Your most "INCREDABLE" shot?

[Little Wattsy]

I started my mystique by shooting TWO "Robinhoods" in the that same summer (One aluminum arrow stuck squarly up the shaft of another) both at 30 yards, instinctively - pre 'sights', no release.
Later that same year during archery season (elk and deer) we were in elk camp with elk and deer tags. Looking over a landing trying to spot some elk we spoted a doe in some peckerpole alders to the side. We debated shooting it and finally decided on some "camp meat". By the time it was decided the doe was in motion through the trees. By that time however my 18 year old self was already comitted and so I drew, tracked, and released. I heard two clicks and watched the deer go down. walking up to it the arrow was perfectly sticking halfway out eith side of her head.
A broadside head shot at 25-ish yards on a moving deer through the trees.
honestly I cant really account for it but I allowed the witnesses to think that yes, Virgina, I was just that dang good.
Deep down, however, I know it was the luck of the Irish of which I am not but maybe it was my Indian ancestors, either way it was a 1 in a 1,000,000 and one that with age and prudance I wouldnt try again.

 

[Vaino]

Have 2 "incredible shots"...one w/ a flintlock and one w/ a slingshot. First w/ the flintlock....

Was squirrel hunting in a beautiful oak, hickory and maple woods and saw a squirrel slip into a hole in a tall oak. Sat there for about 5 minutes and saw a large fox squirrel on the ground about 75 yds away. Two choices...try to sneak w/in range or take a shot. Cocked the flintlock, aimed for the head, raised up a mite and shot. Couldn't see what happened to the squirrel through the smoke and thought I probably missed at that distance. After a few minutes, walked down and didn't see anything but kept on looking and finally to my utter surprise, saw the squirrel lying in a hollow stump...still breathing. Bumped the head w/ the gun butt and looked the squirrel over....a "crease" on top of the head that had broken the skin. To this day that was a memorable shot.

At the age of 17, we were slingshot hunting wooded areas in the city for squirrels, pheasants and rabbits depending on the cover. Went into an oak woods and immediately saw a gray squirrel running up a tall oak, led it and let go the 1/2" lead ball...the squirrel dove into a hole followed by the lead ball. Was amazed that the ball even went into the hole...but, was more amazed when the squirrel showed it's head and promptly fell to the ground. To this day, I'm still amazed. Fortunately, this was witnessed by my hunting partner....Fred

 

[Spikebuck]

A few years ago I was hunting with my .54 Hawken and PRB. I had been after a buck I had been "watching" for three years and knew he was hanging in an extremely brushy, and very steep hillside. I had sneaked in a few days earlier and set a stand just a few feet off the ground in a big oak that was really like two trees, so I was in the crotch where they met. This hill is so steep, it was pretty much hands and knees to climb the hill to the stand. Couldn't sit on the ground as it was just too steep.

When all conditions were right several days later, I went back in and did a little doe talk. Shortly thereafter I heard steady and heavy footfalls coming. I could see big antlers bobbing through the brush. It was the buck, head down, 65 yards down the hill and moving at a fast trot. I was following him with sights on the chest. Just before he hit the one 3-foot wide path I had cleared that far down I gave a bleat hoping to stop him, but he just sailed right through the opening. Now he was in solid thick brush again. It would only be 25 yards or so before he dropped over an edge and out of sight. I just intensely focused on his side and when my eye saw a tiny hole for the shot I squeezed it off. I saw him flinch a bit and then he dropped over the edge out of sight.

Upon going down to where he was when I shot I found a few spots of nice bright blood, then more, then "pools" of it and 30 yards away lay the buck.

As I went back to the point of impact and looked up at my stand, I have no idea what hole I saw through 65 yards of trees and brush. I just think an intense concentration set in that allowed me to see a real opening. There must have been one as it was a perfect shot on a quickly moving target on an extreme downhill angle through brush.

 

[VEARL]

Gonna brag here....
My friend and I both had a CVA 32 Cal. Squirrel rifle. We were in a public hunting area here in central Okla.
Having one more allowable squirrel for the day, we decided to move to a new area. While enroute I spotted a squirrel sitting in a fork of a oak tree approx: 100 yds away.
Holding high above the squirrel, I shot. The smoke finally cleared and the squirrel was gone. My friend said the squirrel did a flip as I fired.
We walked to the tree and found sign of blood on the tree trunk. Approx: 10 ft behind the tree, I spotted the critter. The .310 RB had hit dead center of the chest.
We went back to the truck, where I used my range finder and determined the tree was 105yds from my shooting position.
Haven't done anything like that since.

