My biggest miss was my own fault.

I was hunting bull elk during the rut in a choice unit in Arizona. Opening morning we glassed up a monster 7x7. His rack was fully polished with no coloring. His rack looked like pure ivory and "glowed" in the sunlight. We ranged him three times and each reading came within a couple of yards of one another. The distance was over 900 yards but I do not recall the actual distance.

First shot went straight over his back right behind the should. The bull looks around. Second shot went to the same spot right over his back. The bull looks around some more. Third shot went to the same damn spot over his back. The bull finally had enough and disappeared to never be seen again.

I had messed around with the rangefinder and accidentally turned off the angle compensation. While I still got a bull of a lifetime, that encounter haunts me to this day.

The She-Wolf and I were hunting along the Kafue River in Zambia a few years ago. I had buffalo and roan already in the salt and we'd been looking for a suitable sable when this gentleman stepped out. I snuggled up against a tree while the PH looked him over and when he gave me a green light I sent a .375 his direction. Not much over a hundred fifty yards and whiffed it completely. Mind you, this is with a rifle I had thirty years experience with at the time. I dunno.

Those other cartridges in the magazine were there for circumstances like that, I guess. Whatever I'd done, I didn't repeat it...

Mark

Eland in Zimbabwe. Had a scope that got knocked out of zero. Still have the most vivid mental picture of rain falling off my hat brim and watching zebra move through the scope to clear the shot. Felt great, but was a clean miss, he was facing me and I shot for the chest. Then we figured out that my rifle was shooting about a foot left and 18 inches high at 100 when the next one (a different eland) was a broadside shot and I hit him high in the shoulder.

Great Sable! My partner was supposed to hunt the Kafue end of this month but due to Covid it got pushed to next year.

Sable, Buff, Lechewe and Sitatunga were his bag

Sometimes I miss my on girl friend from high school....and she was pretty big!

To clarify, you miss your old high school flame that carried some extra weight on her, correct?

You got it

I didn't miss cause I never got a shot off but there was a monster mule deer up in Idaho that my brother-in-law and I spotted down the mountain from us. It appeared to be about 600 yards away and was accessible from a ridge below us. I crawled down and try to get on the ridge to try and get a shot but couldn't see him from the ridge. My BIL stayed above to keep an eye on him. After 10 mins of hand signals I still couldn't find him so i crawled back up and my BIL went down to try and get a shot. He couldn't find him either. So I crawled down and we started crawling down to try and find him. Well he was over 1500 yards away! The steep elevation really messed with our distance judgement and this was before range finders were common.

By the time we got to the area he was at, he was long gone but we did find the two does with him. We still talk about the monster that got away. I blame him!

144" ten point WT he stuck around for a second shot and got him.

Mine was a piebald doe, she was white all the way up the back of her hip like an Appaloosas horse.Funny how a single strand of barbed wire can wreak havoc on a bullets path.saw her run off in the middle of the hay field then just trot away,never saw her again but believe me I looked HARD.

Drew out for a special muzzleloader hunt back in Oklahoma. Had bow hunted the WMA a lot, so knew exactly where I was going to be. Big timber area with several hundred yards visibility. Mid morning, I noticed a big rock about 80 yards away that I did not remember seeing earlier. There was a bit of brush between me and it, so I thought maybe I just overlooked it. Kept scanning for deer, occasionally returning to the rock in question. Had the binocs on the rock, and it moved! Was a heavy, wide racked 3x3 that had bedded down on the edge of that bench. Now to get a shot. Couldn’t see a clear path to the deer from my stand location. Stood on tiptoes, no dice. Crunched down on stand bottom, still no path. Tried grunting to see if buck would stand up, nope. Got out of stand on adjacent big limb, still no shot. Sat and waited for 30-45 minutes, but deer was not moving. Finally contorted myself around the tree and found a small window I could shoot through. Calmed my breathing, steadied my rifle, and squeezed of the shot. Buck took off like his tail was on fire. Kept my eyes on him, expecting to see him pile up. Ran out of sight with no apparent ill effects. Couldn’t understand, as the shot felt perfect. Climbed out of stand and walked over to where he was bedded. No blood, no bullet impact. Got on my knees and sighted back to my stand, and noticed a small tree limb hanging weird about halfway back. I had shot a half inch limb almost dead center, just hanging by a bit of bark. That was the only shot opportunity I had the remainder of the hunt.

I thought and thought and couldnt remember so I guess none real big. Finally I remembered(mid 80s) my BIL and I were driving ranch road back to camp on our Ft Stockton lease(Bakersfield actually) and a big buck jumped up and he shot a couple times running and missed. He was with a doe so we tried to get out and get on him again and did. He shot at him running a few more times to no avail and he hollered at me to shoot. I figured it was his buck to shoot and I dont shoot running deer so I had waited. Finally shot at him running right to left at about 100 and missed. I know thats an uneventful story but its all I got. The next year on opening day morning I had worn contacts for the first time and they drove me crazy. I was hunting my way back to truck to deal with that and the buck from the year before was standing 20 yards away. I didnt miss. Best buck killed there in 20 years and my biggest buck at that time.

whitetail or mule deer?

