Looking for game that you have shot that either got away or took a very long tracking job. List ammo used, Caliber, where the game was hit, as much detail as possible

Thanks

I'm fortunate in that I've never lost one...

I've had many a dead dove fly away.

BP...

Only big game I have lost was a doe whitetail shot high through the chest (bow)and a black bear hit somewhere unknown(rifle). No blood from the doe, just a little fat on the arrow. Searched for 2 days and never found a trace of blood. The bear (340 Wby, soft point) instantly dropped at the shot but then got up and took off. I never found a trace of a hit after searching the rest of that day and the next. No blood, hair, nothing. Maybe I just scared it really bad.

I have had to crawl around for hours looking for pindrops of blood (and guts) but I have always found hit animals (except these 2) sooner or later.

Coyotes now, that's a different story.

I have a blood trailing dog (Great Pyrenees) and have looked for a lot of crippled deer for others. Some, after trailing a long ways I decide that they are not hurt bad enought and they will recover and quit the trail. All that I have to trail very far are the result of a bad shot. I have never had to trail one over 150 yards that I found that had a shot to the heart, lung, shoulder area. Most were gut shot, brisket shot (low) or hit in the back legs. A couple were shot too far forward in the shoulders and did not damage the shoulder bones. The longest trail was a gut shot eight point that did not want to quit. He finaly gave up and let me get close enough to grab his horns and cut his throat after he hit some property with barbed wire fences and his guts would grab them when he crossed. I caught up with him after three and half miles as the crow flies. On his trail, I have no idea. miles

Its always a tragedy when a hunter losses an animal. I have been hunting since the early 50's & have shot over 150 deer, over 140 boar, assorted African game, bears, caribou, stags, elk, antelope, sheep, goats, even a lot of predators. I pass up on poor shots & while not the best shot practice a lot. I have 2 heart breaking losses. The first was a wolf hunt in -39 weather with blowing snow & almost dark. The black wolf walked slightly out of the bush & I shot with a 257Weatherby 115G X bullet. The wolf dropped like a rock & never twitched. I watched through my scope for close to 2 minutes & almost put another bullet into the carcass at about 150 yards. I slowly unloaded my custom Mauser & started for the snow machine. Suddenly, the wolf stood up, it was virtually dark at this time, & began to stagger into the bush. I radioed my guide & then sped to the point of impact. Only a tint drop of blood was found. The guide & I tracked into the bush & found where the Alpha wolf had led the pack away. Not another drop of blood. Apparently, I nicked the skull & knocked the wolf out. The second was a Whitetail Deer(8 point about 17" inside spread) again shot at almost dark at about 300 yards with a .300 Win. Mag. with a 180G. Partition. The deer jumped at the shot & disappeared into a swamp with standing water, blow downs, briar's, & piles of small trees & limbs from having been partially timbered(cut) many years ago. I found red blood at the point of impact & where the deer jumped into the swamp. Using my flashlight & marking tape I entered the swamp. About 10 yards inside I found where the deer lay down, pieces of bone from the shoulder(I believe), & lots of red blood. I then fell into a swamp hole & decided to wait for day light. On returning I found the blood trail & about 30 yards later when the deer lay down again, more bone, & lots of blood. I was convinced I would find a dead deer in minutes. I followed the blood trail as the deer zigzagged about another 100 yards deeper into the swamp. Finally I lost the blood trail & returned to the lodge. I then located the best tracker in our club who has found many wounded deer. Using a large magnifying glass he found where the deer had left a slight bit of blood on surrounding leaves. After about 75 yards more we found where the deer lay down, a lot of blood, & a big piece of bone that looked like it came from the upper leg. Long story shot after another 100 yards the blood trail disappeared & the deer was never found. I looked for buzzards in the area for several weeks & never saw any. The deer must have been shot through upper leg & brisket, but how could he have survived?

Been killing deer since the fifties. Never lost one that I shot at, but when I was young, kids were dogs. That meant we chased down cripples. All that I remember were either gut shot or hit in a leg(s). Being as most everyone was using 30-06 rifles I would say that probably the vast majority of what I had to chase down was hit with 180 grain bullets. I remember in particular one doe that went a quarter mile leaving blood and lung tissue in her wake, a gut shot buck that made it maybe a half mile before he spent too much time looking back at me in a big azz swamp, and a front leg hit doe that I chased for a couple days in a big wooded pasture.

