Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Most bullets flung at a game animal?

forgot - did that at 17. Not my mostest flung bullets, but it was at that time.

It’s all good stuff.

My first bird dog, a Setter broke all of the molds. He loved the water and retrieving. Double blind retrieves on land, he’d highpoint a frisbee, run down cripples, was staunch on point and would play fetch until your arm fell off all by six months. I thought I was a dog training genius. The next two reinforced how lucky I was with the first.

Truly a once in a lifetime dog.

Rest in Peace Winston.

Gone but never forgotten.

back again. -- later after missing 7 for 7 with the '94 I did score on another ND whitetail doe. She was moving a bit slower. That was in 1966. The rifle is now my walkabout piece up here. Haven't killed with it since that doe. Might have to remedy that....

It wasn't the rifle.....

Your cabin?


Or the neighbor's?

Have been known to wing a few "hail mary's" at coyotes headed for the horizon...

When I was in Basic at Ft Sill OK, we were out on the rifle range qualifying with our ARs.

there was probably 30 of us on the line, down in the pits.

A Magpie landed on the target stand at 100 yds, right about at the 15th or 16th foxhole position.

The range shack announces, "Ready on the Right, Ready on the Left... the range is hot!"

We were suppose to be shooting 3 round bursts, but instead multiple guys were just doing a mag dump..

I watched this magpie just digitally disappear... only way to describe it...

We hear " Cease Fire, Cease Fire" from the range shack....

"Put your rifles on safe, get out of your foxholes....Front leaning Rest.... Start calling them out drill sgt."

that magpie disappeared in probably a 60 to 70 round burst from 6 or 7 AR 15s....

There was about 20 of us, were pulled off the line, and while others got to ride back to the Barracks Area in the Cattle Cars, we had to march back the 12 miles on foot and carrying 50 pound packs and filled with tons of unexpended 223 ammo.
We also missed lunch.... but by damn did we get that magpie

I believe 6 total.

I like to hunt the HAM season for javelina in AZ. Handgun, Archery, Muzzleloader for those that don't know that acronym. One year, wasn't seeing anything walking from camp as I like, and even prefer to do, I took a ride with one of my outfitter buddy's guides. On the way over behind the mountain, I asked to stop to go up a saddle to get oriented as to where camp was. Climb up the saddle, leaving the muzzleloader in the mule because we were just going to "take a peek" over the ridge.

Take a look, start to turn back (east) , both of us turn north after hearing pebbles rolling. Yep, a herd of "pigs" coming down the knob on the N side of the saddle. He asks "where's your rifle, as they were about 100 yards away, a bit far for the 25-20 pistol I was carrying. Down the hill I go, grab the rifle, get set up with a clear shot through/over the brush, rested on a monopod deal. Bang, smoke clears, pig was up on about a 3' tall rock bench looking W, he falls off like he was poleaxed. Legs up in the air, apparently done for. A second or two later he gets up on his two front legs, rear end dragging in the dirt, and starts making for the draw going to the W from the saddle where he was hit. Crap, I pull out the Blackhawk and start shooting, open sights, about 80 yards to a pig who now is getting his back legs under him and with other javelina running all around him panicked and skedaddling into the brush. About the 3rd shot with the pistol both myself and my guide/friend saw him swing his rear end as if he'd been hit again, then over the edge of the sort of flat area on the saddle and into the brush.

OK, Reload, go over to the rock he fell from and start the search. WTH??? Not a drop of blood there. Obvious evidence in the dirt of where he fell, drag marks from when his back legs weren't working, hoof marks from the front legs. We followed the trail toward where we thought the pistol shot moved his legs before the brush started. It was still easy enough to get to that point, but after that his trail was mixed in with a dozen others as they hit the brush. The two of us, me an amateur and he a paid guide with a bunch of experience working for my outfitter friend, could only find two little dots of blood. Both about the diameter of a pencil lead and very difficult to see in the pink flecked decomposing granite. We tried to follow the herd in the brush, but that was futile as thick as it was, given the density of the brush and the number of pigs that were with him, and lack of a good blood trail. 45 minutes, or an hour later we gave up as there was nothing else we could do.

Best he could figure, and I thought it plausible, was that the first shot from the .50 cal BP rifle might have hit high on his back above his shoulder, just nicking above his spine, maybe even hitting the projection of a vertebra and stunning him for a moment, hence the tits up fall and back legs not working. We figured I may have nicked a ham with that shot from the pistol. Such little blood trail, and we crawled around looking for near all of that 45+ minutes looking for it, and we figured he certainly wasn't hit hard with either shot.

The one I got a couple of years later, walked up to within 15 or so yards while I was glassing at the top of the same mountain, maybe a mile or two south of the lost one. Walked right up a little wash with his buddy while I was leaning on a rock resting my elbows as I glassed. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye as I was glassing 100+ yards past them. I quickly got the pistol out of the chest holster, same one but with a .256 WinMag cylinder and an Ultradot on it, set the sight on him, and pulled the trigger. He and his buddy took off to my right, where it was impossible for me to see and get a shot. I somehow scrambled over the boulders there onto the little flat they were on and saw him about 20 or so yards away standing there swaying. After losing the first one, this one got hit again in the chest, which dropped him for good. 75gr .257 Speer Hot Core. When I opened him up I could see he was dead on his feet after the first one. No liver to speak of left, lungs were mush, and there was some heart left. Those little bullets opened up nicely inside him and pieces penetrated and left some wounds on his off side leg.