Vearl

 

[Spikebuck]

Gonna brag here....

Hey....these posts are for "Most incredible shot" stories, so it would seem that braggin' a bit is a necessity! :grin: :thumbsup:

 

[Preacher Jeremy]

When I was a teen, I was out rabbit hunting with my old ten pump crossman. (well, it wasn't old then) Didn't see a single rabbit, and it was starting to get late, so I headed for home. As I reached the house I fired the .177 pellet into the air and a freaking robin hit the ground at my feet with a hole in it. Don't know how I pulled that one off Still have the air rifle though.

 

[Billnpatti]

About 10 years ago, I was living in Indiana and had access to some great squirrel woods. I was hunting with my .54 cal. smoothbore loaded with #5 shot. I was standing quietly watching for a squirrel to show itself. Suddenly, I saw two squirrels chasing each other around a tree, down across the ground and up another tree. They both stopped together on a crotch in the tree with one on one side of the fork and the other on the other side. I raised my smoothbore, took aim and squeezed off my shot. I hit both squirrels. One fell immediately while the other hung on for a short while, I walked over to pick up my two squirrels and while gathering both of them, a third that I had not seen came dropping out of the tree. One shot, three squirrels. You don't make shots like that every day.

 

[AWsaddles]

My best was also one of my worst. I got my first Flint at age 12 and it was a 36 cal southern style. My dad raised me in the woods hunting but never had the fondness I had for MLs. I'd not had my 36 long and was still trying to figure out its quirks. One day while shooting I had a string of flash in the pans with no boom. I had just charged my pan for the third time when I looked on the hillside to see one of my dads favorite roosters strut out like he owned the place. He had give me a pretty good flogging the week before so I felt I had a bone to pick with him. I raised my rifle and took a bead, chances are the gun wouldn't fire anyway and if it did he was way to far to hit offhanded with a flinch lock. Well when the smoke cleared it turned out that bird crowed no more cause at 87 yards that little ball had carried true and hit that rooster right in the head. I learned a lot that day when I had to explain my actions.

Years later I found out my dad really didn't like that rooster all that well anyway , he just hadn't got around to taking care of himself

Allen

 

[dbutch]

Sat. before the week of thanksgiving... last weekend of bow season before general gun season ..Brother and I set up in stands along a ridge may be 100 yards apart..30 min. before close I hear him shoot his bow ..Here comes a nice buck running full tilt under my stand..I released and drove an arrow through him dead center almost straight down......He went another 70 yards...Turns out my brother double lunged him..I dead centered the heart from the top down..I mean dead center.
Not sure that will ever happen again. Good times Good memories!

 

[Bill Hall]

Since we're talking pellet guns...When I was a teenager, my friend and I were driving around at night in his dad's truck. We swung by a VW shop and junkyard where he worked part time. There was a cottontail sitting by the fence of the yard, so my friend grabbed his trusty 5mm pellet gun from his gunrack and started pumping it up. By the time the gun was pumped and loaded, the rabbit had run straight away about 60 yards and dissappeared in the dark, but we could still see its eyes in the headlights. He started to put the gun away, but I grabbed it and said, "Watch this". I aimed about three feet above the eyes and fired. The pellet went "psssss" through the air and the eyes ran to one side, then the eyes went the other direction, then back and forth and started spinning, then became still. My friend jumps the fence and brings back a dead cottontail. We took it to his house and ate it. Bill

 

[Palatine]

I once made a shot that, while not incredible, was good enough, and quite welcome in the circumstances.

I arrived at the local range, and dragged my stuff from the car to a picnic table in back of the row of benches; then proceeded to uncase Lany. (Her real name is Magdalena, but she has me call her Lany.) Four or five other guys who were there when I arrived immediately got pretty quiet when they saw me holding an "antiquey looking thing". They looked away when my head turned in their direction, but I knew they were watching us. I stapled a target to a frame, and when the range was safe carried both down to the fifty yard line and set up.

I could feel all eyes following Lany and I as the powder horn was uncapped and the measure was filled, and I realized a change in plans was called for. The original plan was to fire a blank fouling shot, but with all those eyes following us there was no way I could feel enthusiasm for being seen to miss the paper altogether. Instead, a full charge of powder went down, followed by a carefully patched ball, sprue centered. The barrel was squeaky clean, so the ball was going to go somewhat high. I guessed at half to three quarters of an inch, and held that low as I took a deep breath, let out half and squeezed.