Good luck getting any info outta this bunch. From what I have seen no one on here wounds anything, makes bad shots, misses, makes bad shooting decisions or shoots over 300 yards. The ones that do talk about it get crucified. And the ones that addmitt it I commemend cause it does happen and no one is perfect.

I have shot Javelina with a 357 shooting 125gr SJHP and never recovered it. looked for hours, tracked blood, and never found him.
Hit a Coyote on the ranch with a 22LR at 25 yards and never recovered him.
Shot a deer at close range with a bow and never recovered him. luckily we found him on the rifle hunt and my buddy got him.

Numerous quail and dove with my shotgun that were just peppered or that got a good dose and flew off.

Wounding animals, bad shots and misses happen. Sure we don't like it and feel bad when it happens. But fact is it happens.

Hope my wounds helped and I hope you get some good info from these guys.

Kique

I shot a coyote two winters ago that took off. It was facing me at 300ish yards when I let loose of a 40 grain v-max from a 221 fireball. I heard the splat and decided to retrieve it in the morning but after sunrise I tracked good blood for over a mile before the trail quit. Roughly three months later I shot a limping coyote in the same area with a wounded front shoulder. It was nasty enough I didn't feel like digging but am pretty sure I had cleaned up my own mess. I have lost a coyote since then but he was bleeding badly and dragging his feet in the snow when he crossed the fence onto unfriendly territory. I'm as certain as possible that he didn't go much further.

I was hunting on the White River Refuge in Arkansas about 1975 or so. We were camped on the river, and a big storm came thru on Sat night and about blew the tent away, drenching us with rain. Sun morn dawned clear and cold and I decided to hunt a hot trail near the river. About 8:30 (I was sitting on the ground, we did that back then) I saw a big 8 point headed down the trail that passed about 40 yds in front of me. As I brought my 50 cal Hawken around to get ready, movement caught my eye and behind that big 8 was an even bigger (read MUCH bigger) deer. He had six long tines on my side and his rack was high and wide with alot of mass where it went into his head. The 8 smelled me and stopped but the big boy didn't have a clue, but was alarmed by the way the 8 was acting. They both bounced off into a thicket and I had one small window for a shot. As the shoulder of the 2nd deer (I thought it would be the big boy) came thru the hole, I fired at about 50 yds. Found blood and looked for him for about 8 hrs along with my 3 buddies, but no luck. He may have been one of only 2 booners I have seen in my life (the other was in Canada (Sask) years later.) If I make it to the pearly gates, I hope I can ask to see a replay of that morning.

I found that when they first introduced steel shot I was losing a lot of cripples, but after I took a steel shot shooting seminar my efficiency went way up. Still , I tend to lose a few birds every year due to the tendencies of steel and probably some poor shooting.The last animal I lost was a bear shot at about 30 yds. with a 30/30. Thought I'd made a good hit but tracked it to a big swamp where I lost the blood and trail. Kept going back looking for birds but never did find any sign. I think I might have hit high between the diaphragm and spine which would explain the lack of blood and dead animal at the end of the trail.

I'll admit I have lost game that I have shot!
Sometimes it was poor placement, other times it was due to the fact I went after it too fast. and yet other times the critter went on property I could not get permission to retrieve.
This year for instance I shot and lost 2 whitetail doe, (both with a bow) 1 I know for a fact I hit high and basically gave her a flesh wound and a haircut, the other I cant explain...I saw the arrow hit her in a double lung shot..arrow blew through and lots of blood at first.
The guy I was hunting with is a Registered nurse/anesthesiologist and told me by the type of blood I had that we would soon find her, but after 4hrs of tracking and no more blood (we waited 2 hrs befor tracking) we lost her.
I'm not happy about any of my losses but sometimes things happen.

I would second your comments. I have belonged to a lot of hunt clubs, owned a booking business, & hunted Canada, Western States, Europe & Africa. I have seen a fair amount of lost game especially whitetails. In many cases when the deer runs off after the shot the shooter looks & seeings no blood & chalks it up as a missed shot. The deer may have died in 100 yards or have traveled quite a distance belong laying down & dieing. In some cases the wrong bullet was used. My best friend insisted on using his standard deer load while hunting plains game in Africa. A 7mm Mag. with 140G. ballistic tips isn't the correct bullet for Africa. He lost an Impala, shot a zebra 5 times, & would have lost a Gemsbok if the trackers couldn't have tracked a snake on a rock. I have personally seen friends loose caribou, Black Bear, deer, & hogs. Its seems to just disappear from their memory. Anyone that hunts a lot has either lost animals or is a good liar.

