Absolutely Disgusting

I've used the gutless method, it works really well.
I just can't leave that big tasty heart in there, I gut them just so I can fry that heart up medium rare with a couple eggs for breakfast. A little onion, couple mushrooms, garlic, elk heart, three eggs....dang.....gonna be a while.

Larry Weishuhn is the worst shot ever filmed. I can't understand how Hornady still sponsors him. I've watched him hit every part of the animal except the area you want to hit.

I still watch his shows just to see if he accidentally hits one right.

I never leave one over night...I will track it until I find it. If it beds any at all I will find it. I've tracked a lot of animals during my guiding days...many guys have been amazed I could find the tiny spot or smear on a blade of grass.

If the "sign" don't look promising, we go back the next day to see if we can find it, but very rarely have I found one with weak blood trail or if there is a lot of hair mixed with bone. I can normally tell right away if an animal will be found.

It happens. I have had to find one animal the next day, a bear. We were about 10 yards away the night before but just couldn't find it in the dark. Once I found an archery kill 3 days later. The bull was poorly hit and he did not go in the direction that I expected. He ran down hill then circled back uphill to where he came from when I called him in. It was a solid hit just too far back and I di not expect him to go uphill. Essoned learned was to always check back where he came from.

Steve

Tracking them is good times. Entwined in the hunting.

I hate having to track an animal using a blood trail. I am so color blind that it is almost impossible. I can see game fine and most other colors but small amounts of blood on grass or branches gives me a lot of trouble.

Hunting buddy of mine had the same color blind problem. Could see well in lots of ways, but limited ability seeing red dots on foliage. That was tough.
The first 6-8yrs of my deer hunting was solely archery. Tracking could be as important as shooting.

Tracking for some is tough. I learned tracking when I was a kid shooting gophers wrong with a .458 Win Mag . . . A gut shot gopher can rip you up . . .

All seriousness aside: The most important sense I found to develop besides my poor eyesight is - smell. I've crept near up to bedding deer and been able to back off before spooking them, because I smelled them first. A shot deer smells different than one that hasn't been shot. A shot deer is much easier to smell than anything else in the woods.

I usually walk a downwind grid if I lose one in the woods.

To train yourself to get good at using your nose, the next time you get near a shot deer, elk, coyote, moose, etc., put your face right next to their mortal wound and draw as many deep breaths through your nose as you can stand. Then take a few more. Your brain will remember that and trigger on it almost by itself - if you let it. It's not enough to try to remember what it smelled like last year. You've got to do it on purpose for your brain to make sense of it later.

Be sensitive . . . to the olfactory, too!

And this us why ethics are banned on this Forum. Nothing worse than judgemental hunters criticizing other hunters.
Nothing pleasant about the death of any animal. It goes hand in hand with hunting.
There's always the slaughterhouse for the overly guilt ridden.
Just imagine how our species killed to survive in days gone by. Most kills today are surgical in comparison.

This Thread was off base from the OP's initial Post. Ethics. Keep them to yourselves. I agree with Len. No tolerance is the only means of preventing them from being force fed by the most high and holy.

phorwath said:

I would have been banned from hunting long ago if a poor shot with an arrow was the litmus test.
We started hunting with recurves before compound bows were invented. I remember shooting wood arrows. No sights. No mechanical releases. Only pieces of metal equipment was the Bear broadhead and the steel snap on the leather three finger shooting glove. The good ole days. Back when men were men, and hunting was a lot less comfortable. Had the Michigan woods to ourselves during archery season.

Misses were as common as hits, and bad hits were part of the hunt. That's the way it was. I'm not very critical of a poor hit, because it will happen for any variety of reasons.

Maybe the TV programs should be sanitized. No doubt the majority of them are.

Large bodied game can spoil overnight if left in the field dead overnight, even in cool temperatures. The larger the animal the greater the risk of it. Large bull moose can spoil overnight even if they've been gutted, but not skinned to release the body heat, before leaving them out overnight. And a spoiled moose is a LOT of spoiled meat.

I MUCH prefer shooting a bull moose in the morning, compared to evenings.

Click to expand...

yeah but the point is with a modern bow there is very little excuse for bad hits, especially on an elk with a HUGE kill zone at 10 yards.

Bigeclipse said:

yeah but the point is with a modern bow there is very little excuse for bad hits, especially on an elk with a HUGE kill zone at 10 yards.

Click to expand...

