Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Finally happened to me

Sorry to hear. That's tuft luck....

I see what you did there!

I think you learned your lesson here:

Next time use a 6.5 Creedmoor.

6.5x57 is too old.

Oh and never post mistakes that you made in the field on the campfire, because no one has ever made any here!

I'd recommend a bigger corn pile and fancier 'shootin house'.

I feel your pain. I rushed a shot on the dominant buck on my property. The good new was he showed back up on camera 2 weeks later. Bad news is he has a bad leg wound that I apparently inflicted and isn’t getting around very well. Makes me sick to my stomach every time I think about it. Of course I’m hunting him the rest of the season but he has been pretty scare\ce the last week so I’m terrified he became coyote bait

Smithrjd- 3-1/2 hours looking is a pretty honest effort buddy. I have seen guys say they looked 'forever' but somehow were in camp less than an hour later. Grrr. Thankfully, no more.

Last year we tracked one 4-5 hours, as it was shot by my friends son in law- and my friend was pissed as he had sort of claimed that one for himself from pics on his game cam. He had a right as the s-i-l hunted for free on our dime, and used his rifle- without sighting it in first. So we had incentive to find it and were proud that we kept at it and picked up sign after sign across many acres. We found what looks like chunks of lung on a fence and signs of a butchered carcass on the neighbors property. Sucks when it happens but I have seen a giant pool of blood where a crossbow went through a buck and hundreds of yards later, after hurdling a fence, we lost it in the dark. Amazing what they can do when already supposed to be dead.

I shot one on the run that broke the sternum and just had lymph like light blood. Thankfully we had snow that year and the deer was bedded about 200 yards away and needed more shooting.

Years ago, when I was new to hunting, I was hunting whitetails in north Idaho. I was in a thick jungle when I saw a doe sneaking in on me for a better look. I shot her in the chest at maybe 75 yds. She took a big jump sideways and disappeared. I actually heard her fall in the dry leaves so I knew she was down. I couldn't find her in that thick stuff. I looked for about 30 min until it was too dark to see. The next morning everything looked different and I couldn't even find the place where I was the night before. That's how I learned to carry flagging tape.

Pard was guiding client to a brown bear. It was laying up on a moose kill done by wolves that a lesser bear had run the wolves off, only for that bear to be displaced by this big boar. A bit of a clearing hole in fairly thick alders and willows.

So they put the sneak on him, they were approaching the clearing while weaving their way through the alders. My pard still doesn’t know what went wrong, swirling mountain air currents, twig breaking underfoot, or just tops of alders moving ever so slightly.🤷🏻‍♂️

They never heard the bear as he charged them hell bent for election, until he was a few feet from them. Pard was down on one knee trying to pick up if the bear was still in same spot across the clearing. When all of a sudden he was face to face w the bear.

Said only reason he wasn’t steamrolled is the bears eyes went wide in the only thing he could say was a surprised type look as the bear and the guys spied each other simultaneously. Instinct took over, he shot the near point blank in the chest with his .375 H&h as his client shot over him at same time with a 300 win mag

He claims if he’d kept raising the barrel he’d of slapped bear in chin with it.

Bear turned and hightailed it. They never did find it, and they looked hard. Know this guy like he’s my brother. When he said they looked hard, I’d bet the client was really ready to call it a day hours before they did

Bears aren’t deer and vice versa, still lots of fun and not so fun under the midnite sun. Hate it for you but it happens. As others have noted, I’d take a dog and go back and look some more. Really all you can do. Good luck rest of the way

Agree with everything except I take no solace in feeding yotes......I hates them things! I believe that when people mess up shooting from "box stands" they tend to miss low.....assuming they are resting the elbow or arm of their trigger hand on the stand. You are already raising the butt of the rifle up because you are shooting at a downward angle. If you flinch or pick up your head off the stock to peek simultaneous to shooting you almost have to move the muzzle slightly down. Shooting from a rested position on a bench "for groups" will lead to "flyers" that "mess up your group" when you make the same mistakes because you have your rifle bedded in your nice rest where its balanced. All of that group shooting stuff is fine and good but it can lead to complacency that bites you in the real world when you have to deal with the adrenaline rush that accompanies attempting to kill a deer. I have made all of the above mistakes, just took me a little time to figure out what was going on.

"Losing" deer is part of hunting and depending on where and how you hunt is easier or harder to do. I've lost my share, probably some of which I would have been able to find in open woods as opposed to the 3000 acres of briars I have been hunting for the last decade. Some that I have had to trail I found out of sheer luck and they were well hit in the chest but did not leave any immediate sign.

The op did what he was supposed to do. He followed up the shot, found sign and looked as best he could. The deer either lived, or if it died could be 2 miles away from where it was shot. Welcome to the real world. Don't want to ever lose a deer again? Do your "hunting" on the internet and you won't have any more problems.

