Have you ever had a what the h--l shots?

[JIsbell40]

I was bow hunting in 8th grade after class one day out of a summit portable. A 4 point came down the mountain behind me and I managed to get turned around and Begun my draw.


Due to the odd angle I was at when trying to draw back one of my limbs hit the rails of the stand. I flinched and punched the release mid draw.

As I stood there wondering what the heck just happened I heard a deer thrashing around and then just stop. I climbed down and somehow my Walmart brand broad head had hit this buck square in the jugular at 18 yards. That was my first and only bow kill and to
This day I have not hunted again with a bow. I figure I used absolutely all of my luck in that in shot so why try again?

 

[ShootMo]

I have only one story that really fits here.

It was a rainy, cold morning as I sat in a stand hunting whitetails. Two does broke out of the woods in front of me and bee-lined my stand. I swung on the lead doe as she got closer. Finally at about 40 yards out, I touched off the shot. She dropped dead without so much as a kick. When I got to her I first started checking for the entrance wound to verify where my hit was. I couldn't find a hole. Finally I rolled her over and realized my lead was a bit much. A perfect headshot. At my angle, that calculated to about 6 inches too much lead. Dead either way. But too much lead nonetheless.

And before everybody decides to bash me for shooting at a running deer, that's how you saw them in the highly pressured place we were hunting. They were almost always bumped by other hunters and were running. Besides, I was 15 then. So try to cut a youngster some slack on this one, please.

 

[Schnyd112]

2009 my dad shot a mule deer buck at about 400 yards with a 7 RUM. Impact behind the shoulder, just above his elbow, as he stood up from his bed. I watched hair fly and saw him start to hobble off. He quickly went into the aspen and we heard him hit the ground followed by some thrashing. Went to the impact zone, lots of hair, no blood. Followed tracks for the rest of the day and never found him. Saw a spot where he tripped over a root, tracks went right to it and a big disturbance in the leaves past it, but again no blood. I saw the impact. I could see a tuft of hair on his shoulder was missing. That's a kill shot. I was flabbergasted.

I had to go home the next morning, dad went back out looking for a dead deer so went super light and didn't take a rifle. It was raining and cold. Found the deer about 100 yards out of the aspen, not 500 yards from where we ran out of light, big patch of hair missing on his shoulder, alive and well. He was feeding up the mountain, not any noticeable limp or anything. When he knew he was spotted he bound off over the top of the ridge never to be seen again.

only explanation is that 140g bullet blew up when it hit him and didn't penetrate. I would still have expected to see blood, or a gaping wound on his side, but nothing more than a patch of hair was missing.

It has gone down as one of our worst hunts.on the way home the night before, we pulled all the lug nuts out of the driver side hub on the trailer. When we were packing up after we looked for the deer, a bungee cord snapped and chipped dads tooth. That was the last time the 7RUM got invited hunting.

 

[357Mag]

All -

Walking w/ a buddy who was tote'n a Win M-52 w/ a 4X mounted on it, and I had my Rem 870 16ga.
We were out looking for opportunistic shots on junk birds in the area.

Looked up and pointed out a starling in a tree some 110yd away. My buddy mounted his .22LR, and was prepping to take the shot standing. I started to rib him a bit, about the unlikely hood that he could......

Rifle goes crack, and the bird drops dead out of the tree. I note a second bird land on the same limb, about 2ft further out. Non-plused, I launched right back into another jab at him, and ...."crack "...... bird #2 falls from the same tree; dead. We live, we learn.


Out w/ another shooting buddy w/ his brand new .44MAg Super Blackhawk, loaded w/ some handloads I had made for him. 24gr 2400 under a 240SWC and LP Mag primer.

We were at some nearly unused rifle range, and I thought it'd be fun to see if he could hit a can thrown in the air.
Without warning, I launch the can.... and my buddy makes this just awefull looking swing up of the revolver, muzzle pointed at an angle above his forehead. With his 2 arms not even completely locked, he wings-off the shot; and blows 2 holes in the can before it even starts down.

Enjoying the fun of all that, I dare him to try it again; and sling off a second can. My buddy takes an even more ungainly looking noodle-arm shot, recoil taking his outstretched arms and the revolver clean up over the top of his head. Sure enough... another double-holed can, before I was even able to put a period on the sentence !



With regards,
357Mag

 

[shooter7]

My moment came during firearm deer season in Michigan when I was 16ish. I had my rifle zeroed before the season. All was well. A few days into the season I decided it was time to fill a doe tag. I had a nice mature doe at 50 yards. I was shooting out of a box blind and had a steady rest. I put the crosshairs just behind the shoulder and pulled the trigger. She dropped instantly. I figured I must have flinched and spined her. I walk up to her and there's no hole in the body. I then see a small trickle of blood just behind the ear. And that's how I found out my $40 Tasco scope was broken.

 

[Jonoton]

My dad did the same thing on a blacktail. He made an awful shot at about 120 yards. Just barely grazed the bottom of the ribs. The buck stumbled forward about three steps and died.