Yeah, so the punishment should be what??? What penalty do you impose, based on your personal ethical standards?

I'm going to let this thread continue but please keep it civil fellas.

Humankind has arisen from the swamps to where we are today...
In order to feed ourselves we fed upon the beast of the world...they(we) did as needed to survive...killed, stole, pilaged, raped and past along the gene pool...
well..eventually things changed..grew a conscious, evolved(some did)..yet to survive humankind had to eat to survive..so killing became an everyday occurrence like any animal...animals that humankind could kill became more scarce..we changed methods...eventually everyday tools(rocks) were used, sticks, anything that could hinder an animal from escaping us...eventually bows, then guns...bows became extremely powerful as did guns...but they were useless unless we practiced the skill to use them and become proficient...
today's equipment is leaps and bounds better and easier to learn to shoot..but lacking actual time of practice , or not learning proper shooting techniques cannot be overlooked even with the advances of today's bow and guns...
I have respect for people that can go hunt their own foods in today's society..which is looked down upon by a great portion of the people that still believe that their meats come from a grocery store...
any person pursuing an animal for a food source should know exactly where to shoot those animals...should have adequate equipment to do so....but most importantly is putting in the practice time in to become proficient of the use of the equipment..that is common sense...
Sure...there is the occassional misplaced arrow or bullet..but every person has to know their personal limit or flaws in technique...
and practice that much more to improve themself...
Flaws in technique cause big problems...even at 10 yards...

While I was bow hunting I used a ten foot target...ever tried to hit a dot created with a ballpoint pen at ten feet....great exercise in technique evaluation(just make sure you have sufficient target stopping power because my fancy $120 Block didn't stop several of my arrows before they hit sheetrock...in my garage)...

The ethics mentioned earlier IS a standard a person has to decide for themself...or others if you are a husband/father or a person taking someone out for their first hunts...you base their ability upon their experience and make an ethical call....but experienced hunters get to make their own call....that's why we are whom we are...
experience....
....WE KNOW OUR LIMITS...

Add a HUGE case of elk fever and 10 yards might as well be a 100. Seen some folks get real excited when real close to an elk with a bow. One couldn't even manage to draw the bow.

A mentor I used to archery hunt with became so excited he bit through the stem of his corncob pipe one morning when some whitetails approached very closely. Never even got an arrow off due to his excitement.

Hunted moose with a guy that became so excited he functionally locked up. I was spotting for him. Let him know the bull moose was legal to shoot. Told him to get ready, that the bull might appear in the one and only opening allowing a clear shot. The bull obliged us and stopped in the middle of that opening, perfect broadside exposure. I had already put the earplugs in and told my buddy again the bull was legal. Go ahead and shoot. I turned to see that my hunting partner didn't have his rifle in his hands, didn't have any shells in the rifle, was searching for ear plugs and for his shells, and had done nothing to prep for the 375yd shot. Brain freeze. The bull move on and he never even got off a shot. This was a second event for him. He'd been a law enforcement office for 10yrs. Simply too much excitement to maintain mental/functional control. Know another guy that ejected every live round in his Remington pump action 30-06 as a mature dall ram ran past him. He fired one round. The animal couldn't climb up and away. It turned and came toward him and cut across the face of the hill above him - 75yds away. He thought he was shooting and couldn't understand how he could have missed. He was so shook up he couldn't even stand or speak. His legs wouldn't support his weight. He didn't believe he hadn't fired the rounds until he'd calmed down and his partner pointed to all the live rounds laying on the ground where he said he'd shot from. Pretty nuts.

There are multiple reasons bad shots occur when hunting with recurve and long bows while shooting instinctively or even with a couple simple pins being used for sights. It can be as simple as the deer jumps at the string noise and moves before the arrow reaches them. My best three archery shots ever were all foiled by animals that jumped the noise of my recurve bow string. One red fox, one whitetail deer, one caribou. They were all longish shots, and arrows that would otherwise have been through the lungs instead impacted mid-height in the rear hams on the deer and caribou. The red fox was so quick, he was able to flip over on his back and track the flight of the arrow while it passed just above his body. Lightning reflexes even though he was completely unaware and looked as relaxed as could be. Modern compound bows send the arrows fast enough that the animals have much less time to react to the bow noise.

Never known a hunter with the goal of poor shot placement. I've known some that overlooked or neglected some pretty basic preparatory steps which later foiled their best efforts. We prepare and then do the best we can with whatever circumstances develop. For better or worse - that's hunting.