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Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

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Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 05 07, 2019 •  [Post 1]

Ya, bad shots/hits happen; hunting/shooting elk is not always text book, poetry in motion, everything occurred perfectly at the moment of truth, like you read in the hunting mags (or on hunting forums for that matter). After you’ve hunted for a year or forty, stuff happens that was not our intention/plan. Share a story of a bad hit (what happened that made the hit less than ideal), and the follow on factors that ended on a positive recovery. I’ve got a dandy and will share it later.
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Fozziebear2000 » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 2]

Archery bear, not elk; but here’s a tale.
A buddy of mine invited me to Alaska to help remodel his cabin in the mornings, and to hunt from a tree stand over his bait stations in the afternoon. We were in the trees for a long afternoon each day, for the better part of a week.
My friend had done his preparations well. I was seeing bears at or around my tree stand every afternoon.
One day a bear came along that I decided I would take. I waited for a sweet quartering away shot and let fly. My arrow made contact high and right. I had just spined a fine bear.
Not good. The bear commenced to caterwauling in a loud and mournful manner. I could tell right off that the shot was not effective. The bear was moving slow, but move he did. I had another arrow knocked without thinking about it, but a good follow up shot did not immediately show up. The bear made his way directly under my tree stand and then into a thicket behind me.
During the days prior, I had used my rangefinder to study all possible shooting lanes. I knew in the direction the bear was traveling I had one opportunity. If the bear hooked right and walked along a beaver pond, my chances were slim to none. If he hooked left he would go into an opening where I felt I had a good opportunity.
He hooked left into the opening, and paused. I dropped him with an arrow through the heart at 35 yards.
Things I hope I never do again:
Lower my bow arm instead of bending at the waist, when shooting from a tree stand. I think this is why I shanked the first shot.
Shoot an arrow system that is too weak for the job. My bow for that hunt a modern 70 lb draw compound bow. My arrow system had killed more than a few critters for me. But with my first shot the broadhead broke at the end of the arrow shaft. That was the end of forward inertia. Penetration into the spine by the broadhead was not sufficient to sever the spinal nerve.
Things I think I did well:
Study all my shooting lanes prior to taking any shot. I suffered zero procrastination prior to taking the second shot.
Loading up another arrow and continuing to look for good shots after screwing up the first one.
Going muther-flocking snake eyes, to get the job done. Never have I felt a stronger sense of urgency or will power towards making a kill shot, than I felt when releasing that second arrow.
I try to bring that intensity to every shot at wild game now. I hope that leads to elk meat in my freezer one of these days :-).



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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby 7mmfan » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 3]

The elk I killed last year was an initial spine shot, that catapulted him downhill into a creek. He was down there bellowing for a minute until I could get an angle on him to put him down. That was frustrating for me. I still don't know what happened to this day as I had the crosshairs on his brisket as he was walking to me. Maybe he wheeled as I pulled the trigger? I'll never know I guess, either way most him is eaten now.

The only "bad shot" that comes to mind was a mule deer I killed in the Methow a few years ago. I was sitting watching a saddle expecting animals to come from a certain direction. All of sudden, all hell breaks loose above me and here come 3 deer, 2 bucks and a doe, barreling straight down the hill at me. About 10 minutes before, a small buck had stepped into the open briefly about 200 yards away across the saddle and I had cranked my scope all the way to 12 to get a better look at him. Unfortunately I did not dial it back down when he left. The biggest buck was in the lead and stopped no more than 30' uphill from me. I swung the rifle onto him and all I could see was the tips of hairs in my scope. 12x at 10 yards is not ideal. He boogied and I had to make a decision so I found the front of his shoulder in the scope and fired as he began to run. I fired 2 more follow up shots as he ran 200 yards across the saddle into the timber and didn't appear to be hit. I sat there for a minute reflecting on what had just happened, kicked myself and got up to go find his trail and follow up. At the place of the shot, there was no blood, but there was hair. I assumed I had grazed the front of his shoulder. I followed his tracks to the edge of the timber and as I looked ahead on the trail, there he was bedded down with his head laying on the ground in front of him. He was clearly still alive and seemed to be trying to hide. I backed up, circled uphill about 30 yards and walked out until I had a good view of his neck, and finished him off.