I have never lost any big game animals I have shot with a rifle or a bow.
IME most of the game lost is from bow hunters. We did have a guy in our camp that lost a deer every few years with a rifle. Very poor shot.

I lost a buck this year. I guess. No sign of hit though and I followed him for 2 hours seeing him 3 more times with no sign. A friend saw him 6 days later, nothing wrong...6mm woa, 85tsx, and i'm fairly sure it must have hit brush I never saw becasue the shot was so steady Id' have bet I could have hit a dime at that raneg. Should have shot him in the head but didn't want to ruin the cape..

My buddy shot a very unique buck smoe years back. 125ish yards. 06, 165 sierra game kings that I loaded, 50 something of Varget. He is a good enough shot, and we found a bit of blood and that was it, appx 5 of us looked for almost 6 hours... never found. Until 3 weeks later he was found running a doe and shot in the neck. Perfect hole through each lung from 3 weeks earlier, and healed up with scar tissue....

You never know.

As to bowhunters loosing more, I dont' think thats capable numbers wise as there are a ton more [bleep] that can't hit squat with a rifle. But that wasn't the question. And I say that having well over 100 animals with a bow under my belt.

My bottom line at this point in life, I'm 99% sure I can find mortally wounded game at any place, and if I don't I don't think it was mortally wounded. Just my take on it.

Jeff

Big game, no.

Small game, yes. Squirrels. .22LR.

My first Elk- a Bull that I walked up on, scared the chit outta me when he came up ouf of nowhere. Was packing a Ruger # 1 converted to 338-378- Many will say too much gun, but I think Buck fever- Almost didn't shoot and to this day wish I had not
Worst shot of my life, maybe he jumped and turned or maybe I missed. Broke his right hind leg and creased his belly.
Damn single shot rifle, I had bullets in every pocket but couldn't find one when he staggered and stopped for a moment. Six hours and several miles later I finally put him down just about fifteen yards from private property where he would have been coyote food.
I made a promise right there that I would never fire at any animal I was not sure of putting a fatal shot into

I shot a four point buck back in 84 or 85, I was excited and
missed him before I hit him. At the shot he ran about 45 yards
and lay down under a tree. I fired again and missed him,
he jumped and ran. I tracked him for two hours by myself and
the next day my dad's friend tracked him for another hour.
Never found him.
Another time while hunting squirrels with a 22mag, I
suprised a large raccoon that was sleeping in a large tree.
It woke up at the same time that I saw him. He sat up and
I fired for the head, he tumbled backwards into the
crotch of the tree, which was also the entrance to the den.
I walked home and got a large ladder, but it didnt do
any good. I couldnt justify cutting the tree down.

If I had a blood trailing Pyr, I'd teach him to retrieve so I wouldn't have to keep up with him.

Mr. jwp475;
I hit a small mule deer with a 180gr Hornady out of an �06, while it was running. I assume I must have hit the withers, as it went down immediately. I was on horseback with another chap that day. He was having a bit of trouble with our horses when I looked back at him, so rather than go to the buck as I normally would have done I went to help with the horses.

When we got to where the deer had been, we found one drop of blood and a piece of meat the size of a pencil eraser. We looked for it on foot and then on horseback for about 4 or 5 hours without finding another trace. I searched the area for ravens later to no avail.

As a by the way, that particular load had a string of something like 18 one shot kills on deer for me up to that day, so it was all me that failed that day.

I hit another small mule deer with a 165gr. Hornady BT out of a .308 Norma that got away. I know where I was aiming, but as the buck was lost, can only guess where I hit. My rest for the shot was less than perfect and I believe the barrel of the rifle was touching the Saskatoon tree I was using as a rest and not the fore end.

I looked for several hours that day and returned the next morning to look for several more hours but found nothing beyond the original small bit of bone and two small drops of blood. Again this load had proved to be very effective on deer both previously and subsequently, so it was my error yet again.