I love it when I occasionally manage to hold all the loose ends together long enough to achieve a perfectly centered bullseye, but it was never sweeter than that shot, when all those other guys were watching.

 

[hanshi]

There have been a few lucky ones but one that will always stand out was a big doe I killed a couple years ago with my .20 ga smoothbore flinter. I was in my stand half asleep when I heard a ruckus. A deer came running out of the brush about 20 yards away. No time to think so I shouldered and led in one movement. When I touched off there was heavy smoke and more ruckus and the impression of a deer leaping into the air. Suddenly a buck I hadn't seen appeared and vanished in a split second leaving a dead doe right where I fired. Sorta like "wing shooting" with prb.

 

[Dave K]

It has to be the first squirrel I shot with a muzzleloader. About 30yrs. ago, I had this original Ohio 38 cal. fullstock perc. I shot it allot at the range but never hunted with it. One day, I thought I needed to take it hunting. While walking the woods, a squirrel came part way down the tree to bark at me. I raised the gun and head shot him. I was so surprised that I actually took that squirrel, I never hunted with a modern gun for squirrel ever again. For a couple years, I counted the number of squirrels that old 38 took. Soon it was well over a 100 and I stopped counting. But, that was the start of my muzzleloading hunting.

 

[andles]

OK here goes. Back in 1964 I’d had my driver’s license for about 3 months. I had been reading the Rifleman Magazine like most boys my age were reading Playboy. Well maybe not with the same ardor but pretty close. In fact the pictures in either magazine were just about as unobtainable so it really isn’t a bad comparison. Anyway, I wanted a black powder rifle. I didn’t know anyone who had one but I wanted one. So I saved my money and bought a Hopkins & Allen .45 cal under hammer rifle. I ordered it right out of an add in the Rifleman. Sent them a check and had my rifle in a couple of weeks and it was a beauty. Since the add had said it was a .45 cal I also ordered some .44 cal prb. Went to my favorite sporting goods store and bought some caps and a pound of FFF powder. DuPont red can, I think I paid $1.98.

Got some pillow case material for patches. Actually I just took a pillow case for patches when my grandmother wasn’t looking but that is another story not that relevant here. Also I knew I needed a patch knife and had read somewhere that a straight razor was frequently used for this purpose so I took my grand dads, I mean borrowed my granddad’s. I read in an article that I needed some kind of patch lube and Crisco was mentioned so took a table knife and put a big gob of it in the patch box on the rifle. I had read about ball starters so I made a short starter about ¼ inch long and one about 6 in long. So now I had my “kit”.

Put all my shooting gear in a shoe box, grabbed my rifle and went out of town where I knew of a good spot to shoot. Probably not very pc/hc but heck I was just a kid.

Forgot to mention that this was in central Kansas in August. Hotter than, well very hot. Drove out to a field with a lot of sunflower stalks and grass and proceeded to load er up. Used 2 .38 cal cases as a measure and poured 2 measures down the barrel. Smeared some of the Crisco (which had become very runny) onto a section of the patch material. Put the material over the bore and centered one of my new round balls and used the short starter to push it into the barrel. Seemed very hard to get it into the bore. In fact I couldn’t see how Daniel Boon on TV could so easily load in a single thrust but maybe his rifle was different. I gathered up the material and pulled it up and took the razor and using my classic thumb against the blade method proceeded to cut of the remaining material.

I also nearly cut off my thumb and also removed any way of now pulling the ball out of the barrel. In my pain I then dropped the open razor on the ground which landed on a rock chipping the edge but I wasn’t interested since I was jumping around holding my rifle in one hand and waiving my other hand with the cut thumb flinging blood all over my hitherto white t-shirt which was rapidly colored red. I used the remaining patch material to bandage my hand. I also worked on a good story about the razor for my granddad.

As it turned out the H&A caliber was really .445 not .45 and my .44 ball was way too big with the patch material I was using. Guess you really cannot trust what you read. Something to be said for young and stupid, but even more about that later.

After staunching the blood I took up the rifle and using the 6 in starter smacked the ball down into the barrel. Pulled out the ramrod (just like old Daniel) pushed the ball down the bore. Not so fast. Got the ball down about another inch and it wouldn’t go any further.

