Ok ...Fess up

[bluealtered]

Ok, i know we are all without a doubt the best hunters in our county, we never miss, it's that simple. But since it's raining cats and dogs and blowing 30mph, i'll share this.

This happened years ago but i'll always remember it. I have always been able to pretty well range my shots by just looking but as i got older i found out i wasn't doing so good anymore, and as much as i hated to i got a rangefinder. Like many/most hunters if you get a rangefinder for the first time you start ranging everything in sight.

So the next time i went out coyote hunting i set up and called a few times and since nothing came in after about an hour i started to range the area, i had been coming here for years and done pretty well but not today. So here i am ranging everything to see how close i was to being right over the years i had been guessing at it.


I was doing ok until i heard a sound and looked up to see a coyote standing about twenty feet from me trying to figure out what i was doing, i think my jaw dropping down to my lap must have spooked him. Of course by the time i dropped the rangefinder and grabbed the rifle out of my lap, got the safety off and looked through the scope, ... he was safely in the trees. By the way, ... the trees were 232 yards away. So the rangefinder did come in handy!

 

[jr600yd]

Did something similar. "Once". Sitting up in a tree stand I saw a whole flight of turkeys land in front of me about 20 yds away. Unfortunately their season didn't open for another week (ain't it always that way?) So I stood up and took some picture. I was told these birds were pretty savy critters but I couldn't spook them. I wonder since they have a brain the size of a pea. Anyway, as I got back to the tree stand (no rifle just camera) I looked up and there were about a dozen deer looking at me. They had that "WTF" is he doing look. Needless to say no venison that day.

 

[mr45man]

My cousin and I did a lot of hunting together.
Shot gun only county,
We're still hunting about 100 yrds apart.
I see him stop so i was watching, turns out he took out the slug and loaded a squirrel load (autoloader) .Now he is waiting for squirrel to reappear, a nice buck comes trotting up the trail to within about 20 yrds.
And stops dead LOL I'm still laughing.
They look at each other and the buck of course runs into the brush never to be seen again.

 

[DOGCAPPER]

My only cyote kill...ever.
Was in a two door Tahoe looking for doves in a harvested circle irrigation corn field .
At the pivot point a cyote jumped out and headed for the perimeter.
I gave chase and overtook him about 75 yds from the edge he never zigged I ran completely over him at about 60 mph.

 

[jds holler]

All I can say, is that after a lifetime of hunting most everything that runs in the desert, woods, and swamp -- that when it comes to killing things, it doesn't always work out the way that ya planned; and sometimes, it doesn't work out very pretty.

I'll have to think very carefully before relating a few experiences for fear of damaging my reputation as a steely eyed, dead-shot, expert killer. jd

 

[86alaskan]

I have a bad habit with poor time and impatience. On more than one occasion I have found myself getting bored or cold, then standing and walking. Of course, this is followed by the sound of deer running through the woods, as they were mere feet from coming into view after hours of fruitless sitting. Actually happened to me this season. Sat for 3hrs from sunup on and was getting cold, so I stood up and stretched.... set my rifle down.... and sure enough, here comes a nice basket racked 8pt, strolling right where I was sitting. Oh well, I shot his brother later that day.

 

[johnfred1965]

I was out squirrel hunting with my brother once. Early in the season and still a bit hot. I sat down on a log for a rest, watching a hugh Oak tree. After a while I heard a sound behind me, and I turned, expecting to see my brother coming up. I ended up face to face(within 5 feet) of a small doe. We stared at each other for about 10 seconds, I said Hey Girl, and she just turned and trotted off. She got within peeing distance of me before I heard her.!

 

[oldhoward]

Hi, This happened the first time I used a varmint call. iI was also my first varmint hunt. This caller machine was an old cassette player hooked to a speaker by about 30 foot of wire, which I inherited from my dad. I set it up in a field about 80 yards from a tree line and turned it on. I was walking back to where I left my rifle when I heard this barking noise. I turned around and 3 foxes were about 20 feet behind me looking at me. I ran for my rifle and the foxes ran to but they were much faster than me. They ran into the tree line and were never seen again. My two son were watching and laughing so hard they didn't think about shooting. Once in a while they still remind me of this hunt.

 

[M14AMU]

Farm boys are the best estimators of distance!

 

[XTR]

Back in about '88 I went with a friend to some stands on company property about 90 minutes from my home. Drizzly day early in rifle season in SC. Not brutal cold but not comfortable. Dropped the other guy off. Took the vehicle over parked it to walk to my stand. Getting my gear together and realized that the 4 round ammo carrier wasn't on the sling of my rifle. Sat in my stand, in the drizzle for 4 hours with on ammo. (didn't see any deer, but wasn't looking that hard)

Never told the other guy.