I hit a large mule deer with the same load, that is a 165gr Hornady BT out of a .308 Norma doing somewhere around 3150fps. The buck was a long ways off, judging from how much the bullet dropped and he knew we were there and was leaving. I was prone with a good rest, but pulled the trigger as he jumped to run and immediately regretted doing so as I well knew from the buck�s body language he was leaving.

We followed him for over two hours into a blow down shin-tangle canyon with a small creek at its bottom. I finally ended it after first missing an easy shot at it at less than 50 yards and then making good on the 2nd shot. The first shot was a foot back of the lungs where I'd aimed, it was a gut shot.

We packed out 144lbs of boned meat- including leg bones- uphill in a blinding greasy snow storm that afternoon, making it out to the pickup at the edge of a remote cut block long after dark.

After all these years I still get mad at myself thinking about what I put that grand animal through because of my desire to get a �good� mule deer when I knew the shot was marginal. He was indeed a good buck and I really didn�t deserve him that day, nonetheless we thankfully did eventually find him.

Well, there are my lost big game animal stories. It is my hope others can learn from my errors and I hope I learned from them too.

Regards,
Dwayne

Yep, lost a mule deer buck many years ago..243, 100 gr. Hornady, high lung shot- maybe through the fabled dead zone. I'll never know,hours of tracking/looking/hunting yeilded nothing.That was my only loss on big game, and it still haunts me. None of the critters deserve that, but as many have said, if you hunt enough, it will happen....
I have had a couple real long hard adventures making sure this didn't happen...one on a bull elk, and one on a leopard. Theres a story there, and a reason I sign my name.....
Ingwe

There have been a couple of grouse...three I think. One I called the titanium grouse. Hit him at least three times with my .22 and he still flew away.

Shot another with the .22 pistol. I was on the back of my horse and was pulling a pack horse. By the time I got off and tied them both up the grouse rallied enough to get a running start and got airborne. He flew down into a canyon and that was that.


Shot one with an arrow. Arrow blew right through him and he flew off but he wasn't going to live very long.

I've wounded one deer and one elk but made follow up shots and killed them.

I've already told my story.My only loss in 40years of hunting.I'll never tell if another one happens...you can bet your sweet a$$ on that. powdr

Yes; two deer.One a doe I creased low at about 300 yards with a 30/06.My fault,since I was not very steady and knew it. I hit low,judging by hair.We had snow and followed for a long way and the better part of the day.The bleeding stopped,she got in with other deer and we never caught up to her.

Another was with a bow;again hit low and a creasing shot.never got her either but I watched her walk off and she appeared OK....

A large mule deer buck was hit a bit far back, on the run,and I caught up with him in his bed, about 1/2 mile away;too weak to rise.I finished him ther at about 30 yards.Got lucky......

Bigfoot.

Any lost game at any of our camps has ALWAYS been bad hits. Sometimes well hit animals go further than we think they should, but the couple that have been lost have always been bad hits.

I know a guy who shot a turkey with a single shot shotgun
several years ago. He said it dropped at the shot and didnt
even flop around, thinking it was dead, he walked up to it
without reloading. You guessed it, it came back to life
and took off like lightning. He never found it.

Yep. I lost a mule deer doe when I was in high school because I thought it would be cool to take a really long shot when I could easily have cut the distance in half. The rifle was a .270 Win and the shot was taken right before dark. From the reaction of the deer I know I hit it in the guts. The loss of that deer had nothing to do with the caliber or the bullet it was purely me overestimating my ability to shoot long.

About 15 years ago I hit a bull elk that I never recovered. The only shot I had was a neck shot on the bull going pretty much straight away. The bull went ass over tea kettle at the shot, but by the time I got to where I could see where it fell, the bull was gone. I found a few drops of blood a couple hundred yards away and followed the tracks for the rest of the day and never did lay eyes on it again. At one point the bull made a quarter mile climb uphill before it got onto a south slope where there was no snow and lots of other elk tracks. That is where the trail ended for me. I was my overwhelming desire to fill my elk tag every year (a big deal in the west) to take a crappy shot. Rifle was .270 Win and 150 Partitions.

