First hunting experience (not good)

[Carl 9.3x62]

🖒

 

[Tikka06]

My first bow kill is almost this bad. I was young, my first outing with a bow. I drew on a group of deer that had a large doe, 2 smaller does, and a yearling. I held for the largest doe but she picked me out, jumped my string, and the arrow hit the yearling in the hip. My old man made me kill that thing with a knife. It broke me from taking bad shots. Looking back I can see a dozen or so mistakes I made. I have tried to never make them again. Keep at it and learn from your mistakes. Best of luck.

 

[LuketheDog]

Switching to a rifle will not cure your ills, there are a boatload of people out there who can't make the shot with a rifle either. Keep practicing, don't give up, get back out there. Also, don't let someone else (like a guide!) pressure you into taking bad shots, he takes a lot of blame in my book for how your situation went down. What he should have done is backed off several hundred yards and watched the antelope until it died since the initial hit looked good...

 

[mtmuley]

Like your one liners that contribute nothing

Sorry to hurt you feelings. Sharing that with total strangers on an Internet forum is a good thing? Sure, guys gotta talk things out. Probly with a good friend and hunting buddy would be good. My apologies to the op if I offended. As said, I wouldn't share this with the world. mtmuley

 

[Pucky Freak]

HT is a great community. You'll see this if you continue to drop in as you continue your hunting journey. Get out there and enjoy your deer hunt!

 

[onpoint]

"Sorry to hurt you feelings. Sharing that with total strangers on an Internet forum is a good thing? Sure, guys gotta talk things out. Probly with a good friend and hunting buddy would be good. My apologies to the op if I offended. As said, I wouldn't share this with the world. mtmuley"

You're old, mtmuley, and obviously don't possess any applicable understanding of the facebook generation. Should probably stick to talking about Cooper tires, RUM's, bullets and other hunter man stuff.

 

[RockinU]

Switching to a rifle will not cure your ills, there are a boatload of people out there who can't make the shot with a rifle either. Keep practicing, don't give up, get back out there. Also, don't let someone else (like a guide!) pressure you into taking bad shots, he takes a lot of blame in my book for how your situation went down. What he should have done is backed off several hundred yards and watched the antelope until it died since the initial hit looked good...

That's a hard call to judge not having been there. To the guide he could have felt the initial hit didn't look good enough, in which case the reasonable thing to do was to try and maneuver for another shot. Especially late in the day.

I agree that you can't let anyone talk you into making a shot you are unsure of. It's the guide's job to put you on animals, it's the hunter's job to know their limitations and articulate to the guide if they feel a shot it outside their capabilities.

 

[LuketheDog]

That's a hard call to judge not having been there. To the guide he could have felt the initial hit didn't look good enough, in which case the reasonable thing to do was to try and maneuver for another shot. Especially late in the day.

You're right, I wasn't there, but this is what he said: "Both the guide and an additional spotter say that the shot looked really good and he should die soon."

 

[RockinU]

You're right, I wasn't there, but this is what he said: "Both the guide and an additional spotter say that the shot looked really good and he should die soon."

Right, but then after 30 min, with the animal still bedded and alert, both the guide and the additional spotter began to doubt that initial call, daylight was short, and they had concerns. He made the call based on what he saw on the ground.

People naturally want to assign blame in situations like this, but if they had put a good stalk on a bedded/wounded antelope, put a perfect single shot on him, and recovered him quickly, avoiding the possibility of losing him to darkness/scavengers, it would have been a brilliant call. Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, but when you have to make the call on the ground, you do it as best you can using your experience to interpret what you see. Just like most everything else in hunting, sometimes it works perfect, sometimes it train wrecks.

 

[thusby]

It takes a couple seasons to work out the jitters and settle in. The margin for error is a little better, with a large-for-species caliber, when rifle hunting. When in doubt, get a little closer. With antelope, there will almost always be more chances.

 

[marshman]

It sounds like you are starting to learn what hunting is really about, it is not just shooting an animal and eating it. There are lots of things that do not go as planned, for me that is a part of the whole experience. I have lost one animal that i wounded - that was tough for me. As long as you are trying your best and you respect the animals you are hunting and the sport, you will learn and get better.
For sure consider picking up a rifle, and practice with it. When you hit them correctly they go down permanently.

 

[MN_Bowhunter4]

Tough situation but as most others have said, if you hunt long enough you're bound to have something like this happen. Does it suck? 100%. Does it ever get better? Absolutely not.

I don't think you should give up, and it sounded like you're in a good head space based on your followup. You appreciate the gravity of the situation and have resolved to to everything in your power to get better. That's what it's all about.

Be frustrated, but don't give up. Thanks for sharing.

 

[LuketheDog]

Right, but then after 30 min, with the animal still bedded and alert, both the guide and the additional spotter began to doubt that initial call, daylight was short, and they had concerns. He made the call based on what he saw on the ground.

