Your MOST Unbelievable HUNTING shot(s)

[archeryprof]

I will admit the only one more surprised than me was the starling!

[Marshallrobinson]

My shot was a long time ago when I burned a hole in a buck that I shot. I have never had another experience like it. I could have seen and aimed at a hair and nearly did. It was amazing.

[CoachBGriff]

This was my best shot ever!  I was trying to build my confidence with a new bow.  This did the trick.  The distance was only about 13 yards.

[adudeuknow]

15 yards and up a tree. right in the mouth and out through the brain. quick and painless.

   

[hybridbow hunter]

Not the furthest but one of the strongest in my memory, as I got the trad bowhunting bow bug over compound bows. I stalked that doe up to 25 yards up to the last tree between us. My heart was 180/ min ! She was slowly walking toward me, eating grass. Something really strange happened: I suddenly got really calm and confident I would get that doe : a kind of " I can't miss" and I shot her facing, shooting the midline between shoulder blades. Arrow hit perfectly, poking out between legs. Upon hit she made a few paces ,almost dying on foot. I put in the following seconds a follow up shot and the doe drop down... It ended to be 19 yards for first arrow and 25 for second. Since that day I was bugged and never turn back to modern bows.

 

[ChuckC]

Hmm looks like something sinister about that bow !

Great story and great shooting.  Seems like with trad, you are calling on the force, and not on gadgets.  What sort of deer is that ?

ChuckC

[hybridbow hunter]

It is a Rusa deer doe. Time on pic is wrong, it was November 2008 and 2 years later I was blessed to kill with same bow ( Fedora TD longbow) a huge buck in Australia in Queensland : the one in my avatar
Rusa deer are a tad bigger than whitetails deer with mature doe weighting 100-130# and biggest bucks 320-330#

 

[ChuckC]

very nice.  During the rut time, do these deer make special sounds ?  Like elk or Red stag ?

Thank you
ChuckC

[lbshooter]

I am infested with these pests....over 20 yards away sitting on my stone wall... with the Silvertip!!.....love that bow!

[tarponnut]

1.My first hit on any game anilmal was pretty good.
My friend Dave and I were walking from some timber into a small meadow. We spotted a rabbit sitting on the far edge(about 25 yards?), without thinking I drew back my Bear Black Bear recurve and released. The arrow took it in the eye and came out the far ear, it jumped straight up in the air and flopped dead on the ground.
I can picture it like it was yesterday but it was actually 35 years ago.
2.I made a surprising shot on a corn rat in Florida a couple of years ago. Twelve yards, through the head, on video.
It's on my Youtube channel: Jim Dussias

[hybridbow hunter]

Originally posted by ChuckC:
very nice.  During the rut time, do these deer make special sounds ?  Like elk or Red stag ?

Thank you
ChuckC

Yes they have a nice roar. Here is a link about those deer made by a friend. Sorry, It is in French but you can hear the deer at 0:15 sec
The one I have heard were more high pitched though
 

[Terry Green]

Well it's taken me about four years to make up my decision for my 3rd... but I think I've got it narrowed down. While I'm making my final selection you guys jumping and post....

[Trenton G.]

We've had a lot of issue with rabbits stripping the young trees around our house this winter so I've been trying to take a few out. The other night I flipped on the porch light and saw one eating under our bird feeder. I turned off every light in the house, moved all the chairs away from the kitchen table. I slowly got the door open but had to back up for bow clearance. It was about a 16 yard shot over the table and out the sliding door. When I shot, he jumped, but I couldn't tell if I hit him or not. I went outside and found him about 10 yards away with my arrow right behind the crease of his shoulder.

[Orion]

Didn't check to see if I posted earlier, but here's one I remember.  Not necessarily a great shot, but one I remember.  

After getting set up in my climbing treestand just at shooting hours during a late season December hunt, a forky buck fallowed my trail in and walked right up to the tree I was in.  

It was still not totally light, and as he turned and walked away, I let him get about 8-10 yards out and attempted to shoot him left of the spine as he angled away. Shot felt good, but I couldn't see my arrow fly.  Heard a solid thunk though so thought I put a good shot on him.

He bolted in a semi-circle, as I put another arrow on the bow, and stopped about 28n yards away (I paced it off later) facing just a little away from broadside. His head was behind a tree, and I saw one of his hind legs appear to wobble/move backward.  Vitals were clear so I decided to put a finishing shot into him.  

Watched the arrow arc out and hit him perfectly behind the front leg.  He bolted over the ridge.