It appears I did miss the initial shot, but one of my hail mary follow ups had found it's mark, just not where I wanted it to. The bullet had grazed the rear quarter, went through the stomach and liver and hit the offside lung. There was not a drop of blood on his trail. A guy named Todd came upon me a couple minutes later and helped me drag the buck to a better location to process him. He kept saying he couldn't understand why I was so somber, it was a great buck! And it was, I was just beside myself for the agony I knew that buck was in before I caught up to him. I'm just glad I was able to finish it quickly.
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 4]

While still in the Army, stationed here at JBLM, I invited a fellow NCO to come elk hunt with me down south in the Lewis GMU. Didn’t get into much the first few days but on day three, we had finished a morning hunt and had returned to my jeep mid-afternoon to eat some food and were prepping to drive to another area for an evening hunt. As Jason was still working on his calling skills, I told him to jump over the small cut bank, walk back in the trees 25 yards or so, and we’d do a bit of calling practice back and forth on this fine sunny SEP afternoon to pass a bit of time; it was probably in the mid-70s. Jason let out something that sounded like a turkey being tortured. I waited a 30 seconds or so and answered back with a nice three note bugle with a bit of chuckling on the end. Well, off to my backside…. not more than 150 yards away in a sparsely timbered and brushy old clear cut…. a bull answered my call! I ran to where Jason was hunkered down, making more sick turkey sounds, quickly and told him “let’s go, a bull just answered me”! Took him a bit to believe me but back to the rig we went, shoved our ½ eaten lunch spread in the back of the rig, grabbed our bows/packs, threw our long sleeved jackets on, and off we went I the direction of the answer. We moved quickly to the edge of a somewhat open area and I dropped Jason close to several active elk trails (fresh sign everywhere). Arrow nocked, I bugled and here the bull came, bugling several times as he moved…. I could see his antlers above the tall huckleberry brush as he moved in a circle, to get downwind of the other bull he heard (me), which brought him close to Jason but not in Jason’s shooting lanes/view. I watched as the bull broke into the small opening at a trot and headed directly toward me! No hanging up for this young bull, he was on a mission. Umm, this wasn’t the plan and as I was set up with my back against a few small jack firs and nothing in front of me…. I had to stop the bull with a loud nervous bark as he was looking to run me over. I drew, barked, and the bull slammed on the brakes not more than 15 yards from me. The old Darton Viper launched the Easton 2216 fence post, tipped with the Wasp Cam-Loc 4 blade, directly into the bull’s chest but very low, too low. As the arrow smacked into the bull, he wheeled and headed out back in the direction of where he came. I quickly nocked another arrow and threw out a loud high note bugle through my tube…. Homer stopped, broadside, about 35ish yards away, and I launched another arrow. This one hit him hard, but low in the lung area….. Crash, crash, crash….. off he went back up through the brushy, lightly timbered area. I marked the last spot the bull was standing, made a mental note of the direction he was heading, and backed out and sat down for a good hour and a half. We started tracking the bull late-afternoon and quickly found ½ of a broken off arrow; I figured it was the initial shot arrow due to the lack of juice on it (just the back half/fletched portion of the arrow). Very, very minimal blood (spots here and there) told me what I needed to know; the hit(s) were not very good. I tracked the bull until right before nightfall, using his tracks as much or more than the minimal blood I found. At dark, I decided to back out till morning and let the bull bed down. Right at daylight, Jason and I were back at it. We found the bull bedded just inside at huge wall of brush, very sick but alive. I crawled in within 15 yards to where I could thread an arrow through the brush and put an arrow through both lungs of the bedded bull. He jumped up, staggered a few steps, and went down for good. The first arrow shot the previous afternoon had hit too low (as suspected) and did not touch a vital. The second arrow had hit him very, very low just clipping one lung. They are tough animals and unless your arrows find their mark into the vitals, they can live a long time if not survive.

