Greatest Shot Ever--A Thread--Post Your's

[Shangobango]

The one that comes to mind for me was on a WT doe at about 5 yards from the ground. I was tucked into some palmetto on my knees. I saw her coming down the trail at about 50 yards, drew when she got to 30 yards and then proceeded to have to stay at full draw for what seemed like 5 minutes when she left the trail to munch on green briar and then hit the trail again almost right on top of me. I was pretty young and still using a Bear Nova that wasn't exactly packed with let off and I was right on the verge of having to let down when she popped back out on that trail. I would rather shoot one at 30 yards than 5 regardless of up in a tree or on the ground.

 

[nicktown97]

Hey guys, I have been active on the Elk Forum but historically have been a Blacktail hunter in Western Washington. I put up this thread to say tell us your best shot on a deer...ONLY TRUE STORIES!!!

I will go first. In 1998 I was hunting Blacktails with a Savage Model 99E Lever Action .243. I had been scouting a clear cut near the coast and knew there was a good gene pool for Blacktails in this particular area. The clearcut was fairly flat with some swampy areas in it. Perfect for Blacktails. I got up on opening morning...may have overslept just a smidge...got out to the gate and hiked in about half a mile to the clearcut. Walked into the clearcut about 20 yards, looked up and saw a deer at about 125 yards. Quickly brought my gun up freehand, saw it in the scope, saw it was a buck looking straight at me and Boom...I shot. That whole process took about 4 seconds. I looked up and saw 2 does bounce to my right. I began telling myself that wow, I can say I missed a pretty big one...probably a big 2 or 3 point...everything just happened so fast I was certain I missed. So, I went up to where the deer was to check and sure enough, there was a massive buck laying in a bush exactly where I shot it. I couldn't believe it as I raised its head out of the bush and saw this big rack. I thought, where the heck did I hit it? I looked all over the deer but there was no sign of entry and no sign of exit. No blood anywhere. Not even in the mouth. So, I gutted it and still no sign of entry and no sign of exit. I took it home and we hung it in the shed. Skinned it...no sign of entry and no sign of exit. We were perplexed...it was like I had scared it to death.

Because it was a big Blacktail I called a friend who was a retired taxidermist and asked him if he would cape the head for us as I wanted to make sure the cape was perfect. So, he came over and caped the head in our garage. About halfway through caping it he popped into the house and said, "Well I know what happened!". I said, what!!?! He said: "Well, the deer was standing straight towards you and had its mouth open and you shot it through the mouth...missing all of the teeth and the tongue. The bullet then went into the deer's brain and because you shoot a .243 the bullet blew up in it's brain and didn't exit the brain cavity...no sign of entry and no sign of exit!". I couldn't believe it. I am not really that good of a shot, however, I think this one might be in the running for one of the best free hand shots EVER!! He green scored it at 118.5 which is pretty good for a Blacktail. One of the eye guards was broken off and thus a deduction at 3/4 of an inch but a true trophy for me!
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Let's hear you best shots ever and prove me wrong! Looking forward to these responses!

 

[Marshian]

I had a detached retina which will lead to blindness in that eye three months before deer season and underwent urgent surgery. My eye was prone to drying out so I had to hunt in ski goggles with prescription inserts. The shot itself wasn’t too bad, prone on a good rest at a hair over 300 yards but it was at the deer of my life and I pieced the heart. The backstory for me is why i will likely never top this shot.

 

[OntarioHunter]

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I had a detached retina which will lead to blindness in that eye three months before deer season and underwent urgent surgery. My eye was prone to drying out so I had to hunt in ski goggles with prescription inserts. The shot itself wasn’t too bad, prone on a good rest at a hair over 300 yards but it was at the deer of my life and I pieced the heart. The backstory for me is why i will likely never top this shot.

I had that surgery ... three times. Fortunately, left eye. But also multiple laser patch jobs to both eyes. Last time was maybe 2012. At one time my eyes were falling apart so fast they expected me to go blind. But I'm good to go now. Left eye gives me depth perception but not much else.

So did you do something to mitigate recoil so soon after surgery? Suppressors not legal up here so I simply had to lay off shooting for a couple years. Eventually switched from 870 to a very heavy 3" mag semiauto A5 for bird hunting. I'm okay now to shoot 404 Jeffery elephant gun.

