MeatEater's brother out for blood. How many wounded and lost beasts?

[JMikeyH]

I was driving home last night after having a great day with great company on the ducks organised very kindly by a member on here. With being on holiday, my library of un-listened podcasts has grown and I took the opportunity to listen to one yesterday, the MeatEater Christmas special.

Very interesting, and at around an hour or an hour and a half in, Steve's brother Danny has a segment. This went from 0-100 very quickly and Danny was out for blood, lambasting his brother for presenting an incorrect image of hunting, over-recruiting new hunters and ruining hunting for the already existing hunters by overcrowding etc. His view was that any media on hunting was bad for hunting and corrupted it by giving hunters a motivation to go hunting other than what you would traditionally associate with hunting. An interesting view that I don't agree with entirely (I do hate "grip and grins", kill shot videos and gore videos (a la 50BMG deer headshot...)) but I know many on here do as evident by a thread called "Media Blackout" from a few weeks back! Another gripe Danny had with how hunting in the media is portrayed and especially how MeatEater does it was that they take effort to hide when stuff goes wrong. Well, I don't think anyone was under the illusion that hunting media shows everything that goes wrong but I do think MeatEater do a very good job of showing enough of when it goes wrong to be credible. Danny, however thought different, and took several members in the room on the podcast to task, including his brother Steve, about how MANY times it goes wrong and that they don't show.

It raised an interesting question to me. How much does it actually go wrong across the pond? It goes wrong where ever there are hunters, but how often? Speaking from my own somewhat limited experience, I've shot around 30 deer since my first muntjac 3 and a bit years ago with deerstalker.308 on here. Of those 3, I can think of one I am unhappy with - my first. Despite the muntjac being in it's final moments as we arrived over to it, the decision was made to help it with a final nudge of a knife to the heart. Ok, it was probably 30 seconds from trigger pull to dead but it wasn't the instant bang-flop we all aim for. Even still I don't know if I'd classify this as going wrong. Not ideal, yes, but not wrong - not a lost beast and hours of bloodtrailing, not extensive suffering yada yada though I am sure the day will come where I have the true nightmare scenario.

Danny eluded to a significant proportion of their hunts (and his own) ending in wounded beasts, never found or found hours later still alive with terrible wounds. I must admit, I watch a lot of hunting stories and videos on the internet and there is a certain cavalier attitude I detect when watching American programmes - no offense to our esteemed friends across the pond as there are many more capable and careful hunters than I, but how many shots have you watched from American hunters that made you wince a little bit? Shots at moving animals, quartering away beasts, too far away for conditions, rushing to get a shot... I could believe as Danny seemed to elude to that the percentage of it going wrong is rather high. 10%? 15%? More?

Danny had huge balls to go into the lions den and call them all out on what he perceived as a threat to hunting. I don't agree with his stance but damn if he didn't have some good points.

Upon reflection, the "best practice" that the majority try to uphold over here despite the sneers of jaded veterans who have marksmanship beyond that of many is probably doing a lot of good for the image of hunting and ethical game killing that we may have thought, certainly than I have thought.

As an addendum to this post, and please answer truthfully (it is anonymous after all!) how many times does it "go wrong" out of 100 animals?

 

[JMikeyH]

The podcast in question, section with Danny starts at about 1:22:55

Ep. 304: The Fish Shack's Revenge - A Tiki Christmas Family Feud Extravaganza Blowout | MeatEater Podcasts

Steven Rinella talks with Matt Rinella, Danny Rinella, Kevin Gillespie, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Sean Weaver, Hunter Spencer, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: Phil and Kevin's shared love of pop-up tiki bars; the incredible land masses that would open...

www.themeateater.com

 

[Pedro]

If you stopped doing things that might go wrong, nobody would ever get out of bed.

 

[Woodsmoke]

An interesting question. I've honestly answered '4-5' in my own case. This can be anything from a pulled shot, to to rushing and having the deer figuratively 'in the bag' too early, to a sure and simple 'bad shot' that results in a wounding. The latter are the shots that I beat myself up for, but thankfully in recent years they've become fewer and fewer. Point is though, it does go wrong on occasion and although nobody likes to think about it trying to hide the fact does nobody any favours

 

[Heym SR20]

I think anybody who hunts enough will have things that go wrong. But we don’t set put to do so. I have been stalking since the mid 1990’s typically shooting 10 to 20 deer a year - sometimes more and certainly in the last couple of years less. I have failed to recover about 5 deer. And have had to shoot a few a second or third time.

As for the deer list - i am pretty confident the shot felt good, but unable to find sign, follow a track or they have been in really rough ground. I am sure that at least three simply disappeared in deep gutters between trees never to be seen again. These days I have a dog, and she has certainly found dead deer that would otherwise be unfindable unless by luck.

Of those they I have shot again, it is often difficult to tell which was the first, second and third strikes, but in pretty much all cases, all the shots were deadly and the deer would have been dead within a moment or two. But those moments can feel an awfully long time. And I have had shots where the deer has shown absolutely no response, other than to look at you and quietly bound away, only to fall over dead 50 or 100 yards later - and with bullet straight through heart and lungs.

I think with many shots on deer, or other animals, the animals do run, or kick and groan for several seconds. This I am afraid is perfectly normal. But when on video, or to a casual observer it looks traumatic. It is traumatic - a life is being taken, and most animals, mankind included, don’t give up life very easily.