I knew enough not to shoot the rifle without having the ball down on the powder so holding the rifle with my damaged hand I picked up a large rock with my other hand and hammered the ball down another foot or so but still not all the way. Did I say that by now I was talking to myself? Not very nice things were being said but mostly there was more intensity than coherency. Finally in a last smack I proceeded to hit my hand that was holding the barrel. Not just my hand but the same thumb that was a previous topic.

Now dropping the rifle and throwing down the rock I proceeded to use every curse word in my limited vocabulary, many, several times. At least I had only hit my thumb with the rock and hadn’t hit the rifle. But now I was committed to driving that ball all the way down the bore. I probably should have been committed for even picking the rifle up again and surely I should have been committed for picking up another rock but I did both and got the ball down on the powder.

So there I was with a loaded black powder rifle. All I wanted to do now was shoot the offending ball out of the accursed barrel, throw all the stuff in my car trunk, and go home. But a funny thing happened. An incredible shot.

Now the ball must have been beaten flat and I was just going to shoot it into the ground but in the distance a crow flew down and landed on one of those sunflower stalks about 50 yards away. Not wanting to let the opportunity pass. I capped the rifle, slowly raised the barrel up to put the crow in the sights. Remember this rifle had never been shot, never been loaded. About this time I noticed a warm hot feeling on my chest. I was sure I was again injured, bleeding or something just as horrible but it was only the now hot Crisco that had turned completely liquid running out of the stock and down my shoulder and shirt.

But what the hay? I touched it off. This resulted in the most beautiful cloud of smoke and a nice shove into my shoulder. Before the smoke had obscured I saw the crow disappear in a cloud of feathers. I was both shocked and amazed that I hit the crow. Heck I was amazed the thing even went off. But I wasn’t surprised and I kept shooting black powder.

 

[Old Creek]

Thanks Wattsy, this has been a great thread to read.
two come to mind so i will start with the one i am less than proud of. one of the few times i have hunted on my own property i stayed on stand a little later into the evening than i should have and when a spike came out every time i would try to sight on him i would loose him to the brush, he just blended right in. i took out my monocular and found a reference point and the next time i raised the rifle i found him and squeezed of the shot trying for a neck shot. to my horror he just stood there and as i went to load another round he hopped off like he wasnt hurt, i couldnt beleive i missed him. i got down and went to where he was standing and found a 6 inch pool of blood, long story short i found him dead about 30 yards in to the gall berries along with a dead doe i never even saw, i had hit the doe high in the neck and cut a artery of the heart in the spike.
the other that stands out happened while rabbit hunting with my brother in law. while walking a over grown road we came upon a squirrel frozen on the side of a huge live oak hopeing to go unseen, i got into my best fast draw pose and asked my brother in law if he thought i could hit him with my pistola, he horse laughed which i took as a green light so i whipped the pistol out and fired as fast as i could and low and behold i hit the squirrel right between the shoulder blades. i looked over at my brother in law and the look on his face mirrored mine, i dont know who was more surprised him or me.
creek

 

[Spikebuck]

Andles: That is one of the best stories I've ever read! How funny! You are a superb writer!

 

[Old Creek]

Andles: That is one of the best stories I've ever read! How funny! You are a superb writer!

I concur completely!!!

creek

 

[Shifty]

A few yrs ago I was still hunting in this thicket ,you can barely get through it and you don't want to go through it in warm weather for the rattlers,well I would take step and listen and watch for a few then go one and so on,well i thought i saw a bird flash it's wings i keep watching and finaly see that it is a buck the only clear opening to a vital area is smaller than your fist, range about 30yds I know i can hit that opening so he moved a little the opening will be a high lung so i take it,he goes down right there, while field dressing i find both lungs destroyed and part of the spine,the 54 cal worked great.But that is not the best shot the best was about 30yrs ago when i made a 49yd killing shot on a doe with my trad bow.

 

[juancho]

when I think of it, is hard to pin down a single one, but then there is one...
I missed , but to this day ,is way up there( for me anyway).A goundhog miss by 1 inch at 265 yds with a .45 flintlock standing in an opend field.
Then there was the one when I shot a squirrel and it fell down square on my face.

 

[S.Kenton]

Andles: That is one of the best stories I've ever read! How funny! You are a superb writer!

I concur completely!!!

creek

Andles:It sounds like stuff that has happened to me in the past! Well written I enjoyed reading it!