Looks like the same deer to me

My oldest boy shot his last year using the 7mm-08 custom lite and it did the job. I have confidence in the custom lite loadings.

Looks like the same deer to me. Your boy is gonna be fine and he had plenty of gun. In my earlier post I suggested you give him more range time. I stand by that. In your OP you described him as getting a little twitchy when he got on the trigger before settling down and putting them in the bullseye. I suspect that is exactly what happened. He is a 9 year old and that stuff happens. It happens less the more they shoot. I raised one up that collected a pretty good bone pile with a 223 before he got big enough to handle a 7-08. Going to smaller cartridges to minimize recoil like you do with kids increase the odds of not getting a pass through and put a premium on marksmanship. There is no free lunch.
Stick with him and help him work through getting twitchy when he gets on the trigger. That’s what dads are for.
I would have cut his shirt tail off and pinned it on the wall rather than look for an excuse how it happened. An old tradition around deer camps that taught the kids to own their mistake and motivated them to up their game. Too many fun traditions are falling by the wayside to keep from hurting someone’s feelings...
Best of luck to you and your boy. I hope he gets another crack at him and makes good on it this time.

Yep

I understand blood trails and have been hunting for over 50+ years, and I've had my experiences of trailing a blood trail for miles and not finding the animal.
As also being a bowhunter and gun hunter, blood trails and pass thru's are critical for the bowhunter, more so than with a rifle that doesn't depend on severing arteries and blood vessels as the primary way to induce a kill.
The one fact remains is that if you have a well placed shot with whatever deer caliber rifle you are using, you will find the deer piled up within 100 yards and even closer most of the time, and a blood trail is a moot point.
A poor shot is not the fault of the caliber rifle you are using, and no amount of blood from a poor shot is going to guarantee you find the deer.
A high shot on a deer with a rifle may not bleed for a long ways even with the pass thru as the deer bleeds internally, and by the time you find blood the deer will be laying nearby.
People seem to get critical about blood trails and pass through, but then end the criticism by saying, "we found the deer a few yards away but no blood or pass through!"
I helped track a deer last year that my neighbor shot with a .308 double lung (high) hit and we found no blood. The neighbor smelled the dead deer as it was during the rut, and that is how he found it.....It had run only 75 yards!

For all the speculation about the choice of ammo, rifle, buck fever, range time, etc., I finally got some information last night that really helped me make sense of things. I was showing my son trail cam pics and said "tell me exactly where you were aiming on your buck?" and he pointed at the spot where the front leg meets the body and said "right here like you told me." Now I don't know what I said in the moment to confuse him, but apparently I did. We had a bearded hen in the previous evening and talked about aiming at the base of the neck, but we have also talked a bunch about deer shot placement and I even pulled up some illustrations on my phone (which I have done with him many times). Hell, he killed a doe with a perfectly placed shot last year. I often tell him to use the front leg as a reference point when he's lining up and I must have said something that confused things. I'm betting we find a spot where he grazed him low (hopefully).

Deer are tough animals and he will survive!
I've seen deer survive wounds that to this day I can't believe an animal could survive.
Depending on the severity of the wound he may be bedding not far from the feeder until he begins to heal and regains some strength, so right now would be optimal time to spend on that stand or somewhere nearby.

I hope my post was not misconstrued as being critical. As I said in my first post, you have my respect for the path you are taking your son down. I wish I saw more men doing the same with their kids than I see. At his age things more experienced hunters take for granted sometimes don’t go as planned while they gain experience. It is all part of their genesis as a hunter as we pass the torch to the next generation. Hopefully he gets another crack and closes the deal. All the best to you and your son.

Not at all, amigo. Thanks for the well wishes.

Went a similar route with my Daughter. She started deer hunting with me when she was 9 years old, but had previous experience on varmints. I started her with a .223 and she took several deer with that rifle.....but we had to track each and everyone of them well over 100 yds. Still, with good shot placement it got the job done.

When she turned 11 we put the .223 aside and got her a .243, the slight increase in recoil was negligible and the deer started going right down or ran only very short distances. She took probably 10 deer with that rifle.

Then at 14 we moved her up to a 7mm-08 (still her current rifle 20 years latter) and she has absolutely slayed the deer with that cartridge (perhaps the ideal deer cartridge). She is very self regulating in terms of the shot she will take and I can honestly say (to date) she has never missed a shot on anything or failed to kill it cleanly.

Hopefully the OP's boy will get another crack at the buck (or another one) and be successful. There is really nothing like 'success' to build ones confidence. After that....I'm sure he will be fine.

I just moved a box full of antlers from Bucks that my Daughter has killed over the years into storage, time to start another box and I pray that we have more years of hunting together and time to share.

it just happens sometimes. lots of practice is king, and practice on paper isn't the same as practice out of the stand. it helps to have some shot experience under your belt and no way to get it except taking the shot. there's certainly things you can do to improve odds on killing deer. As a more seasoned hunter who has shot a lot of deer and hogs, some shot more favorably and with better results than others...i favor heavier bullets because they seem to reliably bring better performance. BUT i've shot lotss of deer with anything from a .223 to a 3006 or a 4570 and the ones that were reasonably well hit all died where they could be found without too much difficulty. Some shots just don't go right, deer that cannot be found were probably not hit well or at all.

we did on a side note seem to have consistently bad luck with a bullet my brother hand loaded for a while, a hornady inner-bond i think it was. it shot well on paper but it just didn't perform well on game. none-the-less the animals that were hit well died where we could find them.

Three nights in a row. 100% same deer. We are going after him Saturday.

Awesome!!!! I cant wait to see what kind of wound he has. Take care of business and let us know.

Apologies if it's been mentioned and I'm sure it has but I dialed in a Rem 700 .243 with Hornady Whitetail 100 grain that was sub MOA. I ran Hornady 87 grain Lite loads and they were high/right @ 4.5 inches. If you are going to pull a bait and switch on rounds, I'd know what turret adjustments to make before doing so. It's one thing to "pull a shot" when your are zeroed in. It's a whole new ball game if you're already off from the get-go.

That's for SURE him. Great news.

Hope to see a picture with your young man holding his antlers soon. Best of luck to you.

Hmmm....



Injured leg?

Doesnt appear injured or tucked up in the other photo thought does it?

Good luck hope he gets him!

I saw it mentioned about practicing with a 17hmr earlier. Even to this day I start off with a dozen rounds through my 17 before zeroing in larger rifles. Good advice.

As is dry firing, it make a flynch/jerk/pull very apparent! especially if the shooter doesnt know its a dry fire!

Yeah, 'load' the rifle for him and see what happens! Always good for a laugh with my brother-in-law. I'm not sure it's fair to the word to call something that large a 'flinch'.

Go time.




It’s 7,000 degrees in South Texas. I must really love this kid. He shot 12 times this afternoon, all good shots. Just need his buck to cooperate.

Well, his buck came in late and got run off by a mid-sized boar. Little man fixed that. Literally ear holed him. Confidence builder.

on the right track!

Shot fired and I think I watched him pile up!