What's your unusual and or lucky bow harvest?

[Bowwild]

It was the early 70's.  I groundhog hunted as much as I could as mid-teen.  This gravel road I walked to my hunting area had a huge pile of junk on the left side of the road. A groundhog lived in the pile.

He would typically be out and when he saw me he'd dive into the pile.

This day I made sure he saw me. He dove and I ran to get on the other side of his burrow quicker than usual.  I stood in the fence line and waited. It didn't take 5 minutes and that groundhog crawled out and looked up the road where he had first seen me.

Bad news for him, I was behind him about 10 yards. Shot him in the back of the neck and he dropped dead on the edge of his hole.

The lucky part wasn't the easy shot of course, it is the fact that I guessed correctly that he would pop-up looking for where danger generally came from.

[creekwood]

 I'm in a tree stand when this guy came along and without thinking I took the shot. While the arrow was on it's way, I thought to myself, " Oh crap! maybe this isn't such a good idea". Fortunately, the critter expired instantly without a chance to spray.  There was absolutely no odor. Phew, got lucky on that one!

[Red Beastmaster]

"Bad news for him, I was behind him about 10 yards. Shot him in the back of the neck and he dropped dead on the edge of his hole."

I've killed a pile of sod poodles using that same technique.

[Pat B]

Again, in my early days, probably '79 or '80 and again at Victoria Bluff WMA near Bluffton SC...my buddy, Richard and I were sitting not far from each other in pine trees in a savanna area nobody hunted because it looked wide open. There was enough under brush and wax myrtle bushes so deer could walk through and not be seen from the ground. This was close to the rut and here comes a "train" of deer, a large 6pt, a small 6pt a 4 point and a couple of spikes following closely to a doe. As they snake along they come within 15 yards of me. I draw and release...over the back. I take out another arrow, draw and release and again over the back...and one more time, the same. Well, I'm now out of arrows and the "train" continues on like nothing happened. So, I climb down, recover my arrows and back up the tree I go. As I get situated here they come again and again I loose 3 more arrows with the same results. Finally the deer move off away from me. I look over at Richard and he's holding on to the pine tree he in in trying hard not to fall out from laughing so hard. These are some of our favorite campfire stories when we get the opportunity to get together.

[Doug Treat]

I once accidentally shot a snake. I was taking a long shot at a target and missed over the target. When I went to retrieve my arrow, I found a big bull snake pinned to the ground.

[mangonboat]

Two stories about my now-departed little brother and deer I harvested while bow hunting but without a bow. My youngest brother was full of energy and, as an adult,  that energy was probably amplified somewhat by the two quart thermos of black coffee, two packs of cigarettes and handful of cigars he carried  to his stand. But he was never hesitant to launch an arrow. When he was 18, he shot a doe on a beautiful October morning near Hillman, MI. He said he hit it a little bit too far back, but his arrow didn't smell bad. The entire family plus my older brother's girlfriend spent most of the morning doing a gridded search for that deer because we couldn't find any blood. After three hours we called it off. That evening I walked to a nearby property with my brother's girlfriend, now my sister in law, and she and I hunted about 300 yards apart. As we were walking back in after dark, we saw headlights coming down the dirt road behind us. We didn't know who that could be way back in the woods after dark so we got about 20 yards off the road and laid down in a pot hole created by a large tree falling over. We watched a pickup truck roll by slowly and when it was out of sight, we got up to resume our walk in.  Just then I noticed that while my future SIL was lying on one side of me, a doe was lying on the other side..dead but not yet stiff. It was the doe my brother had shot  that morning. She had walked about half a mile down a ridge and curled up in that pot hole to die. I field-dressed her where she lay  and carried her up the ridge and across a meadow to our cabin. 

Fast forward 10 years and my little brother, with all his coffee and tobacco, was sitting on a tree stand about 150 yards away and I could see him clearly from my stand , drinking, smoking, peeing, drinking, smoking, peeing, etc. It was hilarious! But a spike walked past him just before quitting time and somehow didn't see or hear him putting down a cigar, picking up his bow and drawing. He hit the deer square in the spine.  The deer tumbled over, spun around on the ground several times then got its front up and proceeded to bawl like a toddler having a temper tantrum. Once up , the deer dragged himself through the woods...directly to me! There he stopped, fell over and resumed spinning, still bawling at the top of his lungs. After less than a minute of that I got out of my stand , jumped on the deer across his neck and shoulders and finished him with a Buck 112 Ranger  through the windpipe and carotid artery.  My brother said that was very funny to watch from his stand and since I killed the deer I had to field dress it. Which I did and we carried it out together.

Every deer he killed had some kind of crazy story to go with it . He passed two years ago from a drug interaction...don't combine Pepto Bismol and blood thinners!

[olddogrib]

My longest (and luckiest kill) I'll confess, was my last wheelie bow kill over 25 years ago.  Late that morning one of the biggest does I've ever seen came over the top of my ridge when I was ready to get down and gave me a broadside shot at 42 yds.  My compound was decked out with all the bells and wheels.  It had a Bull's Eye Tru-Glo fiber optic pin on a Toxonics slide bar.  If I knew the yardage, in those days that was a "chip shot" with a release aid that I'd made on 3D ranges countless times.  My method of judging yardages on the course was "mentally" eyeballing 10 yd. increments from me to the target and I was pretty good at it.  The problem was that from the base of the tree I was 18 ft. up in you couldn't see the ground as a reference.  I was looking over saplings and fallen trees and through a "tunnel" of thick underbrush.  It just "looked" like 30 yds to me, so that's where I set the pin and took the shot.  I knew immediately as the arrow started losing altitude about halfway there I'd severely underestimated the yardage.  I had that sinking feeling mitigated only by the fact I was going to be a foot low...until the deer dropped straight down to leap....right into a heart shot! To make it even better the ol' gal dashed, crashed and rolled down down the steep hillside reducing what would have been a 300 yd. drag to...drive right up on the 4-wheeler and load her up!  I'll take lucky over good any day.

[ronp]

I once accidentally shot a snake. I was taking a long shot at a target and missed over the target. When I went to retrieve my arrow, I found a big bull snake pinned to the ground.

I had a similar thing happen.  My little daughter was watching me shooting at a target about 15 yards away that had a big pile of dirt as a back stop.  So one arrow deflected off the top of the target into the weeds on top of the dirt pile.  My daughter laughed and said, sarcastically, real nice shot dad.  I was pretty embarrassed until I retrieved the arrow and was surprised to see three baby mice impaled on it.  There was a mice nest in the grass and the arrow got it.  Of course I had to tell my daughter that I was aiming for the mice!