AH Members Willing To Bare It All?

[D-Orcutt]

My brother and i needed once 4 shots for the same duck. But in the end the bird was down.

Duck hunting shouldn’t count same as doves there’s a magic field around them sometimes

 

[NIGHTHAWK]

I’ve passed on shots that I knew I couldn’t make… Not an easy thing to do! Especially, on a nice Mule deer with a guide asking me If I was sure I didn’t want to try. I know I don’t want to wound an animal and have it run off and risk not recovering it. The embarrassment of missing wasn’t the concern.

However, on my last Safari I had a Black Impala move at the moment I pulled the trigger and it was gut shot. Had a follow up shot in short order. I wrote about it in my recent hunting report.

I also learned my lesson on shooting at a moving target. Hunting swamp deer on a driven hunt in the Atchafalaya basin in Luisiana I shot a running whitetail at 40 yards with buckshot and it ran off into thick flooded woods and took all day to find.

I spent a lot of time and money learning how to shoot long distance with my hunting rifle. I was already a good shot and well disciplined, but evidently, I had a lot to improve. These schools helped me improve a lot of basics that apply to hunting.

1. I didn’t know how to properly shoot prone. Most everyone needs help getting aligned behind their rifle.
2. I didn’t appreciate how canting your rifle changes your shot.
3. My grip changed on my trigger hand.
4. My finger placement on my trigger finger changed.
5. The way I put pressure on my trigger as it breaks changed.
6. My hand ergonomics changed on my Trigger hand.
7. The amount of pressure I put on my rifle against my shoulder is lighter.
8. I’m quicker to set up and make shots because I’m more confident due to practice and training. Muscle memory…
9. My breathing technique changed.

I learned how to use tools that make ranging and solving angles seamless.

I use DOPE, MOA, and Zero Stop scopes to make accurate shots while hunting.

I’m much better at judging and accounting for wind calls.

I’m still not good at judging distance without a rangefinder…

 

[Jeff505]

Zambia 2014, followed buffalo tracks from the Luangwa river for several hours up into tall grass. Trackers spotted a good buff, the sticks went up and I could see it facing me but with its body broadside. A shot through the shoulder and the buff just shook his head, another shoulder shot and it ran off. It turns out the buff was facing me and what appeared to be the body through the grass was the shadow of the tree it was standing next to. The trackers gave me odd looks and I’m sure wondered about my shooting ability. I could so clearly see the body broadside, even after the buffalo left. My first two shots at a Buffalo and I shot a shadow.

 

[Hogpatrol]

True story, happened to me and I'll never forget it. Big woods, oaks and beech trees, loads of squirrels, sitting under an oak tree with my 1100, plugged with three #6 high brass. Squirrel #1 high in a beech gets a load of shot, hits the ground, THUMP.
I get up, walk over, pick him up and put him in the back of my hunting vest. Go back to the tree, sit down and wait for another to show himself. A couple minutes pass and I feel something moving against my back. Squirrel # 1 wiggles out of my vest, makes a run for it to the nearest tree. While I curse the unfolding event, I fire three rounds and the ground blows up behind him with each shot. He makes it to the tree and is gone. Squirrel 4, me 0. Been forty some odd years and it still smarts.

 

[Hunter-Habib]

From Chapter II of my book: A Most Embarrassing Failure

”At 11:30 PM, the kid goat suddenly stopped bleating and simply kept staring straightways at something. Pachabdi motioned me to get ready, as he put his finger on the switch of the torchlight and pointed it at the direction where the kid goat was staring. The moment he switched on the torchlight, I caught a glimpse of a large pair of yellow glowing eyes roughly 80 yards away from where we were. Using the 2 glowing eyes as a reference point, I aimed an inch below (making an educated guest as where the chest might be) and pulled the trigger. As the tremendous blast of the 12 bore shotgun echoed through the entire mangrove forest, I heard the sound of a massive animal rushing off into the thickets. I had missed.

Pachabdi told me that 80 yards was far too long a range for a shotgun to perform accurately. As I began to curse myself, Pachabdi reassured me that the Royal Bengal tiger would return if we both remained quiet. He was of the opinion that the man eater had become intrigued by the kid goat (having never seen one in Talpatti before) and suggested that this time… I arm myself with the 7x57mm Mauser because it had longer range. I worked the top lever of my Sikender shotgun to open the breech but the ejector did not pop out the expended Eley Alphamax L.G cartridge. As usual, the defective ejector had once again overridden the rim of the expended cartridge … thereby causing a jam. But I had slowly come to expect this and I used the blade of my Buck Model 110 folding knife to forcibly pry out the empty cartridge. Loading in a fresh L.G cartridge and closing the breech, I pulled back the hammer of the shotgun and propped it against the launch’s railing. I took the forest department’s 7x57mm Mauser Churchill Model Imperial rifle in my hands and flipped off the safety catch. Pachabdi switched off the 5-cell torchlight and we began to wait again. The kid goat began to bleat again, out of loneliness.

