Caribou Gear

What's your worst miss? Share your story!

2002 I was bowhunting deer with my wife. We were on a farm we had hunted the last couple years and had seen a lot of decent bucks and I'd taken one or two in previous years. This day was a beautiful late october day, sunny, calm and mid 40's. Deer were running around all over the place. We were in stands about 20 yards apart and shortly after getting there a smallish 8 point came wandering our way. I nodded to the wife and she got ready. He stopped broadside at 20 yards and she sailed an arrow over his back. She was shaking to bad to get off another one and he sauntered off. About 15 mins later, I see anther buck messing around and I hit the doe bleat and out trotted a smaller buck but legal and she hadn't killed a buck with a bow so when the opportunity presented, she shot and hit perfect. I watched him run and pile up not far away. I whispered that we should wait 20 mins before getting down. I looked around and saw another buck rubbing a tree about 75yds away. This thing was massive. It was only a 7 point but the bases were as big around as a beer can and carried that mass the whole way up. I hit the doe bleat again and he snapped his head up and on the second bleat came at a trot. I picked out my draw spot, where I'd stop him to shoot, everything was perfect. I then realized that I forgot to range the spot and didn't have time so I guessed around 20 yds. Everything played out according to plan. I stopped him, put my 20yd pin low on the chest thinking heart shot and let fly. At the shot he jumped, ran, fell down got up and ran over a little rise and i heard a loud crash. Got down, checked the wifes buck and he was dead. Where I hit there was good blood and followed it over the rise expecting to see the biggest deer I'd ever seen but he was gone. Blood vanished after about 50-60 yards and never found him. I went back to my stand and ranged the distance at 26 yards so my arrow dropped enough to go through the brisket. Had I aimed 2 inches higher..... Almost 20 years and this still haunts me and I've never seen a buck even close to that size since.
 
I'll have to think about this. Shouldn't take too long. Only a few to choose from. 😁
 
I was 12 or 13. Late November in the Idaho panhandle. It had rained all day and my dad and I played cards most of the afternoon in the camper. An hour before dark I decided to walk down an abandoned railroad corridor, basically a wet meadow flanked by fir and larch forest. I was wearing one of those cheap, transparent whiteish plastic ponchos over my hunting duds, carrying a 30-30 Marlin carbine with open sights. I walk the end of the route in squishy boots, seeing nothing but getting soaked again. THe wind comes up, waiving the poncho all around. I'm totally convinced I will never kill a deer, ever, in my life, and walk miserably back to camp. About half-way back, I look up and see a big buck looking at me. I had no frame of reference for how big it was, but in my memory tells me the beams went well beyond the years. (I would have shot a fawn had I seen one, I was so eager for my first deer.) I pulled up my rifle, just stuffing it under my armpit, not properly mounting it on my shoulder. Maybe the deer thought I was a ghost, the way he stared at me. I kind of scrunched my neck down to look down the barrel and point it roughly at the direction of the deer. I shot and worked the action as fast as a cowboy on an old western. In the near dark, flame shot about three feet out the muzzle with every shot. I think I fired three times before the deer made it into the timber. I dutifully checked for blood, even though I knew I had missed by yards. I met dad back at camp. He knew by the sound the rapid fire that I had not hit a thing. "Some days are like that," he said.
 
5 years ago I was on Is a sika hunt on Assatique island and at 5 minutes before dark I had to take a leak. And yes I was caught leaking when the big 3x3 walked 10 from me. That's a worse-case miss.
 
My worst miss to date was definitely this year during archery mule deer. Took a 60 yard range on a 180in 4x4 mule deer. The stalk was perfect and I was in a good spot physically and mentally. Released my arrow and watched it fly right above the deer's back, perfectly centered to where I wanted it to go. The shot felt great and dead on, my range game on the other hand was weak AF. I ended up getting a bad range, the deer was actually at 51 yards, not 60...

Edit: I'll add another one even though it wasn't necessarily my worst. My very first archery shot at a deer. Nervous as hell, it was -20C and sitting in a blind when an Okay whitetail buck walked to 40 yards. I was so stiff from the cold it took me 3 tries to draw my bow. By the time I finally drew my bow and released, I watched my arrow hit at the deer's feet. I was so nervous that I aimed with my 20 yard pin...
 
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The one that sticks out the most for me, and I still remember it all to well and all to often is the first miss I had on a mature buck with a bow. I was 17 or 18 so this was over 25 years ago.

Long story short is me and my grandpa had spotted this buck in a bean field and then again in the public woods adjacent to the bean field before the season. The private bean field was actually across a narrow lake from the public land we were hunting. It was a long ATV ride and a long walk through some nasty palmetto to get to the lake bank where we could glass over into this 400 acre bean field.

This was the fall between me getting out of high school and starting college so I was indeed 17 and had plenty of time to hunt. We hunted that buck relentlessly for a couple of weeks until he finally made a mistake and came by me making his way up the high bank trail along side a narrow drain that ran into the lake. He was at about 20 yards yards broadside and picking leaves off of some kind of vine. I tried to draw back for the chip shot but was short arming my bow instead of extending my draw arm. No biggie, the buck was just standing there doing his thing. I finally got my self sorted and got the bow drawn back. I took my time and let the pin settle in for the heart shot. When I released I watched as my arrow sailed cleanly over the top of the bucks back by about 2 feet. The buck bounded off a few jumps worth and turned and looked straight at me with a look that I felt like was indignation before giving one snort and trotting right into the old bank of haunting memories.

My best guess is that I shot my 40 yard pin instead of my 20 yard pin. So I was 2 pins off.

That was the worst and really the last case of pre-shot buck fever I ever had. I get shook up to this day after the shot but do quite well at staying calm before the shot. I think that this experience is the reason why.
 