I'll never forget either, but that first one was amazing to see that critter fall off that rock the way it did and then struggle and get going again.

Mid 70s, I was headed out the back of an ag operation, with nearly 180 degrees of the area around me unsafe to shoot towards. I caught movement from my right and it was a buck high tailing it almost directly at me coming down a fence line. I stood still and waited.

That buck was within 50 yards of me before he spotted me and veered. I was carrying my dad's model 12 16 ga with foster slugs. First shot was likely 35 yards, angling right to left and I connected, but he was still running. Anxious about him getting to where I couldn't shoot, I shot twice more. Second shot caught him low on the shoulder and rolled him, but he was up and getting ready to run again when the 3rd shot hit his spine just ahead of his hind quarters. He was dead when I got to him.

That first shot killed him, but I've killed a fair few deer with slugs that ran a ways before falling. I can take the razzing about shooting something up better than the razzing about something getting away.

Good point especially if once hit.

Mine, but I got his in the pic too for good measure. 😁

I got a Marlin 1894 .44 mag for Christmas when I was around 14. The following Saturday season opened back up after the Christmas break and I wanting to try out my new gun. Left camp with 13 rounds of Speer 225 Half jacket loaded with 25 gr of 296. That was my favorite bullet in my Redhawk and thought it would be good in the Marlin as well. By 9:30 that morning I had missed a spike once, a nice racked buck twice and an apparent deaf doe 7 times standing still at 70 yards. I went back to camp with 3 rounds. Ended up trading that gun for a Winchester 100 in 308 a couple weeks later. Never figured out where those bullets were going. I got ribbed pretty good about it because I could keep 6 rounds in a milk jug at 70 yards with the Redhawk. They would tell folks don't let him shoot at you with a pistol but you would be safe if I was carrying a rifle.

If you count skunks as game animals then...19. We were really laying down grazing fire as the skunk ran towards us....got to laughing so hard at the end I couldnt hit anything. Ended up a little stinky and the skunk was healthy as ever last I saw him.

Amateurs, I have watched a dove fly the length of a 3/4mile dove field and leave the at least 100 shots in his wake to flutter off untouched

I had been in Ambler, Alaska about two weeks when a group of three my future students who were 15, 14 and 16 came up the river in a battered boston whaler with a archaic 60 horse outboard. They waved me to come in and they had small 4 or 5 year Boar Grizzly that probably weighed 300lbs. They had removed the guts but hadn't skinned it and said that they were going to have their grandma Minnie skin it. The bear looked like someone dragged it by its head behind a truck on asphalt. I asked them how they killed it and they said that they saw the bear on a sandbar, jumped off and started opening up with their three ruger 10/22 rifles and all of them kept shooting it in a triangular field of fire. I asked them if the bear had made a motion towards them and they said it had at the start but they all kept shooting it in the head with their 22lr rifles. They told me that they had shot it between 50 and 100 times but had quit counting. They shoot less now with bigger rifles but I never forgot that.

A couple 2-shots are memorable.

A Ram at about 330. First shot broke his hind legs down. Second shot, slightly lower hold tumbled him. Went over there and couldn't find him at first. He was about a quarter mile down the mountain, and 1500 feet lower in elevation. By the map! Ran into a couple guys the next year who had been going up after him until I topped out of the brush and they stopped to watch. They said the end-over-end fall was spectacular!

When I got down to him, I gave him another kick and he ended up about 30' above the trail out.

Jumped a wolf at about 100 yards - it had seen me and was running right to left. I swung the .338WM through and fired, blowing a 4 inch "pecker pole" right in two, just in front of it's nose Wolfie swapped ends as the snag sloooowly toppled, and stretched out to about 18 feet long and 4 inches high. I was laughing so hard I couldn't even attempt a second shot.

Yeah. I got into one of those with a little forked horn buck. I shot it head on with a .223 bolt action and assumed I broke its neck. Left the rifle with my dad and ran up to cut its throat and start gutting. It got back up. I was in the way so dad couldn't shoot so I grabbed my knife and jumped on its back, hooked my heels under its belly, and pulled the head back to start whittling on its throat. Don't do that. Its a wonder I didn't gut myself before it was all said and done. I reckon PETA would have just loved that one for the anti-hunting propaganda.

Goat-fugs-R-us. Amusing in retrospect! Not so much in the moment.

True.

I've only had one multiple shot goat rodeo involving big game. Shot at a deer with .223 from 50 yards. Figured out later that I screwed up and hit some brush in front of it, and the bullet deflected down into the front leg. It ran right at me, but was bounding "different" due to the injured leg. I airmailed my second shot as ran right under me. Then he stopped in some brush 30-40 yards away.

After 4-5 minutes that seemed like an hour, then limped out, stopped and gave me a perfect broadside shot. I drilled him in the heart, he did the death kick, ran a few yards and dropped.



I got a lot of crap, as I'd gone 20+ years without needing two shots, then skipped two and went straight to three. 😁

I had a goat rodeo with my very first rifle deer in MN. I was young, jumpy, and stupid. 12 shots scattered all over hell with a 44 Mag... 3 hits, none of which were fatal on a little doe.

My uncle finished it off because I was out of ammo 🤦‍♂️He still occasionally reminds me of that one, 20+ years later.

Not really

416 Weatherby 300 grain TSX at 363 yards on antelope....exit hole



416 WBY prairie dog



Also 416 Wby 330 GS custom bullet at 3100 fps. Antelope at 452 yards.