Deer hunting is something that I like for several reasons, one of which is that it is varied. You will rarely find the same conditions surrounding any two deer kills. There follows a brief summary of a few of the unusual, and sometimes unwise, shots that I have been privy to, executed by myself and some other hunters I've known.

Strange Beginnings

I guess I started out oddly enough. My first buck came on opening day afternoon, 1987. I was eighteen years old, and the only living legal buck I had ever seen in the woods was the previous season, which I had stupidly watched and had entirely failed to shoot.

Well, I dropped Dad off where he wanted to hunt, and bounced off through the new clearcut in Dad's '77 Chevy pickup. I found a likely spot, hauled my climbing stand out, and hiked into the woods. This was the first time I'd set up the stand that year, and the bolts were mighty rusty. By the time I had clanked and clunked and gotten set up and climbed the tree, I figured it'd be an hour or more before the woods settled down.

After about fifteen minutes, however, I heard something in the brush. I looked over my left shoulder, and there was a buck deer! I had tortured myself enough over the previous year's deer that I knew I was going to do my best to get this one, and I fought off the buck fever that threatened to freeze me once again.

I waited until he lowered his head to get a bite to eat, and then I raised the rifle, aimed at the "sweet spot" (he was quartering toward me, so I chose the forward edge of his shoulder), and fired. He went down like he was supposed to, and after I had determined that he wasn't going to get up and run off, I let out a victory whoop that you may have heard, wherever you were at the time.

I ratcheted down the tree and rushed over to him. Imagine my surprise when I found that I had hit him between the antlers! He had apparently raised his head at just the wrong time, for my bullet traveled on through his head and neck, exited the neck, and hit him at my point of aim. I didn't spoil a "trophy" rack (although they're all trophies to me!)... the antlers were small and had been damaged in velvet (I still have those antlers, though!). Looking back, the only thing I would change would be to fire a half a second earlier, and miss his head.

Shoot for the Third Molar?

Don't try this next one at home (or in the woods, for that matter). This is one that never should have been, but it turned out all right in the end.

Some years before I took the buck described above, around 1982, Richard (a good family friend) scored on a buck in the Ocala National Forest. He had a cold, and was in his tree stand, coughing and hacking and blowing his nose and making all kind of noise doing so (he has a tendency to sound like a bugling elk when blowing his nose... must have been confusing to the deer), and here came a doe with a buck.

The buck was at a range of about 80 feet. Richard raised the gun and missed him, and the Remington 742 30-06 jammed. The buck ran off, naturally, although the doe stood placidly nearby tree as Richard cussed the gun, changed magazines, and chambered a round. Then he took a look around, and there was the buck, this time at 80 yards, showing nothing but his head.

Richard shot at what he could see, and the deer ran. When he and his companions got to the spot, they found a lot of blood and a good trail. After a mile or more of trailing, they finally caught up with the deer and finished him.

Richard always says he hit him in the third molar of the lower jaw. We still call him the jawshooter, although he's gotten much better at shot placement. What he learned from that shot was to take good, solid shots at critters that are well within range. So it's a mistake he learned from, and he did retrieve the deer in the end. Not something to try yourself, but a lesson learned.

Patience is a Virtue

Then there was that time in 1989, Wednesday of opening week. Dad & I were trying an area for the first time, and we'd gotten there late, around 8:30 AM. I headed out and picked a tree that would tuck me well back from the edge, in the mature pines.

After an hour or so, I was feeling blue. We had been hunting pretty hard all week, and had only seen a couple of very spooked deer. As I was feeling down, I felt this voice say, "Patience is a virtue. I will not forget you." Well, I believed it, and suddenly I felt much better.

About ten minutes later, two deer came running by. I immediately identified the close one as a doe (illegal), and I put the binoculars on the far deer, quite a ways off. I identified him as a buck, so I quickly took aim and fired, still holding the binocs in my left hand as I cradled the forearm of the Ruger carbine with it.

The deer dropped from sight behind some low bushes. When I shot, I could only see the top half of him (everything above his belly, basically). He was facing away, slightly quartering, a bit downhill, when I fired, and at the shot he dropped out of sight.

Okay... so I had made this rock-solid shot, steady as can be, at what turned out to be 115 yards, with no rest and a peep sight, and now I started shaking like a leaf. My knees were something akin to Jell-o. A second later, there was a deer standing where I had just shot!

