You knew it was coming. What's the worst shot you ever made?

[2ndovc]

I have two that were equally embarrassing.

First was up at Camp Perry for a DCM shoot.
It was a drill on the 200 yd line.
Load two and shoot. Drop, load eight and shoot prone.

Well the target went down and came up with only two hits.
However the guy next to me ( who hadn't hit a thing all morning)
was grinning ear to ear with eight hits in the black.
When I dropped I shot the wrong target

The second was in 2003. I was deer hunting in PA.
Frozen solid and ready to head in for a while I spotted
four doe and a nice eight pointer heading right towards me.
He stopped about 30 yds in front of me. I raised my Springfield
squeezed the trigger...
Boom!
He's still standing threre looking at me.
What the .........
I cycled the bolt and shot again in what seemed to be
hours later and the buck jumped, ran and collapsed.
I stopped to collect myself and keep my pounding heart from exploding only
to see a 1 1/2" hole through the tree branch in front of me.
The first shot had hit the tree branch that was unseen in my scope and spun off to Lord knows where.
Fortunately for me Mr. Buck was just as startled as I and was nice enough to stand still for a second shot!

jb

[Hobie]

My first string for the National Guard national championship air pistol match at Camp Robinson, AR in 1993. Shot outside in a gusty wind I was so nervous I didn't pay attention and shot despite wind gusts. I was a bit afraid I'd exceed my time. String was all across the target from left to right but within the 10 ring for vertical. Settled down and shot between gusts and had perfect targets for the rest of the match but that first one put me in 9th and out of the shoot off. We had a great team though and placed 2nd (my buddy Mike), 9th, 10th and 12th to place 3rd as a team.

[Blaine]

I was shooting at a big doe that was moving from my left to right, not too far away, kind of fast but that does not explain why my first shot plowed up dirt at her feet and three foot in front of her....the second shot I have no idea, but the third nailed her DRT. Little 20ga Model 37 DeerSlayer.

[jeepnik]

Once emptied the magazine on a 1911. Only hit the target once. But, in my defense, I was young and scared s***tless. And the one hit seemed to do the job.

[Old Time Hunter]

Is this the "worst shot made" or "worst shot missed"?

[Ben_Rumson]

Managed to gut shoot a forkie at 30 feet..Buck fever yes.. possible bullet deflection from tree branch..Then hunting pard's dog chased it.. pumped a few more rounds into him.. But it was the tree it ran into that stopped him...Later down at the ranch house where we dressed the deer... Pard's dog stole the freaking liver!!!

[TedH]

Deer hunting one year quite a while back, a nice 10 pointer comes strolling through the woods to the edge of the wheat field. He's intent on staying in the corner of the field and I can only see parts of him at times through some trees. I'm only about 50 yards away. I finally get a clear shot at his vitals, put the crosshairs of the '06 right where they need to be and squeeze the trigger. He kicks his back end in the air and takes off right at me. He only makes it about half way and drops dead. I was pretty proud of myself till I went to look for my bullet hole in his chest. The only hole in him was right in his butt! It must have cut the femoral artery cuz he was dead in a matter of seconds.

[OI phones in...]

Best-worst shot was loast Christmas with my bow. Arrow deflected into the doe's eye.

Otherwise??? Clean miss at Joe's in Hondo.

[adirondakjack]

Shot my chrony last week. I'd left the sky screens home, so tried to make do by shooting close to the tops of the sensors. Good thing it was my beater chrony that's been rebuilt since I shot it last time. the good one is uh, I dunno, lost somehwre in my junk in the shop.

Watched my dad blow the glass out of his van mirror with muzzle blast from a .264 once, when he shot out of the van, parked at a sand pit, while checking zero on a scope. It was raining, so he thought, "Oh heck, I'll just shoot out the passenger side window.

