I got into hunting as a kid but left it as a young suburbanite with family and work commitments, only to return to it late -- about ten years ago, after retirement. My first serious rifle as an adult was a .280 #1B.
Most of the 15 or so deer I have taken since were with #1s and MLs; 3 were with bolt rifles. All fell to one shot and most -- say, 75% -- in their tracks. BUT this is not a claim to my consumate marksmanship! Read on...
One buck -- my biggest ever, a 16 pointer -- I shot twice with single shots, but a weekend in time apart. When being dressed out, he displayed a diagonal barber job across his back from a ML round ball of mine fired nearly point blank three days earlier. The .280 used later only took one shot, DRT.
I would say 90% + of my shots are taken in stalking/ambush from the ground situations. The deer are standing, unaware, within 150 yards. I mostly use lung shots and larger caliber --7mm or above -- bullets that tend to jelly the lungs. And all were smaller eastern deer, except for 3 good size exotics.
I also have lost several -- mayber 3-4 -- hard-hit deer, mostly on late evening shots with heavy brush/low light obscuring the blood trails, And I have cleanly missed more than a few -- 5-6?--due to pure buck fever in surprise (to me) encounters. (I usually shoot over their backs when flusticated.)
Just as John's list of unnecessary second shots tends to obscure some of the relevance of his 1 shot effectiveness data, I would cite a reverse phenomenon. 2 of the 3 big exotics I shot with a .270 bolt gun --dropped at one shot, but IMO seriously needed another poke. One huge bodied critter took a .270 round in the lungs but a little back, and just stood there w/o moving until bleedout. (I wanted to hit him again but the guide said no, he is toast.) The other was a nice Axis deer that also took one in the boiler as he was grazing and he bolted about a hundred and fifty yards with his heart shredded! (Again, the guide said no need to shot him again.) Luckily, he ran straightaway into an open field and not into the thick stuff with the rattlers and coral snakes. (The third was a very nice Sika that I took on the run at about 150 yards right through the neck -- one of two running deer I have taken -- and my best shot ever.)
Taken together then, my tally of downed deer would record one deer that needed a second shot using single shots, and no deer needing a second shot with bolt guns! A meaningless if not ultimately misleading statistic considering lost deer, blown shots, and deer that take a long time to drop after the initial hit.
1B