I put the binocs up to ID the deer, not wanting to shoot again for fear that maybe I was seeing another deer instead of the buck. The deer kept its head down, and my shaking hands were blurring the binocular picture, and then it was gone.

I finally got out of the tree and walked over there, torturing myself with fears that he had wandered off into the thick scrub. As I approached the spot where he'd been, still hidden by underbrush, the buck tried to get up, and I about jumped out of my skin. I got a little closer, and he seemed like he was going to get up for real, so I shot him again.

This was my best-so-far buck; 150 lbs live weight, and a heavy 7-point rack. This is a big whitetail for Florida, believe it. The buck had been facing away from me, and I had a slightly downward angle on him, and I had hit him in the top of his rump. The heavy 44 magnum bullet had deflected upward somewhere along the line, and after doing its work of putting him down, it stopped near his spine, causing some damage. When he tried to get up the second time, his back broke due to this. I found the bullet a few months later while getting some backstrap ready to cook.

Zipper Shot

Dad really pulled one out of his hat a while back. This is another shot to put on your not-to-do list. Richard is had become co-owner of 800 acres of hunting land in Georgia, and he took Dad up on a doe-legal weekend, since Dad hadn't gotten a deer since 1992 (on the day of our Father-Son Double-Header, when he made a much better shot).

Friday afternoon (new year's day 1999), Dad had hunted down in a bottom, between some of the steep hills he calls baby mountains. Saturday morning was threatening rain, and his knees don't like to work very well anymore, so he stayed out of the steep hole. After a bit of freezing sitting by a brush pile, he decided to move.

As he walked along the dirt road, he soon spotted a deer about 60 yards ahead. This was the first time he had taken his Browning 30-06 BAR hunting, and though he had shot it a range a fair amount, he was used to carrying his Ruger 44 Carbine, same as me. His excuse was that he wasn't familiar enough with the Browning (poor choice of hunting guns, if that's the case - always know your gear).

Anyhow, he fired a tad too soon, missed the deer, and it ran off. However, there was a second deer, which decided to run broadside across the opening. Dad swung the gun with the deer and fired. The deer ran off, seemingly unaffected, showing no sign of being hit. Dad looked around a bit, but couldn't find any sign of a hit.

Meanwhile, Richard came strolling up to check on him, having heard the shooting. They looked around for blood or other sign, but they couldn't find a thing. Richard headed back to his stand. Dad kept looking, and found, a bit farther from the road than he had yet looked, a big patch of hair on the ground, all white.

A thorough inspection of the area revealed that he had gutshot the deer. Bad news! He called after Richard, who didn't hear his call. So alone, Dad began heading slowly down the hill in the direction the deer had run, and soon a deer jumped ahead of him, running gimpily and with its tail down, which is sometimes a sign that a deer is hit. This was apparently dad's deer, and he shot at it, but missed as it ran.

He now slipped up near where the deer had jumped, and while scanning the woods ahead of him, he spotted the deer, down and barely moving. Since the deer was still moving, he shot it again to put it out of its misery. (Skip the following two paragraphs if you've got a weak stomach!)

After shooting the downed deer to finish it, Dad looked over and about 20 feet away, there's a stomach lying on the ground! After the initial disbelief and further inspection, he discovered that his first shot had cut the deer's belly open, from side-to-side, and had barely touched each of its rear legs. A half-inch lower would have missed entirely.

When the deer jumped to run, it left its entrails behind. You don't often hear of one shot that field-dresses a deer without so much as tearing the stomach open. Keep in mind that this man has a much longer history of deer hunting than most of us, and has done a lot more shooting than most of us ever will. It goes to show that anyone can make a mistake, and these things can happen to the best of us. I know he won't be trying that shot again!

How Not to Make Mistakes

The above accounts are in no way an endorsement of rushed and/or offhand shots at game. It is intended as a bit of a fireside chat, "Hey, listen to what happened..." but don't necessarily follow in our footsteps.

If you hunt long enough, there will almost certainly come a time when you don't hit the deer (or other game) exactly where you want to. This should, of course, be avoided whenever possible by careful analysis of your situation before you pull a trigger or sling an arrow. As more of us strive to attain a higher level of accuracy and a better quality of shots at game, we come ever closer to reducing bad shots toward the level of extinction.

- Russ Chastain