Thread: How far away was the last deer you shot???

Originally Posted by Tentman

So Andy and folks, tell us about your last miss on a game animal (any size or shape will do) . . .. ? Too keep it simple let's keep it to animals standing still. The reason I ask is it's often very difficult to remember misses. Harder still to determine if it was a "clean miss" or did you just not hear the hit, or be able to find it, or in many cases where it's across any significant amount of terrain, did you even go look?

This one is easy for me, had found a really nice fallow buck a few weeks before, hanging out with 8 does and young 'uns. Stayed well away and kept watching him, always in the late afternoon, could never find him in the mornings. finally decided the weather was right for a hunt and walked in his area. Poked around a few willows and gorse, put a pig up at about 10 metres. But the wind was all good and all I had to do was stalk along the bushline and keep my eye out. Along the way I had to dodge a few does, but they slowly fed away. So, still all good. After about 300 metres of this sneaky injun stuff i climb up about 2 metres on a game trail to a bit of a terrace. Couldnt see squat, bloody shoulder high gorse scattered everywhere. And then as i looked upwind and spotted something odd, couldnt make it out. Then it slowly rose to become a set of bloody big paddles, then it moved around a tad and then changed to antler below the paddles. This whole time Im trying to find something, anything, that would allow me to take the shot - nothing. So I figured, I've done this before, how many times? a few. So I slowly raised the rifle and seconds later the antlers gave way to head, then to neck. At this point Im thinking, Im all over this, what could possibly go wrong? As I watched through the scope, he looked around, chewed a bit, looked left, then right. And then he snapped back and just steered in my direction. i only had my head and rifle above the bushes, I was stock still just waiting for the opportunity. After what seemed like a bloody eternity, he went back to looking around his domain. At that point I squeezed the trigger aiming about 50mm below his nose height to give me heaps of elevatiion "play room". Bugger me if he didnt just up race off and I got several looks at him doing 90 to the dozen through the gorse. No blood, no staggering, bloody nothing! I was gutted, after all these years the only other head I want on my wall is a decent truly wild fallow buck. And I had just stuffed it up. Seventy metres. After 30 minutes of tracking him and putting the dog in, there was nothing, i had missed.

About 6 weeks later I was with a mate and his pig dogs, hunting the same area and a fallow doe hung in real tight after the dogs had bailed and as I was walking in to the bail, she exploded out of the scrub about 10 metres from me. Ran right out in the open. I gave a bit of a hind/fawn call and she stopped side on at 40 metres. I dropped her, with the same rifle, aiming for the front shoulder cos I didnt want a repeat performance. Bugger me, one tiny little bullet hole exactly where i aimed!