Interesting you asked. On that lease we were close to 50/50, probably a little more WT depending on the area you were hunting. Its was before MD season so you always have to be careful. I walked up on him real close but he had his head down and just couldnt see his head real good at that immediate first glance. I proud myself in taking the split second to look at his tail as I raised my rifle and I knew it was a WT. Just as I raised rifle his head came up and I was already squeezing. If I would of studied long it would of been another running opportunity.

only one true missed big animal that I recall offhand. It was in the early 1970s, I was about 11-12 years old and was getting too big of myself for my own good. I had been hammering on my dad that my 243 wasn't big enough and I wanted to swap with him with his old 30-06, he kept telling me that it would kick too hard and get me to flinching. I kept hammering on him anyway. One morning as he let me out to get in my tree stand (more on that to follow), I said "come on, let me take Bertha (his 30-06), reluctantly, he said okay but it's gonna kick the sh?t out of you!!!). I was like a kid in a candy store, grabbed it and stumbled thru the rocks, cactus & waist high mesquites over to the big oak tree that had 2x4s nailed to the trunk, the tree leaned at about 60° up to a big fork about 10 feet high. There was a 2x6 slightly higher between more limbs that you sat on. No place to put your feet, just dangling like sitting on a tall swing. I got settled in and he drove on down the pasture road about 100 yards to where another road kicked off to the right that went on down into the ranch by a big dirt tank with another ground blind, probably 500 yards to my right. I set there for a couple hours with the wind howling almost straight into my face, I was so stinking cold I couldn't feel my feet or fingers, my cheeks were numb as well. My legs had fallen asleep from sitting on the 2x6 for so long didn't help matters. I see movement down where the road dad had disappeared, moving from right to left. I grab the gun out of my lap and man was it heavy and bulky compared to my 243, ergonomics were all different than it too. I finally got it up to my shoulder but was struggling to hold the forearm up and the wind was whipping the tree, me, the gun, and all I could see thru the scope was a big circle where the crosshairs were going around the biggest deer I had ever seen. I took a breath and clinched my teeth trying to pull the crosshair down onto the deer, flip off safety, start to squeeze the trigger to hear "snap" ... quickly drop the rifle from my shoulder, fumble around trying to get a bullet bolted, back to my shoulder and find the deer again. Finally found it and went thru the steps to prepare for the shot which is now farther off to my left than was comfortable. The last thing that went thru my mind as I started to squeeze that trigger was dad's last words (it's gonna kick the sh?t out of you!) and pure reaction kicked in as I quit squeezing, tensed up and pulled the trigger (of course I pulled the rifle well off target by pulling instead of squeezing) ... BOOM ... ... uh, his comment about kicking was an extreme understatement as it shoved my shoulder back what felt like a foot or so ... ok, remember I am balanced on a 2x6, gun kicks me back causing me to loose balance, my feet continue to go up and out the back of the tree I go rolling with rifle in one hand and the other grabbing for any semblance of a limb or branch to catch myself, but to no avail.. I end up rolling down the 60° angle of the tree, finally landing flat of my back but the gun never touched the ground. I lay there for a few seconds gasping for breath ... after a few minutes of gathering my composure, I got up and looked down where the buck was when my acrobatics started. I see nothing. I slowly crawled back up in the tree and retook my position until dad came back to get me. I knew that it wouldn't be long since he heard my shot. Sure enough, 15-20 minutes later, I hear him crank the truck and start working his way back to me. I sat my spot as I was taught because he might run something over me driving. Once I started seeing glimpses of the truck thru the trees, I started working my way to the ground, then on down the pasture road to where he would eventually come out. When he gets there, he didn't ask what I shot, he asked "so just how much kick does Bertha have in her?" I just said yep, a pretty good little kick. He got out and then asked what did you shoot "AT"? I said a huge buck and it went that away. He looked at the tracks and started following them and stopped, looked back to my tree stand and said "it was about here when you shot. right?" I was like, uh, yeah but how did you know that? He said cause the deer changed from walking to hauling tail about here. We followed the tracks a couple hundred yards and he stopped, lite a cigarette and said "you clean missed him" ... I fessed up to what all had transpired as he started chuckling, then laughing and said we better go shot that gun to see if you knocked the scope off. We went back to camp, walked out into a big field and set up a target and he shot the gun. Was still holding a quarter size group ... It was a few more years before I started hounding him to hunt with Bertha again.

less than a week later, one of dad's hunting buddies killed a 10 point with ~20" spread out of that same tree stand, almost an exact repeat of what it did the morning I was hunting there. He said it was by far the biggest deer he had ever shot and by far the biggest he had ever seen on that ranch. This was well before anyone in my dad or my circles knew anything about B&C, we all went by field dressed weight, number of points and inside spread.

Good one. Very good one.

Great stories here, I can only imagine.