Several years ago I shot a WT buck right after daylight at roughly 230 yards. The buck stepped forward just as the trigger broke and I knew from the shot pic in my mind that I hit too far back which turned out to be exactly right. I followed the few specks of blood and then scuffs in the dirt for several hundred yards before I jumped the buck again. This went on for the rest of the day and then right before dark I jumped the buck and got a shot in the heavy timber that killed the buck. I was as absolutely mentally drained as I have ever been in my life when I finally finished off that buck. The painstaking tracking and emotional highs and many lows over whether I would ever find it made me feel like a wet noodle. 270 Win and 150 Pt's the bullet exited, but the shot was too far back for a quick kill.

Lost my first hit deer with a bow this year, actually. Small doe, less than 10 yards from stand. Arrow entered way low on the body, and combined with steep angle of the shot, figuring I missed vitals completely. Lots of blood at first, fat on the arrow, figured she was hit good. My buddy had seen her limping some, and had he known I just shot her, would've finished the job as he walking to my stand. We tracked her for over half a mile through saplings, briars, and other brushy type stuff. This was early September, so lots of lush vegetation still around. We lost the trail many times, ended up giving up after the blood thinned to very small drips every 15-20 yards. We heard her snorting and running later as well, guessing it was just a flesh wound.

I've lost squirrels when I was younger and lost a dove this year I knocked the feathers off with a 22LR. Aimed for head and hit the body. Shot my gun a week later and found out it was shooting about 4" to the left.

i have a sort of different story to tell...

in approximately 1984, i was tagged out for deer in illinois first weekend, and chose to hunt pheasant on my father in laws place on saturday of the second weekend...

i had taken a rooster with a high angle shot and he landed dead near the peak of a small hill... as i bent to pick him up i noticed movement and blaze orange in the creek bottom on the other side of the hill..
it was the neighbors, and i walked down to say hi... they explained that they one of them had crippled a small buck that had run into the creek bottom... they asked me to help find him and finish him, and i agreed...

i was carrying no slugs of my own so one of them gave me 3 and i loaded up with them... they wanted to simply walk the creek bottom out, but i suggested that i swing out ahead and block the creek bottom further down where it joined a larger creek...
it took me the better part of a half hour to get into position, but i got set up and they began to work my way...

the oncoming guys were about 200 yards away still and i heard some horseweeds clatter fairly close to me... out jumps a forkhorn and i dropped him with no trouble...
almost at the sound of my shot, another small buck jumped out right in front of the 2 guys coming on towards me... one glance and i could see that this second buck was carrying a broken front leg... they got him.....

the guys involved were classy enough to use both of their tags and keep both deer... some guys would not have...
what i did was wrong, and could have gotten me into a fair bit of trouble...
i learned my lesson.....

I've posted this several times before. I've temporarily misplaced 2 moose I've shot. Long enough to defeat my purpose, which is meat in the freezer... which, with a moose, is generally just overnight, due to body mass/temperature/spoiling rate in my area/season, at least.

Shot a 40+ inch moose at @160 yards, offhand, standing, tight, arm-wrapped sling (no rest available) with a 180 gr .30-06 slug- probably Remington Corelokt. He spun 180 degrees with no evidence of hit and in two jumps was back into some of the nastiest old burn/second growth jungle I've ever tried to hunt thru. This was about 11:30 am, and we spent the rest of the day looking for him, up until an hour before dark (roughly 10 pm) looking for him. No blood or hair, but the sight picture on ignition had looked damned good. Finally we concluded i must have flat missed him.

10 days later, on my next trip in there (we were 5 miles off-road), I followed my nose to what was left of him - his hair, bones, antlers, and about 3" of squirming maggots. I was one step away from him before I could see him. From a chipped shoulder blade (bullet or bear?) and the original sight picture, I concluded my bullet had caught him a little high, and likely through one lung only. Still, he'd only gone about 150 yards, up onto this hillside back off the several moose trails we expected him to have followed (we lost his tracks in a welter of tracks after about 50 yards). The hillside was composed almost entirely of 8 foot high second growth birch one could barely force one's way through, with an almost impassible array of fallen, burned, big-timber spruce deadfalls from the fire 12 years before. He had run up the hillside, off-trail, and hid himself in a little 10' diameter circle of 8 to 10 foot high spruce trees- maybe 12 or 14 trees in all, with a moose length opening inside- I'm thinking they grew up around the perimeter of an old squirrel midden after the fire. At any rate, one could not see inside until stepping through the screen of branches.

