Acceptable Shot / Kill Ratio

CAM

Well-Known Member
HI all I have just been reading a hunting report on another site part of the report says what a good result the guns had and how well they had done shooting 31 deer for 43 shots.

Now I have been taught than it should be pretty much one shot one kill.
Of course sometimes you will need to finish a deer off and then there will be an occassional miss but these should be the execption.

One in four shots being a miss or wound seems a little too frequent for me.

I know I that was me I would of not been allowed out again until I had done some serious range time.

What do you guys think?
 
HI all I have just been reading a hunting report on another site part of the report says what a good result the guns had and how well they had done shooting 31 deer for 43 shots.

Now I have been taught than it should be pretty much one shot one kill.
Of course sometimes you will need to finish a deer off and then there will be an occassional miss but these should be the execption.

One in four shots being a miss or wound seems a little too frequent for me.

I know I that was me I would of not been allowed out again until I had done some serious range time.

What do you guys think?

Exactly how I was taught CAM, there should be no other option. Yes, misses occur for one reason or another, but you should not pull the trigger if you are not sure of killing first time.
Timney
 
any less than 10 for 8 incuding follow up shots to finish and I'd suggest you need to get closer to the deer before you shoot. Having a 4 to 3 ratio is poor in the British tradition of stalking anyway. Well IMO
 
I would expect a 90%+ ratio.

Oh, yeah, I was at said weekend.

There were a few experienced guys who had a few misses. There was a rank greenhorn who had a bunch of misses. There was another guy who had never stalked before and had four with four shots and did his own gralloch with a little help....

We were shooting Muntjac only.
 
in some hunting traditions what they might refer to as "anchoring shots" and what we would call a "wounding miss" seem to be quite common and acceptable. I suspect such shots are either an accidental miss or are taken when only part of the animal is visible and such shots seem especially common among those keen on "long range hunting." It is also not unusual to hear those from other traditions talking about "breaking the animal down" and I suspect this refers to a series of "anchoring shots" fired until the beast gives up though fright or exhaustion.

While it is always easy to believe your own tradition is the best while others are flawed I think there are certainly some points to commend the British (I know it is not only a British thing but as we are mostly UK based it seems sensible to us an example everyone understands) tradition of sporting shots on static animals at relatively close range while having to break the beast down with a series of anchoring shots is viewed not just as a failure but also as a shameful event.

I haven't been stalking long and have had my own mistakes (one clean miss and another not so good shot though I found the deer dead after a short follow up) so I know only too well that bad things do happen but I think our ethic of clean one shot kills is something we should be proud of and we should stick to it.
 
Perhaps the article took into account it being a new rifle, and these additional shots were the running in and zeroing shots? Not seen the article so hard to say?

Tom
 
HI all I have just been reading a hunting report on another site part of the report says what a good result the guns had and how well they had done shooting 31 deer for 43 shots.

Now I have been taught than it should be pretty much one shot one kill.
Of course sometimes you will need to finish a deer off and then there will be an occassional miss but these should be the execption.

One in four shots being a miss or wound seems a little too frequent for me.

I know I that was me I would of not been allowed out again until I had done some serious range time.

What do you guys think?

How many deer did they shoot at?

If they killed 100% of what they shot at the ratio doesn't sound quite so bad. However, if they only killed 31/43rds (72%) of what they shot at, that's not so good.
 
One shot one kill...anything else and you should be looking for reasons why it has happened.

Yes thats about it If I have a miss I want to know why. If I shot at the rate of 31 / 43 shots I could not live with myself. And the thought of the wounding, well I would give up without a doubt.