At 1:08 AM, the kid goat suddenly stopped bleating and simply kept staring straightways at something. Pachabdi motioned me to get ready, as he put his finger on the switch of the torchlight and pointed it at the direction where the kid goat was staring. I raised rifle to my shoulder. The moment he switched on the torchlight, I caught a glimpse of a large pair of yellow glowing eyes roughly 100 yards away from where we were. Aiming an inch below the eyes, I pulled the trigger and the sharp crack of the 7x57mm Mauser echoed through the entire forest. As I heard the loud noise of the tiger retreating back into the thickets, I desperately cycled the bolt of the rifle (thus, ejecting the expended cartridge and getting a fresh one into the breech from the magazine) and fired another shot at the man eater’s direction. But it was all in vain. I had missed once again and had lost a perfectly good opportunity. I felt despondent with failure. Pachabdi informed me that the man eater would not be returning to this location, anymore. But he genuinely tried his best to comfort me, telling me that the forest department’s 7x57mm Mauser rifle was in very poor condition with terribly worn out rifling (I would eventually discover that Pachabdi was 100% correct in his assessment) and that it was not my fault. But I could not help thinking of myself as inept.

In the morning, I received an urgent message on the “Forest Queen’s” radio. A large band of heroin smugglers had been arrested by my range officers in the Shoronkhola forest range, and I was immediately required to go there in order to supervise the transfer and evidential processing of the confiscated heroin. I left Pachabdi behind in Talpatti with 2 armed forest sentries under his command. I told him that he was to remain behind and keep attempting to kill the man eater until I returned to Talpatti within 2 days. But fortunately, the Royal Bengal tiger was disposed of before I would return.

On the 1st of January, 1987 … Pachabdi had finally succeeded in killing the man eater. The animal had killed it’s final human victim (a local boatman) and had partially fed on the corpse. Pachabdi found the partially eaten human remains before sundown and used his Belgian 12 bore (loaded with Eley Alphamax L.G cartridges) to rig a gun-trap in the Royal Bengal tiger’s hunting trail. Then, he and the forest sentries spent the night on the forest department speedboat which they anchored in the wider part of a creek. At night, they heard the loud echo of a 12 bore shotgun’s discharge resonating through the entire forest range- a clear indication that the gun-trap had been sprung. In the morning, Pachabdi and the forest sentries returned to the kill-site of the man eater’s partially eaten human victim. And there, lying on the centre of the trail right next to the discharged gun-trap … was a massive dead male Royal Bengal tiger. He had been shot through the head by the gun-trap at contact range. A close examination of the pug marks confirmed that the dead Royal Bengal tiger was indeed the notorious man eater of Talpatti”.

 

[Newboomer]

Have managed to put everything I’ve ever shot at in Africa in the salt. 30 plus animals. That said, I’ve missed the first shot 3 times. Twice on bushbuck and once a kudu. IDK what happened on the kudu. Missed several whitetail back home before I ever got one. Missed the first at 6 years old, with a double barrel 12. Hunting alone. It was a different time……

I had a spell on my first safari of missing my first shot of the day three days running. All within good range, same gun, same load. off sticks It wasn't buck fever. Maybe jerked the trigger, wrong stance, laid the rifle on the sticks wrong. After those misses all were one shot kills. Never did figure it out.

 

[Kevin Peacocke]

I have missed a little more than I should of late, partly down to not enough mileage with the new double, but also a year or two more under the belt. So to try to polish up a bit I firstly went to a good optometrist and got a real going over. My new hunting glasses are fantastic, Zeiss lenses with ski slope coatings that make everything stand out like 3D. Secondly I have bitten the bullet and am fitting red dots on both doubles, the Heym will wear a Kahles, I am just waiting on the special base to arrive. This is a QD mount, so theoretically it can be whipped on and off, but I think I have to eat my earlier expressed love of open sights and concede that things have moved on. The Verney, now relegated to a light PG double will wear a Trijicon RMR. The final part of the fix is to just slow everything down a tad and take aim.

 

[Alistair]

Yup, we've all done it at some point.

