Thread: Hunting Has a Bad Habit of Kicking Your Arse

Just wondering how often this happens, like as happened to me recently
So Labour weekend we decided on a road trip and ended up staying with some farming friends in sth canterbury., Their property backs on to a small river where Fallow deer are often seen wandering out onto the crop paddocks. So a road trip isn't a road trip without the trusty .222 in the back seat right!!.
Waited till about 7pm ish and off me and mother go for a look. About half an hour later, finally found 3 Fallow out in the middle of the creekbed having a nibble. Ranged the nearest one at 180 yds, settled the crosshairs on the side of the head and bang
- flop. Excellent I thought, and even mother was impressed. Good shot I thought again to myself.



So now fast forward to last weekend. Spent all weekend out at our hut, and spent a bit of that time shooting paper at various ranges. 222 was shooting real good, and the 6.5 06 was grouping real tight at 200 yds
Out we went and my mates grandson shot a hind just before dark. Because of lambing we were limited to hunting in the same area the next night. Back we went and sure enough, heres 2 spikers and a yearling. Attached the bipod and dialled up the scope to 380 yds. Very casual and a bit complacent because of recent results. Crosshairs on the shoulder and bang..........clean miss out to the right by a good metre or so
Im like WTF......mate looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, his grandy looked at me and rolled his eyes. Still wondering what the hell happened, I walked back to where I was shooting from, and set up again.
Through the scope I could see where the deer was standing clearly enough, although the bottom of the scope picture was slightly blurry........shifted my head from the scope to look at the muzzle and sure enough, it was pointing through the tussock. The bloody bullet had skimmed the top of the ground. Talk about a self initiated arse-kicking. What a rookie mistake, just to casual and to complacent about the whole thing. Still pissed off as Im typing this but, thats hunting for ya. Its a great leveller