 

[Marshian]

I don’t shoot heavy magnums so that didn’t really apply. I usually use a 270 or 7mm08 and the biggest kicker is 12 gauge turkey loads. The eye surgeon cleared me for exercise at like the two month mark and told me everyone’s eyes dart around tremendously during REM sleep which mentally helped me be at peace with jumping and running etc. that was 4 years ago so I don’t really think about any of that anymore luckily.

 

[OntarioHunter]

I don’t shoot heavy magnums so that didn’t really apply. I usually use a 270 or 7mm08 and the biggest kicker is 12 gauge turkey loads. The eye surgeon cleared me for exercise at like the two month mark and told me everyone’s eyes dart around tremendously during REM sleep which mentally helped me be at peace with jumping and running etc. that was 4 years ago so I don’t really think about any of that anymore luckily.

Spontaneous detachment or injury related?

 

[Marshian]

Spontaneous detachment or injury related?

Spontaneous. Bad luck and age combined with being by very near sighted.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Spontaneous. Bad luck and age combined with being by very near sighted.

Mine were spontaneous, all three detachments within six months at age 54, and I am not near sighted. Just thin retinas. I'm 71 now and both eyes have been "settled" for more than ten years. "Traction" in left eye was formerly at least a weekly affair. Very unnerving. Now maybe biannual occurrence.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Enough about personal opthomology, what about your greatest shot ever?

 

[OntarioHunter]

Enough about personal opthomology, what about your greatest shot ever?

Maybe you learned something that someday may save your eyesight? Google the symptoms. Know what's happening (I didn't!). It's not necessary to get hit in the head with a baseball. Lesson over.

 

[emgarci]

Hunting elk in unit 12…. Late season… rifle…. Snow covered mountains and trees… with my brother in law.

Late on the day…. ride horses to top of mountain and glass. Nothing. An hour of light left. Hmmmm - head back to cabins? Then we hear bugles way way off in the distance… way on the opposite side of cabin. Too far to chase with sun setting. Ok… ride back to cabins.

Get to cabins, 20 mins of light left. Wonder where those bugling elk went? Let’s take a peak over the the opposite side of cabins…. There’s 200yds of brush we can walk through and peak out across creek to other side of valley. Sun has set just a bit of light left.

We peak out and nothing. But wait - are those bugles? Yes. And more and louder and there’s a bull and there’s another and there’s cows streaming out of the woods on the opposite side of valley 600 yds away. Wow! A whole heard with some interspersed bulls.

“I wonder how much a 7 mag round drops that far?” There’s the closest bull… 560yds away. “I bet about 28” drop” I tell him. He procedes to out up his shooting stocks standing up and holds over his back 2’. Bull was quartering toward us feeding. Shot goes off. Bull no se dices into the snow in front off him and piles up. Whoa.

 

[MontanaMuley]

I started recording my deer harvest distance in 2017. My average has been 162 yards. Long was my first at 242, short was ~30 yards. I practice for further, but it hasn't been my experience to need to shoot far..

 

[R.K.]

For the record, I’m not that good of a shot. I miss plenty, and have had a few go sideways that I thought were a sure thing. But here’s a few that come to mind.

Lung shot on a squirrel at 30 yards with field points. That was my first kill with a bow. Took a few years until anybody could tell me about tuning the rest and I got broadheads to fly with any consistency. Took a while to get a deer.

Rolled a mallard trying to land wide- 99 paces. Gotta love the 10 gauge and not having anybody else around. But I wouldn’t have shot if I knew it was as far as it was.

Shot 6 teal from one flock on 4 shots. About 20 birds came in and I knew it would probably be my only decent chance of the day. I put an extra shell in my hand before I stood up. They got up, and I rolled two on the first shot, two on the second shot, one on the third, and I was able to drop the fourth shell in and close the chamber to roll bird number six on shot four. Limit, pack up the kayak and head home.

Hunting with a friend. Small Whitetail buck is in the field as we’re walking out of the stand, and he hits it a little far back. I slightly panic because I don’t like anything about a gutshot deer in the dark. So I pull up the rifle, find the deer in the scope, guess on the lead and shoot before it makes the woods. Deer was piled up just before the fence, lung shot. That one was just a hope and a prayer.