That was 1982, and if I knew then, what I know now, about moose... but I'm still learning....so that's no excuse. Jack-straw deadfalls to 5 or 6 feet high all around this circle of spruce diverted me around it, both sides, on our first and the following two grid searches of the hillside. On my first pass, less than 10 minutes after the shot, I passed within 15 feet of the bull- and on the back track, maybe 25 feet on the uphill side. and twice more within about 30 feet. He was obviously already dead, or I'd have heard him on that first pass by...and that was the lone spruce patch on that whole hill-side...

The lesson here was that if the terraine is defeating you- that's probably where you should investigate - especially if there is an outstanding patch of cover- even 12 feet wide....

The other one was 4 or 5 years later- again a mid-40's bull, a not perfectly broadside shot, through a screen of brush, using my forked walking stick as a rest at about 60 yards, with a .338 Mag and 250 grain Nosler Partitions.

At the shot the bull bolted out of sight, followed by his cow, up and over a little 20 foot high ridge. We waited 10 minutes and followed, only to find the cow hanging out about 150 yards away. She would not leave, and we walked within 30 yards of her many times - sometimes within 30 feet, just knowing that bull was there somewhere within yards. 3 hours later, at dark, we had to give it up. The next weekend, by pure dumb luck I stumbled on the dead bull, less than 20 yards from where I'd shot him. Apparently this was again a poor one-lung hit, and he lived long enough that on our first follow up, he circled back to his original position to avoid us, which we simply did not search again," knowing" from his bolting sounds and that damned cow, that he was down over "that-a-way"! What really bothers me is that I thought I'd "almost heard a sound" back that way - and didn't investigate it...

And then, on one of my search patterns, IF I had taken 3 or 4 more steps down the main game-trail toward his original position-at-shot I'd have seen him at the base of the ridge, 20 yards away - no doubt down and dead at the time. Only 150 yards to the canoe, too...

Don't limit your search with dumb-chit assumptions...and if you thought you almost heard something- you probably did.

At this point in my moose hunting in this kind of cover, I gave up all quartering shots on moose. I no longer accept a double-lunger, either, if I have a choice (found those two bolters, but not without difficulty!. And trust me, following a blood trail after dark by flashlight in brown bear country is just no fun at all.) Head and CNS shots have worked 100% in this situation for me ever since. Still prefer the double lunger in more open country, especially at longer ranges and smaller animals.

And there was one memorable deliberate spine shot just forward of the pelvic girdle at @ 70 yards. He went straight down, of course, but I was still only two steps away from him before i could see his antlers, and another step closer to his butt before the finishing shot. (.338 - 250 gr.)

There was this bounding, spooked going all-out Dall ram full-curl I poked a shot at 30 plus years ago to no apparent effect (.270). Two hours later, my wife nailed a fine ram out of another group, over the ridge, at 35 yards, same gun, and our partner took the remaining full-curl at 50 yards as they ran through the saddle below him, a quarter mile away. (That's ONCE a plan of mine has worked to perfection in the last 40 years!!).

My brother came staggering into camp just before dark some hours later, with another full curl on his back, from where he was hunting on the other side of the mountain, two miles away. "Must be other hunters out here", he related shortly thereafter. "My ram has a bullet crease just through the skin at the back of the shoulder hump".

Last I saw of that ram he was still flying, a mile away, 1500 feet lower, crossing the valley headwaters, headed in Bill's direction.....

The wife and I are hoping to go back there this fall, after 32 years. This time, we ain't taking ANYONE else along on our honeymoon! Unless it's the boys.

1990, south of MacGregor MN... 250+ lb Whitetail..at least 7 points rack on one side alone...

last day of season... about 4:55 PM...

100 yds, 300 Win Mag, 200 grain Factory Federal Load with Sierra SP..chest shot..

deer went straight down on his nose at a dead run.. fur and blood in a circle greater than 24 inches...

buck jumped up and headed straight into the swamp he was headed before I hit him...

couldn't find that night...
stayed until next day and looked for him for close to 5 hours...

never found him in the swamp...

bullet too hard and velocity too fast for that close a shot, was the fault....so operator error...