My most embarrassing one was a guided hind stalk up in Scotland. A new estate for me with a stalker (pro hunter) I hadn't shot with previously. First shot of the day, prone, rock solid off a bipod, nice and easy at about 100 yards. I completely and totally fluffed it, a clean miss. To this day I have absolutely no idea what happened.

I even went so far as to recheck zero before we continued (it was perfect). I could distinctly feel the stalker looking at me like 'For heavens sake, what kind of soft southern amateur have I been landed with this time, what a noob'.

Happily, I redeemed myself on the next one and hit everything cleanly for the rest of the week, including some relatively difficult shots. There was certainly a bit of pressure on the next go around to prove my credentials though!

 

[Brent in Az]

I never miss....... that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.......LOL.

I've got many stories of the one's that got away or I missed, but one in particular, brings back memories of yesteryear while hunting with my Dad.

My Dad and I were hunting mule deer in east central Arizona, and we were a few miles from camp in the bottom of a deep canyon.
We found a spot where another canyon drainage met the main canyon we were in. A nice spot to sit down, have lunch, as well as a mid day siesta under some trees.
In the middle of our lunch, a couple of decent bucks had apparently decided that their bedding spot across the dry creek bottom was apparently not a good place to be.
These bucks jumped up and took off, hell bent for the horizon, in the great leaps and bounds that mule deer are known for, as my my Dad and I were frantically scrambling for the rifles.
Guns -a - blazing, like marines invading Iwo Jima, we let loose on the 2 bucks that were zig zagging thru the trees, and brush.
After searching for a good 30 minutes for blood, or a downed deer, we realized that in all the excitement we didn't hit a damn thing, except for trees and dirt.

 

[steve white]

I have missed a little more than I should of late, partly down to not enough mileage with the new double, but also a year or two more under the belt. So to try to polish up a bit I firstly went to a good optometrist and got a real going over. My new hunting glasses are fantastic, Zeiss lenses with ski slope coatings that make everything stand out like 3D. Secondly I have bitten the bullet and am fitting red dots on both doubles, the Heym will wear a Kahles, I am just waiting on the special base to arrive. This is a QD mount, so theoretically it can be whipped on and off, but I think I have to eat my earlier expressed love of open sights and concede that things have moved on. The Verney, now relegated to a light PG double will wear a Trijicon RMR. The final part of the fix is to just slow everything down a tad and take aim.

Not only do the iron sights get blurry with age, but it is oh, so easy to lift your head and elevate the sights. I wonder if sometimes we actually forget we're not looking down a shotgun rib, but if you elevate those sights you will surely go way high with the shot.
Red dots and scopes prevent that and other aiming errors.

 

[C.W. Richter]

Fletcher Crawford Jamison will not be featured under this thread. The natives called him Chimpongani (One who never misses!) Using old equipment and no scope, mind you!

Past experience has shown how important it is to check your (and mine!!!) equipment prior to hunting. I have many "iron-clad" rigs dialed in to perfection. But, several years back I did not check one of my most accurate rifles at the range prior to hunting, took it out on a very windy day (had a good rest) took what i consider to be a chip-shot at a deer at 200 yds and nothing. Then I did the same thing again with a mentored youth hunter along (some instruction that was!) The bore was gone on my favorite rifle, and back at the range i later found out the groups had widened considerably, and occasionally a bullet would fly way off course. Although the barrel was worn out, it was completely the operator's fault for not checking things out first. (I practiced extensively with this rig, shooting varmints in summer, lots of test handloads for different types of hunting, etc.) I suppose this is an extreme case, but it can happen to you too.

We have gotten away from it (probably to keep the place a sanctuary as much as possible,) but we used to put a full size deer target up at 100 yds and have each and every hunter check their rifle shooting at it prior to the season opener. Now we made a rule that everyone must dial in at their own public range close to home.

OMT-A neighbor (supposed to wear corrective lenses) didn't wear his glasses and he misses nearly everything he shoots at, but enjoys continuing to shoot at deer even after he should've downed the very first one. So, he gets laser surgery after about 13 yrs of missing and downs a split main beam 13 or 14 pt buck in the 14th year of hunting the farm. We were dumbfounded, as he didn't tell us about the eye work until after he got the buck. LOL I get my eyes checked every year, just prior to the season...

Come to think of it, I had a Misses but now I just have a Miss, so things are improving!
I've had more missed opportunities than misses, but I practice the rule of being familiar with your rifle (use them as much as possible, in the field, off-season, and do everything necessary to accurize them, including handloading if necessary.)

With that Title, I was mildly concerned I'd see unsavory photos of hunters (or huntresses) when I clicked on this post.