Freehand shot a whitetail doe with a muzzleloader. 119 steps. Not enough heart left for tacos.

Freehand shot a doe pronghorn at 70 paces with the 308 in a snow storm. The lucky part was the snow letting up enough to see through the scope.

 

[EastTNHunter]

Just a small doe, but on public land in East TN in a county not known to have a ton of deer. Does can only be killed on certain days, and a friend invited me up to hunt. Picked a small basketball sized opening through the trees and dropped her in her tracks right before she stepped onto private property. Hard to believe that you could see 126yd through the woods here, but it was just an opening from ridge to ridge.

 

[Robert N]

“WOOF!” The Tracker grunted as we walked up on the downed Vaal Rhebok in the fading light.



My PH and Michael, the one-eyed tracker spoke to each other in excited Afrikaans and there was a certain awe to the moment. The sun had just set behind the mountains and the light had been casting in gold and pink hues in this harsh, desert landscape. “You know it’s a big one when the tracker gets excited!” - and indeed it was an exceptional specimen. 10 3/4” (the record is 11.5”) for this old guy, the tips of his horns worn down. He might well have tied the record or even broke it in his prime.

We’d been hunting all day in the winter cold South African Karoo for Vaal and Klipspringer. Most of the time we’d see the animals at 700-1000 yards, sprinting for the next horizon and disappearing over the far range. We’d been at it since 5am and we were all tired. Craig (my PH) looked at the sun, then his watch, then back to the truck. One last place to try before dark really. It was 330 pm and the sun was already signaling it’s desire to tuck itself in.

Nearly back to where we started that morning, we’d run a large circle all day, dealing with high cold winds, the kind of cold that cuts through clothing and numbs trigger fingers. The kind of cold that makes one start to question if they can hold a rifle steady through the chatter of chipping teeth.

A rapping on the roof of the Bakkie signaled our Tracker had spotted some Vaalies and we bailed out for a mile+ stalk. As we softly crested a hill and crevasse the dread of defeat began to seep into our psyche. Of course the Vaal had already seen us and were sprinting for the next horizon. Craig watched them for a minute, sank down and made a fresh plan to move over to a cliff area about a 1/2 mile away. We’d have to double-time it to get there before the light faded out.

As we came up on the cliff, my brain was running mathematical simulations. I don’t know why it was doing it this time, but it was. I was shooting a loaner rifle - a commercial Husky Mauser in 30-06. It was the outfitters personal rifle, given to him when he was 16. It had been countless hunts and had all the nicks and dings a lifetime of hunting could sport. It was zero’ed 2.5” high at 100 yards and remarkably drilled a wonderful 1” group at 100 even with that heavy two-stage trigger on it.

With some PPU 150 gr. factory ammo, it was very soft shooting. At best I figured this ammo was doing 2650, maybe 2700 fps. With a steel buttplate the recoil was actually quite negligible through my jacket. Let’s see…150 gr. Factory bullet, probably a flat base cup and core…BC maybe around .36…2.5” high at 100, probably 1” low at 200…figure 12” low at 300…

I see them, 320 out. Sure, a dusky sand colored critter about the size of a Coyote was sitting in the middle of a sandy patch of ground in the fading light. Streaks of pink glazed overhead.

Wait, that’s not 320 yards…that’s 320 meters. Which is 350 yards. Half again the drop at 300 takes me to 18” of expected drop. A Vaal Rhebok’s chest is about 14” high…

I went prone, picked up two rocks, placed in a V-pattern under the forestock…as I lay there, found another rock to wedge under the grip and settled my breathing. Scope on 10x, I found the Vaal, he was standing broadside, staring straight at us with his mate. I placed the crosshairs an estimated full body height over his back (about 14”), put the vertical crosshair on his front leg…and took up the slack in the trigger.

The wind died to zero…the grasses of the plains went still…I never felt not heard the crack of the rifle as I lost sight of the Vaal in the recoil.

“He’s Down!” My PH exclaimed. He’s DOWN! (*More congratulations)

I rolled over onto my back and just stared up at the sky, thanking God, the Heavens, Athena for an amazing day.

It took us 15 minutes to walk down to the Vaal. It was only when we walked up on him that we truly realized what a monster he was.

WOOF.

 

[buffybr]

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Are we twins?