 

[hogpatrol]

How about pulling the trigger on an empty chamber or forgetting to put a primer in the inline muzzleloader?
As I get older that seems to be more frequent.

One of my buddies hunted deer all day, I pushed for him on a half dozen drives and then sat in a hide for the evening hunt. Six doe came out of the woods, a hundred yards, easy shot. I look at him and nod, go ahead. He pulls the trigger PRANG! nothing but a primer, no load. They didn't hang around to see what that noise was. We got a good laugh out of that experience. At least I got some exercise. I told him next time, just put the gun up and yell bang. Same difference.

 

[6ShotsOr5?]

Filling a whitetail doe tag. Saw two does inside a hundred yards, behind a small hill. Looked about the same size to me. Turns out the one on the right was 80-90 yds away, but the one I shot on the left was about 40 yds away — and a lot smaller, but at least the spots were gone. Tastes great, less filling.

 

[FatOldMIHunter]

I was in a blind with a CVA percussion cap muzzle loader. I had been hunting with the same load in the smokepole for a week, tape over the end of the barrel to keep the bore dry. Unfortunately I had also been putting the same cap on the nipple before each hunt and removing it afterward. I had five does in front of me. One was the grannie and she was on the hitlist. The other caps were safe and dry in a bag behind me. I dropped the hammer on that cap five times before she gave the go signal and all the deer left. I had to pick the mushy charge out of the nipple when I got back to camp. I put a new clean dry cap on and BOOM! That ended my muzzle loader season. I got her two weeks later during the late antlerless season at the same place with a .308. It was 30 degrees colder and there was 18" of snow to drag her through.

 

[JayBeeYou]

Years ago an army buddy invited me to go hunting on his family farm in Kentucky. While there we met his older brother who was being a bit of a jerk to his younger brother and me by association. Second day I shot a decent doe and my friend and I decided to have some fun. We skinned the doe with the head on, and went out to the field where the brother had said he would be hunting in the morning. There was a box blind overlooking the field and that night we draped the doe hide across a log and propped the head up with a stick in perfect view from the blind.
Next morning at first light we heard a shot, followed by several more with a clearly defined reloading period. We made our way to the blind to find the brother screaming that his rifle was messed up and for us to shoot that doe before it got away.
He was a bit upset but I will be damned if that hide didn't have a bunch of very well placed new holes in it.

 

[Mark W]

Farm boys are the best estimators of distance!

Road construction and pipeline workers can be pretty good as well. Having the work zones surveyed with station marks posted every 100’ sure helps. It’s amazing how much the terain can sometimes skew ones perspective.

 

[jds holler]

One time a favorite hunting pard and I were circling a high elevation butte, literally in the clouds. We stopped to rest on a rocky out-crop, and and the clouds drifted away revealing two three point bucks standing broad-side about 100 to 150 yards away from us. They were looking down the mountain, oblivious to our presence, and the breeze was in our favor.

I whispered to my bud, "You take left, I'll take right, and we shoot on three." He nodded agreement.

We eased our rifles up and I started, "ONE -- TWO -- WAIT!!" "You wanna take a rest?" He nodded again, and we started scrunching down to kneel in the rocks.

Well -- we made enough noise that the bucks heard, and took off. What had been easy off-hand standing shots, quickly turned into 200 yard running shots.

Long story short, about twenty shots later, both bucks were on the ground. It was pretty embarrassing since camp was about a half mile below us, and everyone down there got to hear what sounded like a major slaughter. The bucks were a couple of nice ones, but were pretty shot up by the time they decided to lay down. Would have made a pretty good anti-hunting show. jd

 

[jds holler]

Here's a scanned pic from back in those days, and that camp. All those bucks on the ground were taken on our last day afternoon hunt. It was a lot of action in a short period of time, believe me.

 

[bluealtered]

I was working an area, (coyotes) that had been logged about six months earlier and i was sitting up on a ledge about ten feet from the edge looking down the slope in front of me. Well i was sitting there long enough that my back side went to sleep and the coffee i had earlier told me i could either get up or go home with wet pants, since i hadn't seen or heard anything I got up and leaned my rifle on a tree and took care of the coffee.
I walked back to the ledge and since nothing was moving around i left my rifle at the tree and walked over to look over the ledge, ... sure enough there stood a coyote staring up at me! Yes i did run and grab the rifle, but you know the rest. I think that makes ... coyotes probably 736, me 0.

 

[hogpatrol]

Ok, here's one for the tech era. Things are kind of slow, you're checking your emails, text messages, voicemails, alerts on accurateshooter, the solunar tables, the stock market and a host of other non essentials while you are in a tree stand, blind or other hunting venue and you look up in just enough time to see and realize you have been busted. C'mon. Fess up. BTDT.

 

[KMart]

Deer/game are well versed in hearing small noises then getting out of town. Why then, does the sound of a snoring hunter not bother them?