Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What's the closest shot you ever took on big game?

Had a smokeless ML built so I could take deer out to 400. Chrono'ed and made a drop chart. First deer I shot was at 20 yards.

Wild boar at the tip of my boots - the dogs were on him and I had just decided to sling the rifle and stab him, when he broke the bail and came straight at me. By the time the rifle had come back down, he was almost there. Got him straight down in the head with my .45-70.

Talkeetnas back in 07 - Grizzly at 12 yards - also with a .45-70.

:-)

Doe at about 40 yards.

About 5 yards. The deer was running straight at me and died at my feet.

I guess hogs at about 30-40 yards.

About 5 feet. A 6x7 elk and I were talking to each other. I ran up the hill and stopped behind a skinny, 10 foot tall fir tree. He trotted up to the other side of the tree. We were both looking at each through that skinny tree. I drew my bow while wondering how I would take a shot when he turned sideways and stepped from behind the tree. I double lunged him and broke one of his ribs as the arrow went clear threw.

I was hunting in southern Iowa which was shotgun and muzzleloader only, years ago. I was posted on public because we were pushing the private ground next to it. A guy comes walking along the public and calls my shotgun a punkinballer. He said his muzzleloader was good out to 200. I said ok. He goes down aways and stops. A Bambi comes behind me about 20 yards and walks past down to muzzleloader guy and stops in a creek. I could see that deer perfectly at 60 yards. This guy shoots at Bambi and hits the mud and water below it, which caused a pretty good spray up. I died laughing, he had missed by 2-3 feet at 15 yards. The deer came back passed me and stopped to look at him. He asked me to shoot it because it was wounded. I said no way, my punkinballer wouldn't hit it. He went after it to track it and I told him he missed by 3 feet so don't bother. He couldn't accept that, I was still laughing.

Negative 2 inches. I grabbed a doe by the ear, shoved the muzzle of my sister's .357 down her ear hole, and pulled the trigger.

Hints:

1) The "slam" of the bullet into the skull [bleep] near dislocated my elbow.
2) There is good potential for muzzle blast along with skull parts to pepper the hell out of you with burning powder pieces and skin/bone chunks. I got lucky and had the ear sorta rolled / twisted so my hand wasn't exposed to that.

Archery deer, 12 yards. Shotgun deer, 18 yards.

A few moose at under 10 yards. If their under 10 yards broadside and not moving and I have a rest and a little time I never miss. Also, their lot bigger then a deer.

I didn't take this shot but I really wanted to. I was sitting on a rock pile in northern Wisconsin, waiting for a buck. I hear a crunch right behind me. I knew it was a buck and I had to be ready, so I put my finger on the safety and slowly turned my head. Here's a super fat black bear about 10 feet away. It was only 250# maybe. I wanted it to charge me so bad. It turned it's head, hoping I would be gone when it looked back. I wasn't so when it looked back at me, his nerve broke and he took off back where he came from. He looked like a black bean bag bouncing across a beanfield. Boy, they are beautiful animals, until they run and look ridiculous.

Maybe he was just being goofy for some reason. A bear can flat out cover ground when they want to and unlike a deer they can keep up that pace for a long ways. Can run uphill on mountain rock as fast as going down and look fluid and effortless doing it. Lots of adjectives would come to mind about a running bear but I can't say looking ridiculous was ever one of them. Impressive on a large scale would be more like it.

I have shot two whitetail does. One at 629 yards, one at 20 feet without looking through the scope.

Whitetail buck & a doe from a tree stand roughly 5 yards nearly straight down in each case. Roughly a decade between encounters.