[86er]

The worst two shots that I "made" were on the same trip. I shot a stone sheep that was walking very slowly from left to right. I aimed right in front of the shoulder figuring I would get into or behind the shoulder as it continued to step to the right. I saw blood on the light colored shoulder and figured it was a good shot, but no blood on the ground and no sheep. The guide saw the hit and blood on the animal and swore it was a good shot. We stopped looking at dark. The next afternoon, we spotted the ram with the bloody spot. It was on a ledge about 50 yards below us. I shot it and it fell. The first shot had cut the neck very deeply but the bullet did not penetrate into flesh. We pulled it down a few hundred yards to a two track, where we ran into another outfitter with his client. "Nice shot" the guy said. "Thanks" came from my lips as I looked back and realized the spot where I and the ram were at are not visible from here. "Where were you when I shot"? "Right here" says the Guide. "And your ram is a good one - and that was a good shot too from way up there". WHAT? "Yeah, your ram is right around the bend in the trail". We go over and look. Sure enough, another good ram is lying dead in the trail, fresh blood trail leading back to a spot directly under and behind the ledge where my ram I shot at was. I killed two with one shot. The second one was a hundred plus yards from the first and completely concealed from our view. A few thousand dollars, a lengthy explanation and a generous outfitter got me out of that mess.

Now the worst shot I DIDN'T make (lately) was a good whitetail deer that sported antlers in the 150's class at 60 yards broadside and unaware of my presence. I put the crosshairs of the pistol scope on his shoulder and let a 45 Colt 300 gr bullet fly. The buck walks off a ways out of view. I call on the radio "BBD". I go to get my deer. No deer, no blood in the snow, no end to the tracks he left. I would have swore I got him. We got to the range later. The gun is dead on where it should be. I have no explanation. I guess I just missed (an easy shot).

[Marc]

The worst shot my old boss made was when he put a 270 bullet through the hood of his 1965 Ford PU and killed the battery. He was shooting over the hood and forgot that the bore is a little lower than the scope!

I will have to sort through my collection of bad shots to see which might be worst. The one that sticks in my mind wasn't really a bad shot but the results were ugly. I shot at a buck about 300 yards across the canyon with my 264 Win Mag and 140 Sierras. The buck was quartering away and was butting heads with a smaller buck. I hit him in the rear leg which broke the leg and blew his belly open. He fell end over end down the side of the mountain into the brush. I had two tags so I shot the other one in the shoulder as he stood broadside and he dropped where he stood. I went over and gutted and hung the second one and then went looking for the first one. He was easy to track because he was walking on his guts and pulling them out as he went. He went about 400 yards or so and was still alive when I got to him. He also broke his other back leg when he fell down the mountain so he was walking on two stumps. He was pretty well gutted. I swore off of Sierra 6.5 bullets shortly afterwords because of blow ups and switched to Barnes X-bullets in that rifle. I do believe a X-bullet would have broken the leg and continued into the chest and killed that deer on the spot.

[madman4570]

My first year---- 1984, shooting Competition M1 shoots. I was on target 7, after the 10 shot rapid prone, target 5 had 20 hits on target and number 7 had zero. Gosh, at least I could have shot the number 6 or 8 target(next to mine)Never did that again!

[geobru]

One of the worst shots I ever made was on my first bull elk at 15 feet. I was using my BLR in 308. I was in a white fir thicket where 10" of fresh snow limited visibility because of the snow laden branches. I caught a flash of movement in front of me and realized it was a horn moving back and forth about 20 to 25 feet away. I dropped down to one knee to look under the branches and I could see his legs, but I had to wait for him to feed toward me! At 15 feet, his head and neck were in the open. I pulled down on his neck, held center mass, and fired. Unfortunately, my center mass included the hairy mane that hangs down from the bottom of the neck, and the bullet passed through the hair, about a quarter inch outside of the hide. The bull threw its head up at the crack of the shot, so he couldn't see me through the branches. My second shot was at his front leg, as high up against the branches as I could hold. That shot broke the near leg, passed through the chest cavity and broke the far leg about 8" above the lower body line. He ran out of the thicket and up onto a rock slide where his front end gave out about 50 yards up the hill. I shot him in the head and he slid down the hill toward my location. The trees formed a funnel that guided the carcass to the spot where I was standing. I wedged myself between two trees in an effort to get out of his way. He piled up against two trees to my right and was laying on top of my feet when he came to rest.