Mark
 
Just to add some statistics of my own on a local fallow cull ,4 years running -
When the cull was first set up it was in the hands of local stalkers ,none paying and all knowing one another .The number shot the first time round was 74 fallow does and one munty for 76 shots fired which was nothing to shout about as it was expected.The following year ,same set up ,81 fallow and 3 muntys for 86 shots which included two follow up shots one by myself on behalf of a well known writer that head shot a doe, say no more ,and one by the keeper to stop a fatally shot beast from reaching a road .The following year the estate decides to sell those seats to the highest bidder and guess what ,the well known writer buys the lot and sells them at a profit to well healed nobbers that have no local knowledge or local reputation to uphold and guess what -The figures for that day were apalling .
112 shots for 71 fallow does and not a word said in their defence ,i know i was there on the boundary mopping up .
Same the following year with 94 shots for 63 deer and handshakes all round :( Myself and a mate were mopping up that day and i personally saw a chap shoot a deer 3 times in the gut before it went down .
These same rifles are maybe good safe ,accurate shots on their own turf but get money and egoes together and the result is the numbers game with temptation to pull the trigger at all costs as they will be heading home shortly after the final whistle leaving the carnage and clear up to someone else . This year will be the same but lets hope the debrief is sterner and violators told to leave.
 
This post got me thinking about the deer I've shot over the last 3 weeks. It might be a good idea for others to do the same excircise. I am going to be brave and put the figures down.

In 3 weeks I have shot at 23 deer and killed 22 (Obviously missed one). However, I had to finish of two others. That puts my ratio at 88%. Thankfully I have not lost any out of the deer I hit. I don't get too excited about clean misses as long as I know the reason why, but I hate wounding.

The miss I have put down as the wind. It was a frontal neck shot at 90m on an undisturbed sika calf and it was blowing a hooly. In hindsight I should'nt have taken the shot but with a large cull and time running out I did. As it turned out I missed. I have learned from it! I also checked my zero a day later and it was bang on.

Of two that needed a coup de grace, one was hit very low through the top of both front legs and finished off within seconds with a head shot and the second was also hit low through the brisket but also the bottom of the heart. If I had left this one, I think it would have expired quickly but the light was failing, I wasn't 100% that I'd hit her right, judging by her behavior and I had the chance of shooting again.

The reasons I think the shots were not dead on was, in the first instance I think I got a deflection off some vegitation I did not see when taking the shot and the second one was just a plain old fluffed shot. Again some range time was put in to restore confidence.

So in conclusion, although I am not happy about the 88% ratio, I would find a ratio of 72%, as in the posting, unacceptable.
 
I dont remember if it was BDS or BASC but there was a chunk of research done on this a few years ago and it was found that 90-95% (I cant remember which) of shots taken resulted in a "clean kill" (and a hit). ie no further action required. Having checked my own stats for about 50 deer then I would claim about 90% but I will continue to strive for 95%+
 
My own numbers would be similar. Over the past 60 or so deer, I have one clean miss (on a Muntjac) and two deer needing a second shot, both Sika.

The stats on the weekend in question are badly skewed by one guy who had never stalked having six or seven clean misses.

I have said more than I should, but the guys involved don't use this site.
 
Even when often taking out new stalkers I would only see 3 or 4 misses a year (70-80 Roe).

It's all down to the shots you allow them to take and calmly talking them through it while they are taking the shot. No rushed shots at all.

Mark.
 
Brian,

So did you all have to prove zero before you went out?

As for the guy who had not shot deer before did the stalker who was with him not say something or stop him shooting or make him recheck zero?
 
Cam
I also read the same thread on another site
my first thoughts were
"It's a lead chuckers convention"
so I'm guessing they enjoyed themselves,
also the part you did not add were how many rifles there were and what species of deer they were shooting or what each percentage of deer species were shot
and also the experience of each rifle involved
what troubles me is why do you hav an axe to grind here
you might wonder why I ask this
but if they were shooting muntjac and had never shot munties before I would expect the shot rate to be a bit higher
as you know they are not the easiest to shoot so misses are exceptable
as are rates for first time stalkers
not every one is a crackshot and people should not be judged on this
 
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