[quoteIf I had a blood trailing Pyr, I'd teach him to retrieve so I wouldn't have to keep up with him. ] [/quote]

By law it has to be leashed so keeping up is no problem. It will drag you right on through the thickets. Sometimes I seem to be bleeding worse that the deer I'm after. I am 6'4" tall and 280 lbs. so I don't fit very well in some places and she gets eager when on a hot trail. We have a lot of briars and brambles in East Arkansas and I am usually down to my tee shirt before its over. On the bright side at 61 years old I probably don't have many more years of doing it. miles

In '06 I shot a nice little forkie with my .44 mag. I'd killed a boar with it in Texas that spring and was pretty confident.

Looking back I'm sure I hit him low and back, likely liver. He was REALLY close when I sent a 240 XTP his way... I think it was 23 grains of H110?

At any rate it went to the bottom of the hill in front of me, hit an old fence and did the "death blat" right in front of me. I radioed my brother-in-law to rub it in, milled around grabbing my gutting stuff from my backpack, grabbed a drink, and all of a sudden he took off with his flag down.

I tracked him all day but the conditions were terrible... never found him. Worst day of my hunting career for sure. Pick my shots a lot more carefully now and haven't taken that Redhawk hunting since, even though I know it wasn't the fault of the gun or ammo.

Several years ago near Pine River, Minnesota. I was set up on a spot where two trails crossed adjacent to a small clearing. The trail I was watching was heavily overgrown and a smoking hot deer trail. Forkhorn comes down the trail and steps into the opening offering an easy quartering shot at about 45 yards. The deer buckled at the shot from my 300 Savage (180 gr. Core-Lokt). I jacked another round into the gun as he gathered himself up and went across the intersection of the two trails. Second shot hit him on the run blowing off a golf ball sized chunk of hair and fat. I chased that deer for over 4 hours. Never did catch up to him. The trail was down to pin head sized spots of blood when I crossed into posted private property. The property owner came out and took up the trail, as I was exhausted from crawling through the thickest stuff that deer could find to run through. I hung out at his shed for about an hour-never heard a finishing shot, and started walking out. I stopped by the next day and he told me he never did catch up to him. Hard to believe I didn't anchor him with that first shot. 'Much as we'd like to think we can make a perfect shot every time, you just can't count on that. As for duck and goose hunting-steel shot just plain sucks. I know it's a necessary evil, but you'd better be dammned careful with your shots or you're going to cripple more birds than you take home. Geez, geese are hard enough to kill as it is, and this steel shot makes it even tougher. We only hunt over decoys (haven't been out in quite a while now) and it seems like you really want to try to catch them with their wings up and cupped and get the shot tucked up in under a wing if possible, or just try to break a wing and get them on the ground where you or the dog can finish the job.

I don't like dwelling on mine - but anyone who hasn't had it happen to them - hasn't hunted all that much.

Now that about sums it up,with perhaps a few fortunate exceptions. Chit happens.

Try not to let it....

Caliber, bullet, broadhead, etc.. ain't the area to be looking when trying to minimize loosing animals or SNAFU recovery problems.. I've learned a few things from my errors.. never let the string go on something iffy, a tricky moving target -- no matter how close. Never force a bullet through cover, no matter how little or few twigs, no matter how close and sure it seems, and never aim behind the shoulder on a bear.. aim dead-nuts into the middle of the shoulder.

All the stories show that if you do something long enough, anything that hasn`t happened yet, will.
I`ve lost deer with the bow and rifle. Pheasant too. I plan on hunting till I can`t, hopfully another 20 yrs. I`m sure I`ll have some problems along the way.

Shot a WT doe, standing 1/4'ing to me. Not exactly sure where the shot went, which is probably why I lost her. Lots of blood at the hit site, lots of blood for 2-250yds, then nothing.

No snow to follow. We did a grid search for several hours, and then agian the next day. Never found a thing, no coyotes, no wolves, no ravens, no trace that the deer was dead or alive.

It is still talked about in camp as to what happened to that deer.

I've lost a couple. The latest was a whitetail doe shot in the shoulder with a 120 grain Speer Hot-Cor from a 257 Roberts. No blood, no hair, no deer. I think penetration was insufficient because had the bullet gone through and out, the deer would have died right there. Maybe a premium bullet would have worked better but I'll never know because the rifle went down the road. It doesn't take many failures like that to convince me.

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I broke a leg on a deer that another hunter killed alittle over a mile later as I was following it. There were 17 shots fired at that deer by others as I was on its trail. That was the poorest shooting I have ever heard of. I have lost a few pheasants through the years that I am pretty sure I have hit. I am pretty cynical of stories about critters being "perfectly hit" and getting away though. It goes against everything I have seen through the years.

