out the offside shoulder!
At the shot I brought the rifle down from my shoulder, rolled the rifle into a position as to eject the fired brass into my left hand…..
Never leave a brass behind! 
As I was catching my brass, the deer now went into a true run, it was at this time I realized that ……I had missed! As I quickly chambered a fresh round, the deer now running near straight away, running of of a drop-off, now out of sight …..obscured by the edge of the drop-off.
I ran toward the drop-off, finally seeing the deer again…..running straight-away, probably 200+ yards away and putting more distance between us with each passing second! I fired two more shots at the fleeing deer before he entered some timber on the far side of the opening.
I spent about an hour retracing his path from the time I first fired, to where he disappeared into the timber! This is when I faced the realization that I had missed! Missed the biggest Mule Deer I'll likely ever see, with perhaps the easiest running shot I'll ever have again! For years I said that I think he had a 40" outside spread. I've since convinced myself that he probably was only 36"……only 36" !
To this day, that miss haunts me! memtb
sure I messed up once again but walked to the clearing and the Berger dropped him without taking a step right through the boiler room. Killed him within 30 yards of where I missed the day before. Thank God rutting whitetail make more mistakes than they should.
