When you have missed an animal with archery equipment - What do you estimate the cause was?

When you have missed an animal with archery equipment - What do you estimate the cause was?

  • Range Error - High

    Votes: 17 25.4%
  • Range Error - Low

    Votes: 29 43.3%
  • Animal Movement

    Votes: 11 16.4%
  • Hit Brush

    Votes: 4 6.0%
  • Hit Grass

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hit Branches

    Votes: 12 17.9%
  • Rushed shot

    Votes: 31 46.3%
  • Just generally.. A crap shot

    Votes: 22 32.8%

  • Total voters
    67

Bump79

WKR
Joined
Oct 5, 2020
Messages
1,684
As the question says - When you have missed an animal - What do you estimate the cause was?
 
I have estimated every one of those things to be the cause, except hit grass. ...and I'm pretty darn sure all of them have been the culprit at some point.
 
You left out the one I have seen that causes the majority of archery misses - buck fever. I have seen big game animals completely missed inside of 10 yards before... buck fever is real. Especially for the rookies and first timers on elk.
 
Me. When I miss, it's always me. I can nail my shots at ranges will beyond what I hunt at. It's always a judgement error of one sort or another on my part.
 
I have pretty good restraint, but even still, it’s probably taking a shot that I shouldn’t have taken in the first place. Sometimes I think excessive practice actually adds to this. The greater your confidence, the more likely you feel like you can’t miss. But shooting animals is not the same as shooting targets.
 
All have been in open areas where the animal moved away from my range markers and I judged the new yardage wrong
 
Most of my bad shots are the first buck of the year. I'm excited and don't follow through with my shot sequence. I'm thinking about 100 different things instead of just focusing on the shot and the sight pin.
 
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