Is possible to wound an animal anytime you throw a bullet in its direction? No matter what range it is at from you? All we can do is get as much information we can on the shot before we take it and then be honest with ourselves about our abilities to make the shot or not make the shot.
I had ranged the hill the wolf appeared on earlier and it was 600 yards on the money to the point of the hill. My mistake was in not knowing the degree in which the hill ran away from my location compared to where I had ranged it at. As Roy mentioned, I am also sure that the my lack of knowledge on how much ground a wolf can cover compared to a coyote made a difference as well.
All that said, I made a calulated estimate off the data I had previously taken and figued the shot for 650 yards. I held in the lead and used the appropriate reference hold for 650 yards and knew for a fact I could make that shot.
Had the wolf been at 650 yards he would have been dead as the bullet landed just under his front feet.
Had the wolf been running perpindicular to my location I would not have taken the shot at that range beacuse there would be far to high of a possiblility that I could have wounded the wolf because of improper lead. But since he was running quartering away from me I knew that if I contacted the wolf to any degree with a body hit that the 200 gr bullet would have ended things very quickly with that kind of a penetration angle.
The fact that I know I could make a 650 yard shot on that size of a target was the reason I took the shot using this estimated range. This was proven again by punching that Russian boar at 715 yard twice in the shoulder before he made it to the bush just two days after taking the shot at the wolf.
I believe that a well prepared hunter and shooter will generally make a vital hit at long range the vast majority of the time. That said, misses do happen and those that claim they never miss are either liars and to ego bound to admit it or simply have not spend alot of time in the field.
I will also say that if a well preparred hunter misses at long range, generally it is a clean miss. Not sure why but that just seems to be the way it happens. I think this is generally because we are very well tuned in with our rifles and when we do miss it is generally a miscalulation in hold or range measurement. Because our rifles are finely tuned for these specific ranges, when we make an error or get an incorrect range, we generally get a clean miss, just my experience.
The vast majority of missed shots from competent long range hunters are eith shots high or low. Windage does not seem to be a real problem most of the time for me anyway because if the wind is blowing noticably I will not shoot. If the animal is running broadside to me, again I will not shoot because I know my limits with windage estimates. On a game animal I personally would never take a shot at a severaly quartering away animal such as a deer or elk. Just the way I am. Have no desire to punch a buck or bull in the *** just to knock him on the ground even though I know my rifles and loads will do just this very efficently. Just a personal issue and nothing against those that will take these shots. I was just raised to harvest the animal with as little meat as possible damaged.
With the wolf however or yotes or chucks or any other critter I will not eat, any angle on the animal is a good angle. To that point, any body hit on a severely quartering away yote or wolf is a dead critter with this level of power. Goal on this hunt was a dead wolf, no better way to get a dead wolf then running a 200 gr ULD RBBT from his left hip to his right shoulder!!
Also, there is very little room for a wounding hit at this angle compared to a broadside angle. If you hit the dogs body he will go down almost instantly from an impact at this angle. Yotes simply fold up to this impact as will most big game when hit with the appropriate rifles but again I can not make myself take that shot on big game.
So I do not feel that the shot I took was unethical. I had an established point of range in the area to work off from. I made a calculated estimate of how far that wolf had traveled from that ranged point, took the proper hold and allowed the proper lead for that calculated range an took the shot and missed.
And missed clean which I varified by walking to that point where the bullet impacted and proving it to myself that it was a clean miss. Even though I saw the bullet impact low, I still checked for hair and blood at the impact sight and for 300 yards up the trail where the wolf ran off.
So did I make a mistake, YEP, used the wrong dot on the reticle but now with the added experience of watching wolves, now I know more and if the chance arose again, I would be even better prepared for such a shot.
Simply goes to prove my point that Crane did the correct thing. Had he had a reading that was within 100 yards of where that big buck was he could have easily calculated the increased hold on the feeding, calm, relaxed buck and made the shot with the 30-378 because he had practiced to those ranges and knew what his rifle would do.
But he had no reference at all to the range of the buck and as such made a proper choice not to pull the trigger. I would have done the same thing in his situation if I did not have a rangefinder.
Just commenting on my own experience and misses to shot another hunter that he made the correct choice and to feel good about his correct decision which is worthy of alot of respect because its very difficult to let an animal walk away like that.
Good Shooting!!
Kirby Allen(50)