About 6 or 7 years ago I shot a doe at close range as she trotted out of some head high grass onto the skid trail I was on. At the shot she hit the ground on her side and let out a bleat and then was dead still. There were other deer coming so I chambered another 150 gr BT in my 30-06 AI and looked over to the side. I heard a scuffling sound and turned back to look back at the doe and she was gone! There was no blood or hair at the spot she fell, and we tramped around in the high grass for a couple hours with no sign of her. My crosshairs were on her chest when I pulled the trigger, so I think it must have been a hit somewhere high in the vicinity of the spine that stunned the deer. Probably broke a spinous process.
Another guy was watching the whole thing from a treestand on a hill about 200 yds behind me. He thought the doe was dead as a hammer, too.

Six years ago my best friend and I were hunting elk. It was his first and only about the sixth year that I had been going. We set up over looking this really deep canyon, it is very steep and has a small creek that cuts through the middle of it. We see some cows start coming down out of the trees so we move a little to ambush them as they are coming out onto the face of the hill. We get within 150 yards and a bull starts to bugle. This is amazing because this is the first week in November. Well turns out there is a herd of about 65 elk. We wait for this bull to come out into the opeining. It's a big 6x6. He's never shot an elk, I've never shot an elk, so we're just about as excited as we can be. We have a good rest, leaning over a fallen tree and the elk have no idea we are there. The bull steps into an opening and my friend shoots him with his 270wsm it was a perfect bride side shot. Bull goes down to his knees. I think that's the end of it and I try to see if a cow will stop and give me a shot (the herd had started to run to the bottom of the canyon). All of a sudden this bull gets up and starts running with the rest of the herd. Couldn't get another shot at him becasue there were just too many other elk around him. Tracked him clear to the bottom of the canyon and up the other side into some very dark timber. It was impossible to find any blood becuase of path the herd had tore up. I've never been more sick in my life. That's the only animal that any of us had ever lost. It still keeps me awake at night sometimes.
BP

I have been fortunate (lucky?) not to have lost any big animals I've hit seriously. I think part of that goes back to how much time I spent trying, sometimes not successfully, to recover small game as a youngster. I did, however, as a teenager, lose a deer that I hit. It was one of those deals where I thought the deer was mine - and it was my first deer. I really didn't know what I was doing in terms of deer hunting and hadn't connected on my own. (I had done all my homework weapons-wise and knew what brand of slugs my single barrel Savage liked and where it shot with the single bead front sight - pop cans at 50 were no problem.) But I had some friends who liked to hunt and they invited me to hunt on land I didn't otherwise have access to. They wanted to sort of drive. Unfortunately, they also had little idea what they were doing so we were more or less just walking around. Anyway, a deer passed by me hastily and I got off two shots. The second shot nicked the animal. My friends, in their inexperience, came crashing through the woods to see what had transpired (and check to see if I was still holding a single shot since they thought I was shooting too fast for that. "My deer" must have been nicked near the head and been a bit stunned as it had stopped momentarily, head lowered, under a tree. I saw it and was raising my gun again just as the boys came hollering out. Of course the deer took off, not seriously hurt apparently. So we tracked it through thin snow barely finding flecks of blood here and there. Finally, across a ravine, we saw her again standing. I was raising my shotgun - it was an easy broadside shot. "Randy" elbowed his way in front of me as I stood there; "I want to try," he said. (He had fired all of maybe two slugs through his gun before we went hunting - and didn't do so well on the targets). Of course he missed and the deer ran off. We didn't find much sign after that other than tracks and we eventually lost them. I worried about that deer suffering a lingering death. In the years since, I have realized that the 20 gauge slug most certainly was nothing more than a poor shot, a "miss" that kissed the animal. It showed none of the signs that many more, less-than-perfectly, but still lethally hit animals have shown. I did manage to center punch the shoulders of a running fox with a 20 gauge slug later the same day to save my pride. Again, Randy, who had a "much superior" 12 gauge pumpgun, "knew" that a puny little 20 gauge slug wouldn't completely penetrate that animal. Obviously he was as wrong as I was to hunt with guys who were more clueless than I was. I did learn a lot of things that day!