I don't know if many guys on here would consider "2.5 hours til sundown" to be the same as "daylight was short", they had enough time to take a nap, eat dinner, and visit the outhouse if they felt like it. An antelope that trots off and then lays down again multiple times is not a well critter, a healthy animal would have been in the next state by then. OP is a newb to hunting and didn't know any better and gets a pass on that part, guide made the wrong professional call and rushed the situation, simple human error...period...hopefully OP has learned from the experience, and learned what the risk is of trying to rush a situation like that. Some lessons suck to learn...

 

[midwesthunter]

These things can happen to the most experienced shooter. You may never forget this experience, but it should help make you a better hunter in the long run.

Not a lot can help you with the jitters, but if you want to see what your comfortable range is under those conditions, bang out 20 or as many push ups as you can as fast as you can, then jump up and shoot your bow. Muscles will be tight and you will be short of breath.

 

[Focus]

I said something about this in your broad head thread but it’s worth mentioning here. Were your broad heads absolutely razor sharp? Firing one into a target, in my opinion, can ruin one until it is resharpened. A dull broad head can fail to cut veins and arteries.

+1 on Ben Sellers' post. I opt for replaceable blade broadheads (Thunderheads) and replace with brand new out-of-package blades prior to hunting.

Also OP, make sure mechanicals are legal where you hunt if you do decide to make the switch. I didn't see which state you were hunting in......I assume if the guide said to make the switch he would know they are legal where you were hunting.....but I would verify with the state regs prior to making the switch.

As far as your experience goes OP, at least you bagged and tagged him. I've lost two deer over the years, one that I know was badly hit and one that was nicked (I feel like it survived the experience based on arrow sign and the blood trailing experience). The badly-hit one stuck with me for quite some time. I quit hunting (with a bow) for the rest of that season. But I learned some very good lessons through that experience that stick with me to this day.

Good luck on the rest of your season and let us know how it goes.

 

[nhn2a]

I commend you for taking the situation very seriously and letting it bother you. I've known a lot of people that make a bad shot and just say oh well and move on. I even had to force one guy that I let hunt my property years ago to follow a blood trail because he thought it was too faint and not worth following. Honestly you learn more from mistakes than you do successes a lot of times. We've all made bad shots at some time in our life but it sounds like you did everything you could to prepare but the "buck fever" got you a little bit. I'm not a huge sports fan but I saw this recently as a quote from Michael Jordan and I thought it was appropriate to share in this instance. Keep practicing and dont give up!

 

[RockinU]

I don't know if many guys on here would consider "2.5 hours til sundown" to be the same as "daylight was short", they had enough time to take a nap, eat dinner, and visit the outhouse if they felt like it. An antelope that trots off and then lays down again multiple times is not a well critter, a healthy animal would have been in the next state by then. OP is a newb to hunting and didn't know any better and gets a pass on that part, guide made the wrong professional call and rushed the situation, simple human error...period...hopefully OP has learned from the experience, and learned what the risk is of trying to rush a situation like that. Some lessons suck to learn...

On this Monday morning, I don’t think there’s any doubt that human error was at play, what I think bears discussing is whether or not the guide’s judgement is to blame for that error.

Towards that discussion I would offer that had I, as a guy with experience, left an animal that I legit believed to be double lunged for 30 min, and returned to find than animal’s condition to have not noticeably worsened would have then questioned my perception of the shot. And then, having a different perception of the shot, and knowing that a liver or gut shot can take longer than 2.5 hours to expire, could have had a sense of urgency to get another hole in the animal.

Obvious now that it was the wrong call, but I don’t see it as unreasonable.

 

[Jape]

That's a tough first experience, but well done finishing the job. Taking an animal's life is not, or should not be, an inconsequential matter. There is definitely a lot to consider. However, sometimes we analyze it too much.

Example: On my first elk hunt as a 12-year-old I saw a calf run out into a clearing mid-morning. It was clear the calf had been running for some time and it was alone (probably lost its mother that morning). I pull up my rifle and miss the first shot because I had "buck fever." I missed the second shot. And the third. On the fourth, I hit it in the spine. I won't give the details of what it was doing thereafter, but it took me a couple more bullets to finish the job.

Now, I'm not the type to anthropomorphize animals. I think they are distinctly different than humans. But, I felt definite sympathy for that animal. I didn't want it to suffer any more than was necessary. At the same time, it was a learning opportunity for a young kid and I definitely valued the sustenance that came from that animal. You should too. There is value in that antelope you took and I hope you realize that and enjoy the experience the best you can, with the understanding that the next one will be that much better.

 

[ida homer]

Sorry to hurt you feelings. mtmuley

Sends me a PM to talk through his

 

[Brian in Montana]

Man, hunts like that are rough. Please trust me when I say yours sounds really exceptionally bad. Very few hunts are actually that nerve wracking and gut wrenching, few to none, I'd even go so far as saying.

I'd also add that I think you're guide made a bad decision to push that buck. He should have waited him out after the first shot. Could have pulled back and waited after any of them. Its unfortunate, but I think you didn't have a great guide.