The op did what he was supposed to do. He followed up the shot, found sign and looked as best he could. The deer either lived, or if it died could be 2 miles away from where it was shot. Welcome to the real world. Don't want to ever lose a deer again? Do your "hunting" on the internet and you won't have any more problems.

I would like to add. If you checked your rifle before the hunt. And are fairly proficient, that’s all you can do. If you shoot enough game , you will lose some. He also used enough gun and didn’t try a shot at an extreme distance. Hasbeen

"Aimed just behind the front shoulder midway" Where were the crosshairs when your rifle went off? I used to hunt with an old guy who missed or wounded l lot of deer. I always asked him where the crosshairs were when his rifle fired and he never could remember. I watched him shoot a target one time and he would close his eyes and jerk the trigger hard when the shot. I'm not saying you did that but it happens. I sight all my deer rifles in at 200 yds. so at 150 yds. I hit about 1 1/2" high. Sighted in 1" high at 100 yds. you probably hit where you were aiming and shot over the heart. If you had hit the heart there would have been a good blood trail. I have lost one lung shot deer that I shot late one evening because there was no blood trail and it got too dark. I found him the next morning piled in a big cedar bush 100 yds. from I shot him. I like the high shoulder shot for dropping big bucks where they stand.

+1

Happened to me several years ago. Found him three weeks later.... still alive, but wasted away to skin and bone. Put him out of his misery.

Laffin,,that's not how it works.

Nope

Most folks who have hunted deer for years have either had this happen, or been with someone who had it happen. I've thought about it a lot, and have realized that there are two separate causes for losing deer, poor judgment, and poor execution. The second one is forgivable, while the first is not.

Poor judgment usually involves taking a shot that the hunter should have passed. Shooting at a running deer in thick woods without a clear shot, especially having not practiced moving shots, or shooting at deer much farther than one has practiced, both involve bad judgment. In that case, the hunter should feel guilty about his screw up.

On the other hand, if one sights in his gun, has a steady rest, and takes a good clean shot, but does not find the deer, there is nothing to be ashamed of. Life is not perfect, and things go wrong at times. All we can do is practice our execution, but realize things happen. That's why NBA players still miss free throws they are paid millions to make. If the OP spent 3 and a half hours looking for the deer without finding it, it's time to chalk that one up to experience, and move on without guilt.

For what it is worth...

I shot a caribou once that mule kicked and bolted at the shot, ran about 100 yards, turned and ran back, at an angle, the way he had gone. He went down maybe 30 yards down slope from where he had been feeding when I shot. He apparently was looking for just the right spot to die in, a 2 foot deep caribou sized hollow in the tundra with about 18 inches of water in it. I'd taken my eyes off him for just a moment and when I looked again, he had magically vanished.

I'd guesstimated and held for hair just below his back line for a range of 300 yards - paced it off at 356 long ones. The 180 gr. Corelokt had taken off the top of his brisket, slicing open his heart with a piece of bone or bullet. I found the jacket lodged in his off-side knee.

I have shot several animals in, or near the spine, just above or below.. Even if the bullet passes between two vanes, it knocks them flat, so I'd say it was a low hit.

I also once didn't find a moose for 10 days, so I know how you feel. Shot him about 10 in the morning, and looked for him until dark- about 10 at night. It was a second growth jungle in there. He had run about 100 yards, and died in a 10' circle of 10 foot high spruce, with overlapping branches (If I had known then.....etc) - obviously grown up in the burn area, around the perimeter ofa squirrel midden. I had walked right by him maybe 10 feet away on my first and several subsequent passes along that hillside of 8-10 foot high birch second growth that one had to force one's way through. Head high deadfalls around that little clump of spruce group detoured me around them every time until the next weekend when I followed my nose to it, climbing over and through the deadfalls. I was exactly one step away from what was left of the moose before I could see him as I pushed through the inner side of the spruce branches.

I took to using CNS shot placement after that, whenever I could.

I was setting about a quarter of the way down from a ridge top when a doe came across the clearing without stopping. I got prepared for the buck but he came up out of a gully between me and the path of the doe. He stopped and was trying to catch her scent and I shot him thru the rib cage with a 308 at about sixty yards. He took off downhill and from my vantage point I could watch him until he went into some post oak trees about 200 yards away. He stumbled a bit while crossing a ravine but showed no other sign of being hit.

I walked to where he was when I shot and found a big bunch of blood and pieces of lung. I went to where I last saw him and he was piled up dead short of the post oaks. After field dressing him, I backtracked him and the only thing I found was some blood on a weed where he went through the ravine.

If I had been in reasonably heavy cover, I don’t believe I ever would have found him. Were it not for all the blood and lung at the spot where I shot him, I would have been forced to call it a miss.

Remembering that is why I only shoot bullets that will exit...... every time.