Worst Shot Turned Out To Be The Best Shot

[dwerner]

Most cattle ranchers in Namibia hunt plains game for the meat and not for their trophies. So one aim is always to have the least damage to the meat which is why some farmers tend to shoot at the neck or head.

I was once accompanying a farmer who shot a kudu. The wounded kudu ran away and when we followed the tracks there was blood everywhere. On the ground, the grass was covered, and in the trees. The kudu did not make it far, about 100m. Upon inspection the bullet severed the main artery to the head as if it's throat was cut. The kudu was totally bled out.

But the funny part was that the farmer apparently aimed for the vital area behind the front leg and instead shot it in the neck. I must add that it was a quick free standing shot.

 

[owenowen]

Hi,

On a slightly different note, once my Uncle told me a true story as a small child that he was out on a hunt in the Eastern Cape when he shot at a moutain reedbuck and the same shot went right through and hit a klipspringer stone dead ! 2 species one shot

 

[Umebo]

Nosejob

An older gentleman hunting moose on the same area as I do once by mistake shot a moose bull straight through the nose. I was called there to start tracking it with one of the dogs but it lay dead about 100 meters away. Apparently it had drowned in its own blood. Sometimes you are lucky!

 

[Christopher Wettstein]

Something happened with my brother, but with a blesbok and an impala. Both stone dead.

 

[BryceM]

Just after the dinosaurs left, my dad and I were hunting antelope in Idaho. We kept jumping this same little bunch near a certain field. They consistently ran off the same way each time. The next time we got smart. My dad dropped me off near the escape route and he drove over to where they usually were. Sure enough the little herd ran right past me. I picked out the buck and fired. I was thrilled to see the buck laying right where I shot him. We went over to get him and found him stone-cold dead. The funny thing was that we couldn't see the bullet hole.

We gutted him out and again - no hole. It was right around then that we noticed the width of the horns kept changing. Apparently I had shot him in the head. Apart from being an excited 15 year-old I have no other excuse. I was shooting from a bipod in a sitting position. I tried to play it cool, and tell my dad that I did this on purpose. Ha! In retrospect, my shooting was really horrible in those days. Every once in a while it's better to be lucky than good.

 

[Bert the Turtle]

My 9 year old son shot a blue wildebeest through the carotid artery with his 243. From the way it acted, we thought it was a good heart shot (which at 40-50 yards from a stand, it should have been!) As it slowed down and staggered to a fall, we noticed it was spraying blood everywhere. It went about 40 yards and dropped dead.

If I thought there was any way to do it reliably, I'd take it as a preferential shot. Just no possible way you could lose the animal: the blood trail wouldn't be much better if you used a paint roller to make it. It is really too bad that it is sheer luck to hit it.

 

[Craig Willey]

This past winter I made bad shot on a red deer. Shot through some brush at about 50 meters aiming at the heart/lung spot. The bullet struck a small limb, and went 30 cm to the right, cutting right through the neck arteries; missed the spine. He hit the ground on the spot, kicked with his hind legs in a circle for about 20 seconds, and was dead. I stood there dumbfounded for about 5 minutes expecting him to jump up and run. There were only a couple of drops of blood on the ground, and it took a minute to figure out where I hit him. There was a small entrance wound on the front of his R-shoulder, and a small exit on the L-neck; both holes only had a couple of drops of blood around them. When I field dressed him, he had a golf-ball sized wound channel through most arteries and veins in the neck.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Some days it just pays to be lucky.

 

[archer36]

The best bad shot going well is a femoral artery hit. A huge blood trail and animal dead in about 50 yds.

 

[Red Leg]

Hunt enough and weird things happen. Many years ago, I shot a whitetail with a .300 Savage (basically .308 ballistics) and he dropped at the shot. It was very late, and my intent had been to hit him in the base of the neck. I threw him whole in the truck and carried him the skinning shed where I realized that I had hit him very low in the chest, forward of the shoulder. Upon gutting and skinning, I discovered the bullet had gone through the brisket muscles without penetrating the chest cavity or cutting any major arteries. I have no idea what killed that buck.

 

[Craig Willey]

Maybe a bullet fragment broke off and hit the magic kill button. I shot a deer last year with .308 Win 168 TTSX, did a heart/lung passed through, came out at a 45 degree angle, and hit another deer 25 yards away. A heard of red deer came out, and I waited until one cleared the group, with enough room that I don't injure another animal, but the bullet had another idea. The second deer was hit in the shoulder and stunned, so I dropped it with a second shot. I love that TTSX and TSX. I must hunt lead-free, and got 6 animals with 6 shots last season from 168 TTSX and 150 TSX.

 

[Jumo Jaeger]

When I was a teenager, I hunted mule deer with my friend and his dad. His dad was an ER doc. We used 30-06s and a sporterized .303. we were hunting for venison, not trophies.

We always aimed for the neck. Over three seasons, we got five deer - always with neck shots. Sometimes we missed but never found any blood. We never had to track a wounded deer. But every neck hit anchored the deer. One time a 30-06 bullet found its way all the way down the center of the spinal canal.

Do how come plains game hunters don't use neck shots?

 

[archer36]

When I was a teenager, I hunted mule deer with my friend and his dad. His dad was an ER doc. We used 30-06s and a sporterized .303. we were hunting for venison, not trophies.

We always aimed for the neck. Over three seasons, we got five deer - always with neck shots. Sometimes we missed but never found any blood. We never had to track a wounded deer. But every neck hit anchored the deer. One time a 30-06 bullet found its way all the way down the center of the spinal canal.

