I’ve missed twice, what would have been my first deer, later found a loose scope ring on dads rifle. And the other was 5 years ago when I got back into hunting, first deer I had shot at in 8 years. A doe at 200+ yards and I shot under her. It happens, everyone misses, if you “never miss” your either a liar or haven’t done much hunting.

Probably close to a hundred I never kept records.
Adios,
Gary

Missed 2 deer with a gun and 1 with a bow best I can recall.

I have yet to miss on a deer, but I have clean missed a hog at probably 30 yards. It was getting dark, open sight rifle and a steep angle. I went for a behind the ear shot and flat out missed.

I have missed 4 deer with riffel in 43 years hunting. 2 with bow but I have only bow hunted 25 years.i have had 3 knocked down and then got up and ran did not find. That's the downside but man have I made some amazing shots this got me thinking back I can hit one running at 150 yds. It does seem like the missed ones were not too hard of shots and do cause lots of scope changes and even stitches . Missed big one had to ck sight in 7 stitches got deer next morning.

Three with a gun and one with a bow. Most of them from just not knowing any better when I was younger. Rushed a couple and had one where I completely misjudged the distance and shot right under a buck at 300 yds.

Although in all honesty the bow miss was earlier this season... second year bow hunting and first ever attempt at a deer with my bow, really bad buck fever, didn't hold low enough, and a nice 10 jumped the string at 30 yds, clean miss. I had been practicing diligently but no amount of practice had me prepared for that

That will happen to every bow hunter several times over their lives. About all you can do is play the odds and aim low. Missed a nice one once by over correcting and shooting too low too when he didn’t move.

Bowhunting ain’t for sissies.

I've missed 2 that I never found blood or sign of a hit that I believe we're from brush deflections. I've missed three on the first shot that luckily I was able to down with a follow up shot. Two of those three were caused by me not remembering to extend my collapsed stock on my AR10 after arriving for my sit. The other was misjudging the distance before we used range finders. The hardest shots that were without a rest without time to think, just react I haven't missed yet. If you hunt long enough, it will happen to you. I've hunted about 41 years now.

Not very many over my many years of rifle hunting, mainly because I don't take questionable shots, and I'm a pretty fair marksman, so I pride myself in that respect.
That said, back when I was a teen I took about a 300 yard shot at a huge buck that was across a canyon. All I saw was a cloud of dust over the back of the big buck that was standing on the side of the hill across the canyon. He took off and I was sick, and I still remember that to this day, and that was about 55 years ago.
Bowhunting is a different story. If you hunt long enough as mentioned above you are going to miss, but practice and patience is how you lower your chances of a miss.

Never missed a deer i was shooting at. But have been known to lie from time to time.

all I was saying is assuming people are liars before they give you a reason to believe so or without ever meeting them makes no sense. Lots of people have never missed YET. Add in bow hunting and their chances go way up

Just curious, what rings and bases were you running?

I've missed one. A simple doe at a little over 100 yards. It was right after I started hunting and shooting some. Buck fever got the best of me, and yanked the trigger. Killed the crap out of the tree limb behind the deer. I hated missing.

After that, I started shooting more and loading my own ammo. I dialed in my 270 Win with several different loads (a 135 grain Sierra Matchking for targets and 130 SST for hunting). I shot a lot of the 135 SMK for plinking and target shooting. I took a long range shooting class with a 270 Win, and the bug of long range and precision shooting was born.

I still hate missing. I hate missing much more than I like getting a round on target. I expect the round to be on target. So I practice enough to make sure the round goes where I want it to, exactly where I want it. Not close or kind of close. Exactly.

With a gun: zero
With a bow: 3 or 4, can't recall. I generally forget about them real quick.

1 with a rifle when I was probably 12-13yo.. missed a 160 class down in freer at 75 yards broad side with my grandpa’s 30-30.. the guy hunting one blind over drove up with that same deer about 45 min later..

I’ve missed a few pigs as well...

lol, love this answer.

I've been truly blessed. Never missed or lost a deer in 60 years of hunting. Hogs yes, coyotes yes. But then sometimes I just sling lead at them. I don't do that with a deer. And maybe it was because I did not start out hunting for sport. It was food for my family.

This is my 39th deer season. I haven't missed a deer yet, and had one failure to recover. That one bothers me. It was a chip-shot at 75 yards. I know I hit him solid. Found good blood, hair, found a spot he laid down and bled a LOT. We did everything right, just never found that deer.

Now this guy...I might believe. 'True gentleman. No reason to believe he'd lie.

I have clean missed three, lost one, and wounded/lost one deer in 25 years of deer hunting. I did redeem myself on two of the misses by harvesting them later (one the last day of season two months later, the other two days after the miss). Didn't so much redeem myself on the wounded one as make the hurt a little less by killing a bigger buck the next day.

I remember them all vividly and learned a tremendous amount from all of the experiences. Hardest thing to swallow is that 3 of these 5 experiences have happened in the last three consecutive seasons and the other two when I was just a kid.

You guys must be true marksmen. I’ve missed more deer than I can count in the last 35 years. When I was a kid we didn’t hunt out of stands. Many of our shots were on running deer while we were walking rimrock. I had plenty of practice from shooting running jackrabbits with a 22, but I still missed with the trusty 30-30 every now and then.

Ive missed some long shots the first time with a scoped rifle, but the second one usually connected after seeing where the first one hit, if they couldn’t figure out where to run. I’ve never missed one out of a blind that I can remember. I still don’t know how that’s possible with a rest and all of the time you want, but some of the kids we hunt with miss quite often.

I have a bench rest on the back porch with a 150 yard feeder and have seen kids and adults miss hogs and deer standing still with unhurried shots.

When I was guiding I remember a lot of missed shots for no reason, even when they were shooting my rifle and my handloads.

We need a thread for all of the guys that can count all of the dove and Quail they’ve missed for no unexplained reason. My only claim to fame is, I’ve never missed a Quail a new pointer pup pointed for the first time. I’m damn careful with that first point. My grandfather was convinced if you missed a Quail on a pups first point you had screwed up bad. I don’t think it’d be the end of a good dog but I don’t want to find out.

I agree there’s no rational reason to miss from a good blind/rest from a clinical standpoint.

But, that doesn’t take into account emotions and adrenaline. I still get those. So I’m capable of missing.
The day I stop getting them, I’ll quit.