A doe at 30 feet with my muzzle loader. Not yards, rods, or miles. Feet. I think I missed four or five on that hunt. Danged near earned me one of those nicknames that blackpowder shooters give each other. Thankfully the following season I made meat.
 
Number two:

Legal but meatless. Binos much? Or, he who hesitates is lost.

I had a little time after work for a quick hunt some on some corporate timber near our place. It gets hit pretty hard, but some nice buck have come out of there for those who know where to look. I didn't want to waste a bunch of time as it was pretty late. I grabbed my 1894 30/30 and a pocket knife and threw on a blaze orange sweater. I set an alarm on my iPhone for last legal light. I was twenty minutes down the skid road and it was getting close to that buzzer going off. I caught some movement to my right and saw what I thought was a bull elk. Then I thought it was a mule deer. I finally realized it was a monster whitetail at about 125 yards. He was so tall and wide it just didn't look right.

I brought 30/30 to my shoulder and I could barely see my iron sights. The rifle is amazing accurate through the tang peep sight, but I had not lifted it up. The "Buckhorn" rear is not so accurate. I put the front bead on his shoulder and squeezed it off. He swapped ends and blew out. My alarm went off.

I did not have a headlamp or flashlight. I did a quick search and found no sign. Then I had to hike back to my truck. Then drive back to the house to get my headlamp and maglite. It was an hour before I got bak to wheree I shot from. I spent the next 3 hours looking for hair, blood, or deer. No hit.

The whole time I was rethinking why I hadn't grabbed a scoped gun, or my binos?

I saw the buck one more time about 4 days later. Standing on the other side of a fence on private. Giving me raspberries.
 
I missed a huge buck with my bow in PA back in the early 2000's. I wasnt fit to talk to for months....and I still dont want to talk about it. lol
 
So many painful memories to sift through, one that is still fresh is this bull, after finding him a couple of days before season and keeping tabs on him then refinding him after he moved six miles the night before season, then winning the coin toss for first shot, then spending 8 hours within 500 yards of the herd trying to get a clear shot at one bull among 150 elk in a thick burn I managed to miss twice at 300 yards from essentially a bench rest, fortunately, my brother was batting backup, also, fortunately for me that I have a bull 4" bigger so he can't give me a hard time about missing my biggest bull ever...
after the fact we were able to look back and determine I had been hitting a tiny burnt limb about 40 yards off the muzzle, almost impossible to see until looking back from the other side.
full
 
First sit for bears last spring this guy came in to the bait. He wouldn’t commit and circled. Finally he hit an opening behind my stand so I went or shoot him. As I shot my elbow slipped off the corner of the stand causingg me to miss him at about 40 yards
FEB8736A-83B0-4117-86A2-4CB4494F674C.jpeg
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Saw this guy a few October ago so snuck in for a sit with a snow storm coming in. Does we’re out already so I couldn’t get where I wanted and five minutes later he was out. It was a long shot with the muzzle loader 225 yards but I had practiced a lot that summer for my antelope hunt which I did with the muzzle loader as well. Shot just underneath him. One of the biggest WT I have missed. In high school dad and I missed a 170 class typical multiple times running and a 190-200 non typical running as well. Some day I’ll have a big WT for my wall
13252EED-D130-4632-8731-B71AB548903F.jpeg
 
Art Vandeley said:
Missing this dude at ~38 yards... Complete failure under pressure. Left knee was shaking uncontrollably. Wish I would have not shot and tried to get back on him later...


View attachment 212465
Click to expand...
If it’s a little consolation he doesn’t look very wide…

Everything else looks big though!
 
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Still haunting me today…..in the 80’s Bowhunting the Kaibab. This is back when I shot fingers, no rangefinder, etc. I snuck in on a giant non-typical mule deer feeding and guessed the yardage incorrectly by 5 yards….he was 45 instead of 40…..my heavy aluminum arrow sailed harmlessly underneath him.

A local from Kanab found his sheds from that year…..with a conservative estimated inside spread, he netted in the mid 250’s!
 
My son and I are bowhunting elk and have been following a herd and herd bull all morning. Bugling back and forward but just following, not catching up. We lose them. Then we hear the clanking of antlers, and my son says "they're fighting". We hurry towards the sound in the recently burned forest. You can see quite a ways through the burnt, standing trees. I'm about to say that we need to watch out for the cows, when off runs the herd, followed by a 6 point bull, down the hill to our left. Since we only saw one bull I bugle to find the other. The clanking of antlers starts up again to our right, apparently there were three bulls. We hurry towards the fighting bulls, who didn't even notice that the cows had ran off. Two big 6 point bulls have there antlers locked in a real fight. They didn't even notice us and we are about 30 yds away in the open burn. My son and I are standing there with our bows raised, getting ready to shoot. It is a little comical, we're about to kill two six point bulls at 30yds at the same time. We could shoot them at any time, but their movement is very jerky, back and forward, and we want to make good shots. They are tearing up the burn ground with their hooves, several inches deep. They go side to side at broadside to us, but sometimes one backs up our direction, and you think you are going to get ran over. They continue and still never notice us. I ranged them a few time and know they are right about 30 yards. All we need is them to hesitate for a second, and two dead elk. They never did hesitate, and when the defeated bull gave up, he disengaged so fast, and the winner chased him so fast, we got no good shot. The winner gave up the chase quickly and stopped broadside to me. I released an arrow, and knew instantly my mistake. I saw the arrow go below his body, and create sparks on the rocky ground where he stood, then off he ran. See, for over 5 mins, I'd been thinking 30 yards, and now I shot at a 50 yard elk thinking 30. We didn't get one, but still have the memory of the coolest thing I've ever witnessed bowhunting.
 
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