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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Swede » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 5]

It was getting close to dark and I was going to need to get down from my tree stand. Only a couple of minutes remained and I was starting to gather my things together in the day pack and close the last zipper. I would have just enough light to get back to the road before the flashlight would be needed. Suddenly a cow elk came in from uphill and behind me. I still had the bow on the hanger and my release on, but it was starting to get dark. As the cow came forward and stopped to drink from the little water hole below, I came to full draw and took aim. When everything was lined up the arrow was released. The shot should have been good, but I did not see it.
For years I always had a wrist strap on my bow. In that low light situation and in the rush, I did not get my hand through the strap. My bow hand was over it. I did not realize how much I had learned to rely on that strap until the bow slipped from my hand and crashed on the ground below. With the bow crashing downward, I lost my concentration on the cow. My quiver was destroyed, and arrows were scattered around, but everything else seemed to be fine. After picking things up, I got my flashlight out and started to look for blood.
Blood was very sparse and hard to find. I decided to go back to the truck and call a friend to come and help me. He brought a couple of other guys from church and we hunted for the cow until about 2:00 AM when they decided to go home. I too went to bed, but hardly slept.
I was back looking for the cow at first light the next morning. My friend was back very soon after. We picked up where we had left off. Knowing time was of an essence, and we had found no new blood evidence for the last hour that previous night, we decided to walk on out in the direction the elk was traveling and see if we could find her in the daylight. Within about a hundred yards there she was. She was in plain view. We skinned and gutted her immediately. Fortunately all of the meat was still good. We were blessed to get her before the sun was up and while it was still cold.
I was surprised that the shot on the cow was really pretty good even though I dropped the bow. Still she went about 250 - 300 yards. Elk shot from a tree stand often are difficult to track. The arrow goes in high and if it does not pass completely pass through the animal, their bleeding is almost entirely internal. Often there is very little blood to track.
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Lefty » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 6]

Great story Fuzzi


When I was young I loved lobbing .22 long distances and had a place I would shoot from 140 feet above the river.

I killed a couple fox over 200 yards and a coyote at 190 with CCI stingers
I was running a trapline in NW Minnesota we had a lot of rain , 10’a of thousands of acres of ag land was flooded often full sections were flooded with just an inch or two of water.
Evidently a fox figured mice on floating field fodder was easy pickings.
This fix was a long ways out there
I began shooting and kept adjusting for windage
The fox wasn’t putting together the distant sound of the rifle and wizzes of the bullets As they skipped on the water past him. Seventh shot I heard the smack report back.
I walked out 570 yards found stuff of hair floating and fox prints in the mud but no fox fox populations were low , pressure high prices that year $76.00 and my new ford ranger was$6400.
I just could figure out what happened
I heard the hit.
Two days later 1 1/2 miles away I caught that dog fox

As I was skinning the fox the bullet was just sitting between the hide and silver skin .The shot location of the hide
was a little red, but no infection or even bruising the bullet barely piercing the skin
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Indian Summer » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 7]

My brother shot a 5 point bull at about 25 yards. Arrow hit a branch and deflected.... and literally cut his penis off! :shock:

He walked off stiff legged taking really short steps. Wouldn’t you? He went far though and we didn’t find him until the next day. Yeah he was dead alright. I’m pretty sure he wanted to die!
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 8]

Indian Summer wrote:My brother shot a 5 point bull at about 25 yards. Arrow hit a branch and deflected.... and literally cut his penis off! :shock:

He walked off stiff legged taking really short steps. Wouldn’t you? He went far though and we didn’t find him until the next day. Yeah he was dead alright. I’m pretty sure he wanted to die!


:shock: Yikes...
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Swede » 05 08, 2019 •  [Post 9]

I.S.: Did the bull bleed to death? Was there a lot of blood where he was bedded?
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Lefty » 05 09, 2019 •  [Post 10]

Swede wrote:I.S.: Did the bull bleed to death? ,,,,,,

??????? :?: :?: :?: :?:

The buck that lost his testicles just had occasional drips. Once found the whole mulie sack in barbed wire without much blood

Never heard of a circumcised elk :shock:
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Re: Bad Shot That Ended With a Recovery.

Postby Indian Summer » 05 10, 2019 •  [Post 11]

Well he didn’t die of a broken heart! Yes he bled to death. But the original trail was very spotty. Minimal blood. Lots of blood where we found him though.
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