Do how come plains game hunters don't use neck shots?

Ruins the mount.

 

[PARA45]

I shot a deer with my Ruger Model 77, MK-II, shooting 180 grs Accubond reloads. I hit this deer behind the shoulder, and the deer collapsed. As I chamber another round into the rifle, the deer jumped up and ran. I sat in my stand scratching my head in disbelieve. I walked up to where the deer was, and there was a blood trail Ray Charles could have followed. I found the deer dead about 75+ yds in the woods. When I opened him up, the heart was almost cut in half and the lungs were nicely turned into mush. I still don't know how this deer ran like nothing.

 

[archer36]

I shot a deer with my Ruger Model 77, MK-II, shooting 180 grs Accubond reloads. I hit this deer behind the shoulder, and the deer collapsed. As I chamber another round into the rifle, the deer jumped up and ran. I sat in my stand scratching my head in disbelieve. I walked up to where the deer was, and there was a blood trail Ray Charles could have followed. I found the deer dead about 75+ yds in the woods. When I opened him up, the heart was almost cut in half and the lungs were nicely turned into mush. I still don't know how this deer ran like nothing.

They say African Game are tough. I think a Whitetail Deer has them beat.

 

[Hank2211]

Some days it just pays to be lucky.

I will take lucky whenever it comes my way.

A couple of years ago I was hunting for as old and worn out a dugga boy as I could find. I had tracked lots of buffalo over 10 days, but they were always too good looking to shoot at. Finally, early in the morning of my last day, we came across a small herd of bulls feeding. One way exactly what I was looking for.

The distance was about 80 yards. He had no idea we were there. Everything was perfect. No rush. I lined up his shoulder with my .375 (TTSX). I took a deep breath, let it out and slowly squeezed the trigger. All the time in the world. At the shot, the buff didn't buck or jump. He and his mates joined up and stared at us (malevolently, I would say) from about 60 yards. My PH said "don't move but be ready". Ever the optimist, I whispered "I must have missed." The reply "not if that fountain of blood shooting from his neck is any indication."

The others left and our buffalo went into the reeds and tall grass. We went in slowly, and by the time we found him, he was down but still very much alive, bleeding another gusher every time he swung his neck to try to get us. (No one told him, I guess, that he had no horns left - clearly buffalo spare a thought for each others' feelings).

It took him a while to bleed out, but I think by the time he was done, most of his blood supply was sprayed on and around him.

 

[arizonajake]

A buddy and I were on the highway one day, when we passed a coyote which was watching cars go by, about 50 yards from the highway. My friend, who was driving, stopped and got out of the truck, went quietly behind a bush and took at shot at the coyote, which was focused on me, with his .357 magnum S & W M-19. At the shot, the coyote fell as if hit by lightning. About 15 seconds later, as we were approaching him to skin him, he got up shaking his head and took off running as if he were drunk, never to be seen again. We concluded the bullet must have bounced off the top of his skull, knocking him out for a few seconds, causing him nothing more than a bad headache. Worst shot turned out best for the coyote.

 

[Dukeisok]

My 13 year old took a careful aim for a broadside 15 yard high heart shot with a crossbow on a smallish 8 point whitetail on our land. The deer jumped at the shot and ran off. He came down to the house to wait it out for 20 minutes or so. We found the bolt on the ground with bright red blood all over it. Helen Keller could have blood trailed that animal. Blood sprayed 6 foot in the air over everything. Found him still alive but unable to move about 40 yards from where he was hit. 22 behind the ear finished him (legal in archery season in nc). The bolt went through his pelvis, hitting both femoral arteries and blood was spraying out. His guts were intact as the bolt almost miraculously passed through the muscle, missing the peritoneal cavity. Adrenalin is a powerful blood vessel constrictor, shunting blood to the vitals and away from the muscles. As soon as it wore off he would have collapsed, similar to the golden hour in a trauma patient. Amazing how God designed things to allow even a fragile 140 pound whitetail to survive acute blood loss of at least 50% of his volume. I can only imagine a lion or cape Buffalo if fully wound up. Agree it is better to be lucky than good any day.

 

[BourbonTrail]

In high school, I shot a button buck at last light with a Mossberg 500 12ga. It was about a 100yd shot with no optics, and I was aiming for the vitals. He was DRT, but upon inspection I had hit him in the neck. It could have been me, it could have been the brenneke slugs, but it worked.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

Two...

I took a 22 yard shot at a big whitetail doe with my bow a number of years ago. She was broadside at the time. Perfect, right? As my fingers slipped from the string she turned to walk away and I felt the horror set in. It hit her in the arse. She ran maybe 20 yards and fell over. I was confused. When I got to where she had stood, I found my arrow buried in the dirt a few feet forward of her initial position. Dressing her out I found the arrow went in a few inches to the side of the anus and exited in front of the opposite side front shoulder. It went all the way through and out and into the dirt. The bow was an old Bear set at 80, the arrow an Easton aluminum, and the tip a 4 blade 125 grain Muzzy.

In the 1990s I went out looking for meat (caribou) while living in a small village in SW AK. I found a cow across a steep sided drainage. She wasn't far - a hundred yards? - and she was facing away about to go over a rise. I was shooting a .300 WinMag and decided that even from behind it'd put her down so I took the shot. I hit her a bit low. She took several steps forward, then just fell and slid down to the bottom of the slope, trailing a wide swath of blood and intestines as she did. I was only maybe 25 at the time and too stupid to be curious about a bullet's effects on an animal. Whatever I hit low, it opened up a part of her like a zipper. She was mostly gutted by the time I got to her.