Well, yesterday afternoon I climbed up into my ladder stand bedside the well house and 10 minutes later had a 160 pound 7 point on top of his feet. Super accurate half MOA Steyr tactical, handloaded 168 Amax at...17 yards.
Yeah.
17 yards.
a new record short range shot..

I think I can still beat you by about 7. I walked up on him. Took me a lot longer though.

That is like sand-blasting a Ritz cracker....

Killed by muzzle blast! powdr

I shot a big 7 pt. down in Ohio quite a while back with a rifled slug. It was so close the wad stuck in it's hide. Probably about 20 feet.

Both deer I have mounted were shot at 5 (8pt) and 7 yards (9pt).

I wondered about the powder burns......

My personal best was a doe at 12 feet....

7 yards, on my first nice buck when I was seventeen-years old.

I shot this one last Sunday. 12 steps from the tree I was in. Good thing he was so close, everyone knows that you can't hit anything with a Kimber Montana especially in 300WSM!

Burned a patch of hair off a coyote once. Honest to god muzzle flash burn.

I've not burned any deer hair with gunpowder, yet.

Missed a herd bull with a bow at 8'.

Big fork horn. TC White Mountain Carbine .50- cal. 1990. 6 ft straight under tree stand. Bang-Wobble-Flop inside 3 yards...

Dropped a nice buck at about 10 feet once. A Nosler ballistic tip out of my 30-06 absolutely grenaded on impact. What a mess that was.

Snuck on a buck bedded on the corner of a hay stack. Let the arrow go as he stood up at maybe 1 and 1/2 arrow lengths. Not much aiming on that one.

Found later where coyotes had been nipping his Achilles.

You boys ought to kick them up like quail, let them get 30 yards out before you shoot. Won't tear them up quite so bad.

Does help understand the popularity of those sausage recipes tho.

I killed a 150 pound hog, at about 8 feet, with a bow one time. I was on the ground, too. Upon retrospect, it might not have been the safest thing to do, but it worked out OK. He took off the other way like his butt was on fire.

My first elk was taken about 5 minutes after I had sat down next to an open meadow. Looked up and 14 yards away a 7x5 was walking right towards me. Barely light enough to see, but I'm sure glad I had my 4.5-14 Leupold on a 7mm mag.

Pretty much bang/flop and I'm left wondering why people think Elk hunting is so tough?

Buddy of mine shot a small doe almost straight down from his tree stand with his 30-06. Killed it and field dressed it all in one quick operation..........

had a rutting whitetail in Montana walk around a rock outcrop and emerge at 15 ft. Don't know if he wanted to fight me or screw me, but I shot him. He tumbled/slid down the slope out of site. I stood there for 5 min telling myself that what happened really happened! He was at the truck in 25 min. A trout fisherman who saw me leave and hear the shot helped me load it.

Need to think and remember this - Wyoming deer last week was 2.5 mi from the truck with no help in sight!

I shot one so close it was fully cooked from the muzzle flash.
LOL
Good thing I don't fish, I'd really tell some woppers.
I have shot over 30 deer and 50 yds would be a long shot. Usually within a few feet of my chair.

2006.. heard 2 bucks briefly going at it close by as I sat in a umbrella style ground blind. Few minutes later a 2x1 trots out and then sees me, turns and runs at me. I was chuckling when he was at 75 yards, still chuckling at 50 and whistled to spook him off.. at 20 yards and he was still speeding up I said screw it, I'm not going to end up in the papers as the guy who got beat up by a little forkhorn. He slid to a stop about 20 feet short of me. Bullet entered through his lower jaw and passed straight down the chest cavity - he was coming straight at me, the little fart.

5 minutes later I shot a 5x5 at maybe 8 yards in a wide open field as he stalked up on the spike to whoop his butt some more. You know that feeling when you have your scope set at 4x and you bring it up and all you see is brown fur? Yeah, I'd never had that feeling before either unless I'd left a scope dialed to 9x.

9:30am and hunting was over.

Killer deer:

A few years ago I was hunting on a friend's small rural property. We were running out a small patch of reforestration.

I walked up to a wire fence that ran through the middle of the pines. A doe sneaking out ahead of the beaters passed on the other side of the fence and I killed it with a shotgun slug. Never measured it but it had to be between 5 and 8 feet.

Jim