The point I was trying to make is the hunters that seem to lose deer often are probably not putting enough effort into the search.

Obviously this question is addressing two different types of people.

There is the guys who have hunted a long time and make it a point to take responsible shots who may lose an animal every once in a great while (maybe just once) due to a rare mistake. Thats ok.

Then there are the guys who are not good shooters, have bad equipment, impatient, etc. who seem to lose deer every season. That is not ok and I hope I am never on a lease with one of them.

I cant even believe this is a question
There is not a number that can be placed on that and by you asking this ? it makes me think you have already made your mind up that it's ok to loose one and are asking for others to say it's ok but thats just my take on it .
I have only lost one and really dont know how it happened but it did and will out ever effort to never let it happen again.

this was my stepdad to a T. hopefully he dosent hunt anymore, it will save the wildlife population a lot of pain and suffering.

not everyone is going to be a peter capstick, but its not difficult to get proficient and familiar with your equipment. he did neither and it cost him some good deer

Very true

I agree with you never know, but I also know that 99% of those perfect shots on game that was not recovered are not perfect shots.

every animal I have had a hard time finding is never a perfect shot once I actually find it.

Hunt enough and shoot enough...it is going to happen. What you do after is what is important.

Every deer I have lost has left me seriously questioning myself. Did I wait until I had an absolute clear shot? Did I practice enough this year? Did I bump my scope? Did I know the distance? Did I jerk the trigger? Did I flinch? Etc.

After the shot, did I give the deer enough time to expire? Did I push the deer? Did I check every possible trail? Should I bring in a dog? Etc.

It happens, but a responsible and ethical hunter will do everything in their power to keep it from happening again. Not to say they will succeed, but a valiant effort should be giving.

I always worry when I hear a bow hunter say "I just went to get my arrow to see if it has blood on it". I never get my arrow until I believe enough time has passed for the animal to expire. I pushed two deer because of this and lost one of them when I was 16. Patience will increase your odds dramatically.

Good luck to everyone

I agree. Many deer are left unrecovered every season simply because someone didn't want to put forth enough effort to find it. And then there are those whose shooting skills are more accurately described by what they "think" they can hit, rather than what they "know" they can hit. When I hear someone say "I know I hit that deer" or something like those words, I consider the deer recoverable. I never want to hear "I think" mentioned about a shot taken.

There also seems to be a line between those who say "it happens" and look upon the issue with a lot more tolerance, than those who truly believe it should not happen and never tolerated. Simply put, acceptable or non-acceptable is what some choose to call it.

IMO, everyone is entitled to a "do over". But when it comes to leaving a wounded deer in the woods, it should never happen so often that I find it easy to remember it happening to you more than once.

yeah the correct answer is you "should" NEVER lose one, but it DOES happen. I'd say you should expect to lose 1 out of 50 maybe.

Now MISSED deer are a raw spot on my butt, I'm sure A LOT of people shoot, and if the animal doesn't DRT they say they missed,
and some people don't even go look... unless I know the person well I always insist we go look, if they don't want to I'll go look myself. I started doing this because we found a nubbin one year that had been drug behind a log and covered up.

Yes, nothing serves as an indication of the honesty and character in a man any more, than what comes out of his mouth after shooting at a animal.

Some might say the same is true of a man when he swings a golf club.

This is not a blanket attack on long range shooting per se, but I wonder how the growth of this sport is going to result in more wounding and lost game.

The recent development in LR equipment has brought the effectiveness and capability of rifles and scopes to a level inconceivable just a few decades ago. Unfortunately, the capability of beating hearts and quivering flesh and sweating fingers haven't improved at all.

And I worry that if an animal disappears after a 1000-yd shot, how many gunmen will bother to go look for blood and hair?

The buck my son shot this past weekend was a great shot, perfect chest and the buck still ran off over 50 yards. We were fortunate to be able to watch it run and eventually dropped dead. Upon gutting the chest cavity was completely full of blood, lungs were mush and there was a hole in the heart (from bone or bullet??). Couldn't get any more text book than that.

But, there was no discernible blood trail, and the entrance wound was not large so there was little if any blood outside the body at the site of recovery. He bled fully internally. Had we been in some thick cover and he zig-zagged through it, he could have made for an interesting recovery.

Good point.

Not to mention how would you even find the spot? I don't think I could.

Even though they would never admit it, I'm confident such comments and these discussions as a whole, have resulted in some readers putting forth a lot more effort to recover their deer. And that is a very good thing no doubt.

There is a saying in the surgery world that goes something like this:

If you don't want complications, don't do surgery.

It isn't condoning surgical complications, but it is letting us know we are all human and mistakes can happen (or sometimes S*** happens) and if you do enough surgery, things happen.

Anyone that says they don't have surgical complications is either lying, or they don't do surgery...no other way around it.



Doesn't mean our complications don't haunt us though, some more than others.

I have wounded 6 deer in the last 40+ years. One I tracked and got a dog on and not found. I did see that buck again later that season and it lived. One was in archery season and I saw it 6 weeks later with a high shoulder wound and I killed that buck the next year. One I could not go back to look since it was on Aransas Wildlife Refuge but found very little blood and no deer after a long search. The other 3 were never found nor buzzards seen. That is out of a very large number of deer I have killed in that time (I do not want to put that number on a public forum). It is a very low percentage. The more you shoot the more chances you have to wound a deer. Deer move in a blink of an eye. I take very high percentage shots when I can and almost always shoot highpoint of the shoulder shots now when I can.

If you don't want to say how many that's cool, just curiouse to know if you do know an accurate number?

What he said. Most lost deer are the result of poor decision making regarding shots, be it Gun or bow, or as a result of not sighting the weapon in properly. My future daughter in law spent a great deal of time learning to shoot her .243 this year and dropped her first deer right in its tracks.
I personally have never lost one.

I would like to know more about his experience, types of game hunted, locations, and the answer to his own question also.

Reason: he constantly sets himself on a pedestal as an expert of experts thinly-veiled in the form of "preachy" threads much like this one.

If I am going to hear the preaching I would like to know a little about the preacher.So it seems like a fair inquiry to me.

I've probably lost 4-5 in thirty years. Most recent one was 2009, I hit a spike in the brisket. Two of us looked for several hours in some pretty heavy brush but did not find him. I don't like it and it does leave you with a bad feeling but it does happen. Most every time I can remember it was due to doing something wrong. In the spikes case, I rested the gun on a tree limb rather than the rail of my tripod and I think it dipped a little when I shot.

I'm not exactly sure, but I think I've hit and lost either 3 or 4 deer in my life. None recently. I've killed somewhere between 100 and 120 deer total. So for me I guess my average is to lose 1 out of every 30 to 40.

or approx. 3% of your total bag you have lost.


that's a pretty good percentage and where I was going when I asked the fellow how many deer he had killed.

(OP is now calculating a number/ratio that doesn't sound too good to be true yet still keeps expert credentials intact....)

I share your concern regarding the long-range shooting trend now in vogue and promoted by so many. I'm afraid that in many (if not most) cases it ends up being an unethical farce that wounds many animals.

I simply don't believe the performance of the shooter in the field matches up with these audacious claims of long range proficiency we see on the internet. Plus, at many of these extreme ranges discussed, even the most proficient shooters have no business taking the shot because so many variables are simply out of their control.