[C. Cash]

While stationed at Ft. Carson we had a visiting General watching us do a live fire. I was one of a couple of M-60 gunners that was to run up a hill, set it up on a tri-pod(which you rarely do unless in a defense) and lay down a heavy fire on some targets out at about 300 meters. We stormed up the steep hill, set up the 60 on the tri-pod as fast as possible, and sent about 300 rounds downrange at those targets, and the other 60 gunner did the same. Results: not one hit! Looked very impressive though with those 600 or so shots tearing up the hill! The General was not impressed and as an Infantryman who prided himself on accuracy, I was mortified. Can't believe I did not hit it one of those targets once!

[LeverBob]

My first string for the National Guard national championship air pistol match at Camp Robinson, AR in 1993. Shot outside in a gusty wind I was so nervous I didn't pay attention and shot despite wind gusts. I was a bit afraid I'd exceed my time. String was all across the target from left to right but within the 10 ring for vertical. Settled down and shot between gusts and had perfect targets for the rest of the match but that first one put me in 9th and out of the shoot off. We had a great team though and placed 2nd (my buddy Mike), 9th, 10th and 12th to place 3rd as a team.

Great Horny Toads!...My Pap trained at Camp Robinson in 1944 before going oversees to fight in the Asiatic Pacific Campaign in WWII. Met my Momma at a USO dance in Litte Rock. I'll be a dirty bird!

What was Camp Robinson like Hobie?

LB

[Sixgun]

Never made a bad shot. I hit everything exactly perfect, even out to 2,000 yards---------Al Gore

[Hobie]

The worst shot my old boss made was when he put a 270 bullet through the hood of his 1965 Ford PU and killed the battery. He was shooting over the hood and forgot that the bore is a little lower than the scope!

This must keep a lot of body shops busy. I've heard of this or something similar being done with just about every cartridge!

[Hobie]

My first string for the National Guard national championship air pistol match at Camp Robinson, AR in 1993. Shot outside in a gusty wind I was so nervous I didn't pay attention and shot despite wind gusts. I was a bit afraid I'd exceed my time. String was all across the target from left to right but within the 10 ring for vertical. Settled down and shot between gusts and had perfect targets for the rest of the match but that first one put me in 9th and out of the shoot off. We had a great team though and placed 2nd (my buddy Mike), 9th, 10th and 12th to place 3rd as a team.

Great Horny Toads!...My Pap trained at Camp Robinson in 1944 before going oversees to fight in the Asiatic Pacific Campaign in WWII. Met my Momma at a USO dance in Litte Rock. I'll be a dirty bird!

What was Camp Robinson like Hobie?

LB

I'm betting it is much nicer now than then. North Little Rock has grown up around it on a couple of sides and since it was selected as the National Guard Professional Education Center it has had a lot of new construction. Typical of military posts it was built on land marginal for farming (meaning sandy or rocky) and has its share of ticks and chiggers in the summer. I have been there at least a half-dozen times from 1984 through 2000. It improved a LOT in that time.

I don't have really high standards, if I was dry and warm in winter/cool in summer, had a moderately comfortable padded bed, and the food was good I was happy. This post is now of a higher standard than my minimums! I imagine that in WWII it was like other posts like Camp Pickett, Camp A. P. Hill, etc. with all the all wood double decker uninsulated barracks heated with coal furnaces fed by soldiers from bunkers put between every two buildings. "Fire guard" was more than a building guard or character producing lack of sleep duty back then.

[dkmlever]

Buck deer hunting in heavy snow, walking slowly looking toward a nice meadow that was about to come into view at first light. Something made me turn around and a very decent buck was walking my path in the heavy snow no more than 10 feet from me! Pulled the Marlin 93 in 32 Win Sp out of the scabbard pack I wear, thumbed back the hammer as I pulled the gun tight to my shoulder and pulled the trigger all at the same time (ok, miliseconds) and as I pulled the trigger the butt of the gun shifted off my pack shoulder strap, casuing me to miss the buck at 10 feet. He popped out of there back into the heavy brush very quickly and I stood there quite embaressed.

[Tycer]

No mine.

[Sixgun]

No mine.

oooooooooooooooo.....that musta hurt -----------------Sixgun

[Old Time Hunter]

No mine.