 

[meigsbucks]

I’ve missed a few…
An antelope: We put on a stalk and popped over the top of the ridge, expecting about a 150 yd shot. No antelope! The herd was coming out at the far end of the ridge. I swung around. My guide guessed it at ~300yds (before later range finders). I held a little high and shot under him. We checked to make sure we couldn’t find blood and paced it off: something like 410yds.
About 40 yrs ago I missed a huge mule deer THREE straight times at around 300yds. I was shooting a break open single shot 7 mag and sighted in for 250yds. I had been hunting in rain and snow for about a week. I had a solid position and held about half way up the body. At the shot, my guide said you shot over his back. I reloaded and held even with his brisket. AGAIN HIGH! The buck just stood there looking around. Reloaded and fired a third shot, holding with about six inches of light under his chest. AGAIN HIGH! This time the buck had enough and headed for parts unknown. When we got back to camp, we turned headlights on the target at the range. 3-4’ high. Turns out the forearm swelled with the rain. Had trouble getting the forearm off the rifle. Fortunately I had brought a second rifle and finished the hunt with that, taking another mule deer in that same drainage, on the last day, only about 150yds from where I missed the monster. (NOTE: I’ve bought exclusively synthetic or laminate stocked rifles since)
Early on my first safari in Zim. missed TWO Impala. One at about 145yds and another about 125yds. Just flat out missed. After that all one shot kills.
I did kill a tree branch with a .44 mag revolver. I was in a tree stand. The doe came trotting down the hill from behind me. I lined her up in my scope… BAM… the doe ran off and a branch about 18” in front of my muzzle bounced around. A nice clean .44 cal hole thru it.
Missed a Steenbok in Namibia at ~40 yds. It was behind a bush and couldn’t really see it. It popped out and immediately turned and ran. I shot and missed. He went about 75yds. We put the stalk on and I didn’t miss the second time.

 

[fourfive8]

Absolutely, we all have- either done it or will do it. I think the important part is learning from the mistakes and using some dedication to not make them again. Using good judgment with experience and good tools are also critical tools for hunters. About 52 years ago I learned both the hard way- or began the learning process... I rushed a shot at a steep downhill angle on a fairly decent mule deer buck, hit him solidly I thought... but using poor judgment combined with poor bullet led to bad outcome. I tracked for two days but never found him, losing his tracks in large areas of bed rock plates with sketchy tracks mixing with other deer. Poor judgement and bad outcome! The last one was 4 years ago on an impala. Clean miss at about 150 yds, dead steady off the sticks. To this day I don't know how, which in many ways is worse than being able to identify the reason- grrr. Same with bad hits on game- which we all have done or will do. A lot of quality shooting practice, learning the limitations of shooter and gun and learning to call the shot can all help in identifying and correcting the deficiencies in carpy shooting or carpy outcomes.

 

[JimP]

My first shot at a African animal, a impala at 200 yards. My rifle was sighted in for 250, I was sitting down with the rifle sitting on the sticks. Pulled the trigger and a nice clean miss. It was a good thing that the rut was going on and this gentleman was more interested in the females than he was worried about a nimrod shooting at him. We tracked him to a small clearing and got another chance at 90 yards.

The results is in my avatar.

 

[Deleted member 40394]

I have missed a hundred deer probably. More turkeys then I can count. But have killed a lot as well.
i shot at 15 animals In Africa but somehow managed to put em all In The salt. That’s what counts.

 

[Divernhunter]

to be honest the only animal I have missed in Africa is warthogs. I have flat out missed several and to this day I am not sure why. All were walking/running shots but I made others that were walking running on all sorts of game including wathogs. They just seem to have my number.

 

[sestoppelman]

I shot better on my second and third trips than before or since. Sadly have missed more than a few times or hit poorly.
My biggest mistake is not taking enough down time after the flight to get well. Flying really knocks me for a loop and it has costs me in poor shooting.

 

[LivingTheDream]

I have missed a lot, between squirrels, ducks, doves, deer, a blackbuck, impala, puku, a red hartebeest (didn't miss the 2nd shot), duikers...I have made some bad shots too and been able to recover the animals. It is something that if you hunt enough it is going to happen. The key is not letting your last miss cause your next miss.

 

[Tintin]

I've hesitated opening this thread, based on the topic, I was worried it might go down a 'Full Monty' or 'Chippendale' type path

possibly resulting in some images that might prove very difficult to unsee

 

[steve white]

I've hesitated opening this thread, based on the topic, I was worried it might go down a 'Full Monty' or 'Chippendale' type path

possibly resulting in some images that might prove very difficult to unsee

Don't want to have to put my eyes out, either--it was a tease