I lowered my bow, descended the tree and went to retrieve my first arrow.  Imagine my surprise, when I found it sticking in the frozen ground with nary a drop of blood on it.  

No blood between it and where the deer was standing when I took the second shot.  Immediate heavy blood there, and found the deer about 50 yards away in the bottom of the draw.  Field dressing confirmed the events.  I missed on the first shot, but an X from a 4-blade Zwickey delta was right through the center of the heart.

Guess I'm a better shot when I think the critter is already dead.  

One of my best came this year.  One day I decided to be a pheasant hunter going in to the slope I wanted to hunt.  I saw a pheasant fly into a patch of some rough stuff the state planted.  I was shooting lefty with my duo shooter Sunset Hill.  I had a three blade hi-precision head on a parallel cedar.  The pheasant got up about 18 to 20 yards away flying from left to right. I tried to swing with it and got tangled in some long switch grass.  I got the bow free, by this time the bird was well 'out there'.  Just as I released, I noticed that I could not see its right eyeball.  The pheasant was veering left. The arrow took a single wing feather on its way past the pheasant.  My next opportunity came during the deer gun season.  I only had 3 River Hammer blunts in my quiver, I did not want any game warden to think that I was deer hunting. Three cock pheasants lifted at about 20 to 25 yards.  I was shooting the same bow right handed that day, two of the pheasants took a low flight path just above the unpicked corn, the one on the right was going for some altitude at about a 45 degree angle.  The Hammer blunt caught him right on the wing base with a surprisingly loud thunk at 35 to 45 yards out,  he went down hard and was dead when I got to him.

[Buckeye1977]

Best shot I can remember was my first deer. The button buck was sneaking by me at about 10 yards but came in on the wrong side of the tree. I finally managed to get myself turned on the stand without spooking him. I didn't try to stop him in fear I would make him bolt for cover. In one motion I swung my recurve and found a spot where he was walking between the forks of a tree about 20 yards out and released the arrow. It struck exactly where I was looking and entered just in front of the back hip as the deer was quartering away and exited right behind the offside shoulder. As long as I live that memory will never be forgotten!

[nek4me]

Mine was unbelievable because it was so close and I still don't know how I made the shot. It was 1973 and l had just bought my first hunting weight bow a 45# Black Bear. There was a woodlot behind where I grew up that was the backside of the property the next street over. That property had a field with a narrow finger that extended into the woodlot where a few woodchucks hung out. I took a stand inside the treeline against a double trunk oak to wait for some action. A short time later I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and slowly looked to see the head of a woodchuck poking out from around the other side of the oak.
I slowly leaned back to put the tree between us  and in one quick motion drew back and leaned forward and released. I heard a sharp crack like a .22 then looked to see the back half of the Microflite with hair and blood in the splintered end lying across the unseen hole. Thought about digging it out but didn't want to attract attention to what I did there. The woodlot and field is now a neighborhood of homes and I still wonder where that Razorhead and front piece of shaft ended up after all the construction.

[Jerry Gille]

Squirrel hunting in August many years ago. Found an old squirrel arrow of mine sticking in the ground while in the timber. Pulled it out and it was rotted off where it was in the ground - no point, missing a couple inches of length, no feathers and chew marks all over it. Stuck it in my quiver and continued with the hunt. Ended up losing all my arrows during the morning but this one. While walking out of woods I get under a fox squirrel cutting hickories way up in a tree. I pull out the short, no point and feathers shaft, pick a spot, half draw it and let it fly. To my utter amazement that shaft took him right in the neck and peeled him right out of that tree.

[Tim Hoeck]

My best shot was more of a mistake. About 20 years ago my buddy and I were driving a two track road when we saw a doe just off the path laying in the weeds. Drove by and we thought why would she be in a odd place and we thought since it's the 2nd week of November maybe there's a buck laying with her. We snuck up to where see was laying and up jumped a nice buck about twenty feet and he took off and we both shot and we both missed.  Oh well let's get going cause where late now. We got back and in the truck and started to drive away and thought where did that doe go? Well we went back and thought well maybe we could get a doe for our antlerless tag. Looked around and found her dead with my arrow in back of her head..

[Ron LaClair]

Some years back a few of us were sitting in my Brother in law's hunting cabin shooting the breeze.

My brother in law said look at that mouse running along the top of the wall. My osage self bow was close by so I grabbed it and a arrow with a judo. As the little rodent scurried along the wall I swung and shot pinning him. I just missed a framed picture which I hadn't noticed.

The other guys were compound shooters so I tried to act nonchalant like it was no big deal.