Tycer wins! Heck mine ain't even close to that, I tried to shoot at a Whitetail while wrapped around a tree from my left shoulder (I'm right handed) with a Ruger 77 chambered for .300 WinMag and a 4 X 12 scope on it (this was back when you got a "big" game license, mainly Bear or Deer). 'Was 'bout four feet off the ground with a single foothold on the first branch, had to wrap my right arm around the tree to hold on, then shoot single handed with my left. The forestock was supported by a single finger from my right as the rest of my fingers were grasping the trunk of the tree. Pulled the trigger.....WHAM, next thing I knew, I woke up on the ground with blood pouring from a circle cut surrounding my left eye, the deer no where to be found, and three hunting buddies laughing their butts off. Still have the scar, it's been 34 years this November 20th.

[Hillbilly]

Worst? Too many to count. They sorta all run together --- know what I mean?

I did see a guy shoot the pulley and cable down at an indoor gun range once.

[JohndeFresno]

No mine.

SSSSSssssss [sound of me sucking in air] !

Never made a bad shot. I hit everything exactly perfect, even out to 2,000 yards---------Al Gore

[GoatGuy]

Unfortunately, I've had more than one worst shot, but one that stands out to me was a hunt in Lincoln County, NM for Barbary Sheep. Not my first hunt for those guys, and I always expected to see them out at 300-500 yrds, requiring a stalk to get close enough for me to comfortably take a shot. This time as my son and I came up a hill into a hard blowing wind we walked upon a couple of the sheep and I quickly pulled up my "geewhiz .300 weatherby custom Model 70" and made a "great shap shot". Thought the bugger was out at about 75 yrds. Well, no hit and the two took off in a flash in different directions. We watched one of them go down a canyon until it stopped at what seemed about 500 yards. My son shamed me into trying a shot and after some soul searching, I obliged him and told him to watch where the fellow would go as I never expected to hit him at that distance. Sent a 180 grain Partition his way and as expected, pulling down out of recoil, the guy had vanished. Dad says, "which way did he go". Son says, "it toppled off the boulder after you hit it". What? I hit it?

When we finally made our way to the site there the Little fellow lay, stone dead, with a neck hit. Was aiming for the shoulder. Well it was a little fellow, couldn't have weighed much more than 50-60 pounds and horns were only about 10" long. Upon examination, we discovered a nice .30 caliber hole in his left horn, left there from my first great shot. On reflection, my first shot was snapped off at about 10-15 yards. Great shot, ...yeah, sure. Now we knew why we saw him waving his head about as he made off from the racket of the .300.

Well, after I proofing what I've written here, I suppose this has to be my contribution to topics regarding my worst and best shots. Sorry for the lengthy post!

[Rimfire McNutjob]

Some friends and I were plinking in the woods (now large neighborhoods) in Apopka, FL when we were teenagers. One friend brought his Remington pump gun loaded with #6 shot. I wanted to see what kind of damage those #6's could do if they all hit tightly so I fired the gun into a dead tree that had broken in half about 15 feet in front of me. The load of shot hit the 8" round remainder of the tree at a height of about five feet. As it turns out, dead trees are rather spring-y. The shot piled itself into a 1" hole about 1" deep and was then propelled from whence it came. I was smacked in the chest and face with the majority of the shot. It was travelling fast enough to leave welts all over my face and torso and knocked the wind out of me. When I finally was able to catch my breath, I spit out four or five pellets that had apparently made it into my mouth. None of the shot broke the skin and luckily none hit me in the eyes.

Lesson learned ... the hard way.

[2ndovc]

"Owwich"
As Bugs Bunny would say

[Modoc ED]

While in college getting my Associates Degree, I was in the NROTC and I was on the Rifle Team. We were at an away match and the range had an odd set-up -- four lanes straight ahead and four lanes to the right. It was my turn to shoot and my first position was Sitting. I took my time within the time limit and shot a perfect 10X. I was excited and my spotter was excited until my target was reeled in and there wasn't a mark on it. I had shot the target in the lane next to me. Duhhhh!!! It wasn't caught until the target was reeled in because nobody was shooting in that lane. They let me finish shooting the match but discarded the wrong-lane-target.

