Anyone ever make a mistake shooting to far and shoot or hit the wrong animal?

S-3 ranch

WKR
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I just watched a video where the hunter shot the wrong pronghorn after mistaking the smaller one in the scope.
I did it one time and my uncle did the same thing, just shooting way too fast and far away
 
Not the wrong animal, but pronghorn too, in MT. Shot a buck and walk up to it and there are 2 dead. Lucky the one standing behind it that I didn't see was a doe that I had a permit for. Pass through on both animals. Conservation of ammunition I guess. Only time that has ever happened to me.
 
I didn’t think many people on here would admit to shooting too far
And making a mistake, or making a mistake at all, 😂

Anyone shoot a animal and get to the where you thought you were shooting and figured you had no clue where the animal actually was when you shot at it?
 
Anyone shoot a animal and get to the where you thought you were shooting and figured you had no clue where the animal actually was when you shot at it?

I’ve made plenty of mistakes. When I was 12, my dad gave me hell for taking a 300-yard shot at a whitetail with my .30-30. That’s the last time I shot at something too far away.

My solution to the last point is to take a picture of where the animal was standing and a picture of where I was standing before I start walking. Then add a dot or something to mark the spot and try to make a mental note of any distinctive trees or whatever. I also use my range finder to that spot and start my track on On-X. If you have to do a tracking job, even if it’s only 40 yards, it really helps to start in the right spot. Here are a couple of examples.
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I tracked that deer 400 yards from that spot without finding any blood until the last ten yards. The dog was zero help (she’s a farm dog, not a hunter, but she chewed through her lead to come join me on the hunt).
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Here he is in his second to last incarnation.
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It almost happened to me years back, also on antelope. Had a fixed 6, and the bucks kept moving around, couldn't tell them apart through the scope. Everytime I moved between binoculars to the rifle, they would switch again. There is something to be said for a durable scope that is also clear and has enough magnification.
 
I just watched a video where the hunter shot the wrong pronghorn after mistaking the smaller one in the scope.
I did it one time and my uncle did the same thing, just shooting way too fast and far away

Was it the muley guy's where he blames the camera man? That's a classic.

I did it once, but not because it was too far. I just got excited and shot the "wrong" buck in South Dakota. I had been hunting a much larger deer and set up to ambush him on his morning route. Buck comes along. I shoot it. Definitely not the deer I thought it was...
 
I did it at 200 yards this weekend, if it was 600 it never would’ve happened.


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Can be as much a FOV issue as a distance issue. Too far to identify or too zoomed in to see other animals in the periphery can both be bad news.
 
Anyone shoot a animal and get to the where you thought you were shooting and figured you had no clue where the animal actually was when you shot at it?
Yes.

Especially shooting multiple animals in one sitting from a fixed position in tall grass or on the edge of cover.

We had a place last year where lung shot does would bee-line for holes in an old wire fence and shoot thru like they owned the place and die at the end of the lunge. The lane was mowed on our side but choked out in early successional jungle on the other. If we crawled thru the wrong hole we were wasting valuable time and getting really poked up and itchy.

I solved the issue by keeping a waterproof notepad in my bino pouch and a marker to make notes on what I observe between shots so I can quickly mop up when it gets too dark to see.

I'll take pics with my phone and draw arrows and notes on the photos too. I see @Q_Sertorius is on the same wavelength.

This year I'm hunting lanes in 3-5' tall invasive grasses and a few weeks ago I had 2 deer on the ground. We encountered one deer on the way to the other and I thought it was 150 yards away. My eyes followed an uninjured deer that I thought was the wounded deer and it made some crashing and vocalizations that sounded like a death. Be ready for anything.
 
I heard of a guy sitting on a meadow and a herd of elk walks into it. He has a cow tag so levels his rifle and BOOM. Recoil jostles him and when he looks he doesn't see that an animal has been hit, and the elk are confused and looking around. So he fires again BOOM and hits a cow and sees her go down. When he walks into the meadow there is his cow dead and another one right next to it. Turns out the first shot stoned her and she must have dropped instantly and he couldn't see her in the grass. Self reported and got a ticket for his honest mistake (which I think is fine).
 
I did in Wyoming about 25 years ago. I was hunting antelope with my buddy (who was a Wyoming Highway Patrolman), I had a doe tag and he had a buck tag. A small herd of them were standing looking at us about 200 yards away. I sat down and was using my tripod and I took a nice, fat doe. At my shot she fell and a buck behind her fell also. I shot her in the neck and it went thru and hit the buck in the eye and killed him also . I told him we should call the warden and he said that particular Warden would write me a ticket, so he tagged it.
 
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