My wife shot a desert hare, dropped dead right when she pulled the trigger. Nothing hit it. It just died. We skinned it, nothing.

My brother-in-law did this last year on a cull buck. 120yds, 30-06. I was watching the deer staring right at us through my binos and figured he was waiting for a broadside, then BAM-poof and the deer was gone. No blood at the site, but a big tuft of white chest hair and white hair all over. We found the deer 20 yards away in the biggest pool of blood I've seen, no bullet to be found and no exit. Best we could tell was that the bullet glanced off the sternum and shattered it, and the deer running with that shattered sternum caused the actual killing damage to the lungs. I was sure we were in for a nasty gut shot deer, we lucked out.

 

[Vortex!]

Once back when I was in my mid to late teens, I was hunting with an open sights inline cva muzzleloader. It was getting dark and there was a nice doe about 30 or 40 yards off and so I aimed behind the shoulder and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared she was dead and laying right where I had shot her. I blew a fist sized hole right through the neck about six inches down from the base of the head.

 

[sturner]

A buddy shot a turkey on the fly with a 45-70

 

[Jonoton]

One I felt bad about-
I was taking a bunch of non-hunting family on a buggy ride and came upon a skunk in the road after barely making it through a mud hole. Skunk had no care, and we couldn't back up or turn around in the thick brush. I threw some small rocks to scare it off, and I don't really mind skunks. Little rocks weren't getting its attention, and i lobbed a softball sized rock that I thought might roll into it and get it scooting on it's way. Nope, broke mr skunk in half.

 

[seattleman1969]

Older friend of mine shot a whitetail at a steep downhill angle roughly 80 yards away. Just brushed the brisket. Knocked the hair off but never went through the skin. Died in seven steps. I'm still perplexed....

Gave that old deer a heart attack! On a separate note, love your profile pic. Morel season is almost upon us!

I have a couple bird hunting stories...

1. Just after getting out of the Navy I stopped at my dad's place and it was last day of quail season. As we were catching up on the porch a covey flew in and lit about 30 yards from us so we grabbed the shotguns and went after them. Got a couple on the initial covey rise and then went after a single I saw land near the creek bottom brush 1oo yards away. As I walked up to the edge the bird flushed into the very thick central Tx brush, I could see him flying toward an opening, dropped to a knee and timed the shot as best I could through the narrow window, fired, and heard him hit the leaves. My dad said I was smoking something, no way I hit that bird. I had to belly crawl in to get it to show him...

2. Duck hunting a SE Texas swamp, my brother and I were on either side of the root wad of a downed tree in waist deep water on the edge of a tree line. Ducks would fly in down this narrow cut right in front of us. My brother called out a duck coming in fast from his side, I got my shotgun up and just as I saw the bird come past the root wad, I fired. He was so close I could have smacked him, but, instead I blew the entire head, neck, and front 1" of breast completely off the duck.

 

[memtb]

A buddy shot a turkey on the fly with a 45-70

I hope that he "head shot" it! memtb

 

[Vortex!]

Back when I was working on the farm we had a lot of starlings and during the winter we would put out a little strip of grain to lure them in for the kill. We lined it up so we could shoot down the line from our point if ambush. One time I was sitting there with the 22lr and several birds showed up. I tried to line up two of them and after I shot there were three dead starlings on the ground.

 

[Ricky C]

Here is my what the %^&* story. I was stationed at Redstone Arsenal and I'm originally from MI. My cousins and Uncle hunted in the UP in the Iron Mountains for years. I was finally close enough to be able to go on a hunt with them. Since there was the possibility of some long shots, I took my 300 Wby. So one day I'm sitting in one of my cousins blinds, almost all of my cousins are taller than I am. A buck comes by at about 40 yards, I bring the gun up slowly and get him in the scope. I squeeze the trigger and there's almost an explosion of wood, dust and stuff. The scope cleared the logs of the blind, the barrel didn't. I was thinking well that sucked, no deer for me. But I stood up to look and there's the buck stone dead, not even a twitch left in it. A 180 gr partition went thru the log and then hit the deer in the neck. By the way, funnest hunt I've ever been on. Every night after hunting, we sit around and tell stories and laugh until you could hardly breath. Shot a few deer, had a skunk almost join us in the trailer, had a lynx stalk me. Great times.

 

[John Klingenberg]

I got invited to my neighbors hunting property out near Terlingua. Now these two brothers are in their 50s and 60s. They basically hate each others guts but they don't hide it. Hard core brother rivalry. We are unloading the truck and I see the older brother open his brothers gun case and crank his scope two full turns up and put the cap on. I'm staring slack jawed. He says "that mouthy fool always shoots his deer way out there and I have to hear about it for two years, not this year". Two days later we are up on a dirt hill with the younger brother about to squeeze off at one about 700 yards. Big brothers grinning behind the binoculars and I'm really uncomfortable. He shoots, deer drops D-R-T. Now I'm grinning and big brother is standing slack jawed. They start arguing and bickering while I almost pee my pants laughing. Gotta say, that backstrap was pretty good cooked over a few mesquite coals with a cold beer while they argued.