[bogus bill]

Back in the 1950s when I was about 14 I was hunting deer with my dad in wisconsin. We were driveing down a gravel road through the woods. I saw a huge beautifull buck about 40 yards of the road through the trees with his head sticking over a bush looking at me! You never would have seen him unless you were looking hard for deer while hunting. I yelled to dad I just seen a buck back there! Dad said okay I will swing back, I will drive slow, you drop out of the car and I will keep driveing slow. Dad was a well experienced pro. Well, we did that. I had a winchester 94. I shot two or three times and the huge buck never moved and still was peeking at me over the bush well back through the trees. Dad walked back to me howling with laughter! He said its got to be a stunt. No buck is gonna stand there and let you shoot that much!
We walked over and found a old mounted head wedged in a fork of a tree behind the bush! At least I found a number of bullet holes!

[Naphtali]

My first whitetail shot with a handgun was an attention getter.

I bought a [newly available] Ruger Blackhawk stainless steel 357 Magnum revolver with 6-1/2 inch barrel. My father helped my craft the ultimate custom grip for it - from pink dental acrylic, he being a dentist. The revolver was perfect in function albeit strange to look at.

I selected Remington 158-grain JHP factory ammunition for the hunt. In my revolver ammunition accuracy complimented the revolver package.

My first shot at a whitetail buck, unaware of my presence, was taken at 3 yards. The animal was meandering and feeding. My broadside shot was at the junction of cervical spine and shoulder (spine near thorax). The animal dropped like a stone - then bounced up apparently unharmed. The next shot, still at 3 yards, missed everything. The third shot, still at 3 yards, was broadside high in the right lung. Animal dropped, then struggled to rise. Last shot was in the left ear.

When I dressed the animal, I found the first shot had penetrated less than 2 inches, the bullet expanding to a pancake nearly the size of a half-dollar while cracking the cervical vertebra it hit. The lung shot (#3) barely penetrated the right lung, just over 2 inches of penetration, also expanding to a pancake.

My worst shot(s) were a result of not having a clue what I wanted the bullet to do. I bought a bullet whose expansion would be excellent - and that's what I got.

The following year I shot a Pasadena 44 AutoMag 6-1/2 inch with Mexican-made 240-grain factory ammunition. There's no substitute for cubic inches.

[gundownunder]

No such thing as a worst shot, every shot you get is a good shot.

Here's an example of a good shot in a bad place,

Harvesting rabbits on the Nullarbor for the game meat export trade, with two blokes in one vehicle.
We were on the last warren of the night and there were two rabbits above ground. Without saying a word we each lined up a rabbit and pulled the trigger. We were so close together the two shots sounded almost like one and the nearest rabbit got slammed down like God himself had hit it. On inspection there was only one bullet hole in the back of its head, which I was quick to claim as my own. The other bloke wanted to claim it too so we agreed to disagree and proceeded to gut the rabbit. The inside was a mess but there wasn't a mark on his Texas roadm@p to show where the second bullet entered.
Obviously the first to hit was the head shot which drove his head down and his roadm@p up, as we had both been spot on all night long, and neither was likely to miss by that much.

[kemosabi45]

My bedroom window and bird feeder in one shot... I had just installed new Houge grips on my S&W 66. I had practiced feeling them and aiming with the gun in the garage. So then i brought it back into the bedroom to put it away.. I loaded it as it was my night stand gun and was to put it directly into the draw.. I guess i was just to excited about the way it felt and BANG..Real LOUD noise.. I can't hear a thing and I had no idea what just happened.. about 20 seconds later as i realized that I practiced aiming one more time and this time the gun was loaded and i must have pulled the trigger. I got real scared about were that bullet might have gone.. Happy ending, I aimed at a window of the bird house in the back yard and hit it driving the bullet into the dirt 50' later. My bedroom window had a clean hole in it so did the window of the bird house but the back half of the bird house was blown half off Funny now but not then.

[retmech]

Many years ago I was hunting woodchucks with my .44 mag and soft hollow points that I cast. I came upon a rather large chuck facing me about 20 yds away. At the shot she slid back a few feet and never moved. When I picked her up I was somewhat disappointed at the lack of huge exit hole( this was back in my younger bloodthirsty days!). In fact there was no exit. So I decided to open the chuck up and find the bullet which I did. It had entered under her chin was all the way to her back end and an inch in diameter. The slug was a perfect mushroom but that was the end of my chuck hunting. She had a number of babies inside still moving around!