Missed Buck

N

NHSHOOTER

New member
In my stand at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, not much happening and out of the thick pines steps a very large 8 pointer at about 80 yds from my stand. I am in a stand of hardwoods so, I raise my rifle "which I shoot often" and place the crosshairs right behind the shoulder as the buck stops. I squeeze off what I thought would be a bang flop shot and the buck just spins around and trots off back into the pines out of sight. I thought for sure he had been hit. Alas, NO blood where he was standing when I shot or anywhere along his tracks for the 100 yds I followed. Very discourged by now I climb back into my stand trying to firgure out what went wrong. I sit in my tree and look towards where the buck was standing and I see a dead pine branch maybe 5 ft in front of me with a bullet groove in it. Never saw the branch in the scope but now I know that is why I missed.
Sounds reasonable to me, anyone else have a opinion on what could have gone wrong?
 
Hey, the management doesn't offer excuses but we will accept any offered by the shooter.

That is what I tell the shooters at 22 silhouette and it works with any other style of shooting.:)
 
That happened to me last weekend; except I was using a flintlock and found out after the deer ran that it'd been screened by brush; can't see that with primitive iron sights. I empathize.
 
I highly doubt you'll ever see that buck again.

Once molested big game animals are smart enough to know they "must" vacate the area in a hurry. Maybe reappear in a week? Maybe not? >especially if he/she found a new sweetheart in the move. Always concentrate on the animals tail. If it drops you got em. If it flags. He's a memory of the one who got away.
 
i will have to agree with Sure Shot here,,,,if he tucks that tail he is hurt and will be laying somewhere close most of the time,,,if you wait a few before you go looking for him/her

lol,,,if that tail goes up and he is waving goodby,,,well that is exactly what happened,,,see ya later,,,,,,,BUT you need to get down and look,,,just to be sure

ocharry
 
You might see him again. I shot the same buck two weeks apart in the same spot. I dug my old bullet out of his shoulder. The bullet hit bone and exploded. That was the last Game King I ever shot at anything except paper.
 
reynolds357 I will be hunting him from the same stand till the end of the season, dec, 12..I can only hope I see him again, I do know deep down that it was a clean miss..
 
When you see that you're bullet was deflected you understand the myth of a "brush busting " cartridge !
Some "good hits" are not . We met a new handgun shooter who had finally given up tracking a deer. Deer came toward the hunter, 41mag, deer went down ,but jumped up as the hunter moved his position. Tracked for along time then lost the track. We heard his story and assumed that the bullet had gone into the chest but under the heart. Obvious hit blood trail but no deer. We heard that a week later someone took a deer that had a bullet hole in the chest !! :(
I've heard of that shot on many animals rifle or handgun .Frustrating
confusing and no deer !!
 
I hope he comes back, NHSHOOTER. It's better that the deflection caused a clean miss than a bad hit.

I got lucky in 2013 when shooting a big nine. He was a bit over 150 yards away briskly walking after a doe. I fired when he stepped into an opening and he went flop. Imagine my surprise when I got to him and saw there was no hole behind his shoulder but there was one in his head. Thirty yards from the deer and 120 yards from where I shot was a slender, sagging tree branch with a hemispherical hole that had deflected the bullet.
 
Update, I dont know for sure if it is the same deer but I killed this 8 from the same stand 1 week to the day from when I missed it before.
 

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I shot a limb a few years ago. Missed a doe as a result. It happens.

Consider yourself lucky that it was a clean miss and it looks like you made up for first missed shot.
 
The closer the limb was to you the better the chance of a complete miss. Just think how small of a movement of the sights it takes to be off target 100 yards away, a small deflection of the bullet close to the muzzle could easily result in a miss, could have easily upset the bullet enough to cause it to destabilize enough to come apart too. If not overly spooked he could well be back, just make sure that dead limb vanishes before then.
 
Yep, i’ve shot a limb, and I remember my dad fussing about a thick vine that ‘jumped’ in front of his rifle.

Sometimes a buck doesn’t show textbook reaction after being hit. Recently I shot a nice 9 point. A standing shot at 265 yards, and I had a good rest. I shot and he slowly trotted off. Didn’t show any sign of being hit, but I knew that he was. No stinkin way I missed that shot. He didn’t go very far, and I found him easily. I will admit that I put the bullet a bit back of where I wanted, but still hit the lungs.
 
I once shot a 10 pointer at about 45 yards with a 165 Gr Winchester 30-06 Super-X out of a 1903 Springfield rifle. The deer went down hard but got up and managed to run off. I waited about 30 min and went to the place he had gone down. A lot of blood and a 4 inch piece of bone. I waited another 30 minutes then started trailing... I found where he tried to jump a fence and failed then tried to crawl under it! He then paralleled the fence for about 400 yards then the trail disappeared. My son found him a week later and he was still alive but was down in a creek.

When we looked him over it appears the bullet hit the main shoulder joint and disintegrated after shattering the the ball, the socket, and shoulder blade. Infection had taken it's toll but we basically had a large entrance wound but no exit wound.

Bottom line, I have always wondered if it wasn't a faulty bullet. I have killed over 2 dozen whitetails with a 30-06 and could never believe this could happen with such a great caliber.
 
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