I am though absolutely certain that:

1) increase in range
2) cost - whether it be cost of the hunt, trophy, or cost of doing cull
3) lack of time
4) tiredness, cold etc
5) lack of preparation, practice etc
6) and animal being on the table before you take the shot

All individually or combined can bring about an animal that is shot, but that is not recovered.

 

[Leec6.5]

My answer is not per 100 , but per 1000.

 

[TH4]

Amazes me that people on here comment about shooters in the states shooting af a moving animal and then go off on a driven boar hunt doing the self same thing.

 

[JMikeyH]

Amazes me that people on here comment about shooters in the states shooting af a moving animal and then go off on a driven boar hunt doing the self same thing.

Never done driven boar, got no experience or knowledge and so have no comment. Perhaps one of our European friends here could put their take on that for us. In my ignorance, I certainly see them as different

 

[JMikeyH]

My answer is not per 100 , but per 1000.

Not terribly helpful, we can't see which vote is yours to divide it by ten and keep it in line with all the other results. 0-1 I take it would be your answer per 100?

 

[TH4]

Never done driven boar, got no experience or knowledge and so have no comment. Perhaps one of our European friends here could put their take on that for us. In my ignorance, I certainly see them as different

Interested as to why you see it as different as they often shoot deer on the drives as well. And if anything probably more challenging as at times they will be running flat out. Both are basically shooting at a running target. I wonder why people think it is more ethical on a driven hunt.

 

[Ratel]

My answer is not per 100 , but per 1000.

Oooh, get you.

 

[JH83]

I do watch Rinella sometimes and cringe. As good as he is at representing hunting, there seems to be a large proportion of wounds/misses. I generally put that down to him taking slightly iffy shots due to the pressure of trying to make something happen for the camera. He seems to be a fairly poor bow shot which he alludes to himself in fairness. If his brother is losing a lot more than Steve, he needs to find another hobby….sharpish.

I’ve been stalking since the early 00’s and as of the last 6-8 years out weekly on average. I’m glad to say it doesn’t go wrong often anymore, but it does sometimes for sure. The main differential is the number of deer under my belt, I am less prone to rushing into a shot, generally more relaxed and fully aware that pride comes before a fall-I used to have a slight tendency to get overconfident after a string of good shots and push the envelope which is something I try to address. Bullet placement on fired up stags has been a real learning curve too, crawling through Sitka looking for sika gets old fast. Experience really counts!!

Every single time I have messed a shot up I have instantly known it and known why, either taking a ambitious shot or rushing it, and absolutely hated myself for it!!

 

[brandon]

Amazes me that people on here comment about shooters in the states shooting af a moving animal and then go off on a driven boar hunt doing the self same thing.

I my opinion that is 2 complete methods of hunting. Driven hunts are planned and different sights/scopes are used and the distances are almost pre determined(knowing where the animals will be coming from etc) I have done both and believe they are and has to be approached differently. I have only ever shot at moving animals when they are wounded or obvioulsy i driven hunts

 

[Leec6.5]

Oooh, get you.

Yep and all shot with copper!

 

[dobber]

I used to do a lot of drive hunts, using hounds - my weapon of choice was a remington semi carbine - easy to swing and quick follow up shots. We used to practice at a gravel pit though often, using an old tire with a cardboard target stuck inside, toss the tire down a hill - wait till it hit the "safe" zone and shoot, that tire bounced and bobbed and had some speed to it. I am glad to say i never wounded a deer or moose within these drives. But i have wounded 3 animals that i wasn't able to recover, each of them are etched in my mind and often think what did i do wrong.
Just glad you didn't throw in bird hunting to the count as them numbers will jump much higher, but how many birds get a pellet or two yet still fly away

 

[palmer_mike]

Yep and all shot with copper!

I guess it depends on definitions of ‘going wrong’.
If one owns a highly trained deer dog and is skilled at using it then I guess the going wrong might get less often?

Copper ammo? Deer run longer with traditional shot placement

 

[deerstalker.308]

For what it’s worth Jon, as witness to your first deer, there was absolutely nothing to worry about with it whatsoever. The deer was dead, had we followed “the book” we would have left it to expire naturally before approaching, we didn’t, and because of that we took the view to speed things up accordingly.
I am always staggered by meat eater and the amount of somewhat reckless things he does, one that springs to mind was going elk hunting with a muzzle loader, discovering on arrival that he’d lost one of the iron sights, so pops to a local gunshop and buys one, no mention of checking zero etc.
then a poor shot with iron sights and what appeared to me to be a poor but lethal shot, largely written off (at least on camera), no opportunity of a second follow up being as it was a muzzle loader, and the elk went off to no doubt die.
Some of the footage is good and to some extent not shying away from the fact that it doesn’t always go to plan is no bad thing, but I can (thankfully) count on 1 hand the number of bad shots over more than 15 years and multiple hundreds of clean kills, yet he seems to have vastly more than that kind of percentage.

 

[Firefly]

My answer is not per 100 , but per 1000.

There’s always one !

 

[Andy seatrout]

During lockdown I watched a lot of hunting YouTube films; mainly because I took up stalking last year after procrastinating about it for ten years ( I’ve had an FAC on an open cert for five and standard ‘tied to land ‘ before that) I run a small pheasant shoot on maybe 500 acres or so do rabbits and foxes with 22LR and .223 are my main tools…. Adding a Sako 85 in 6.5 x 55 for deer and any legal quarry gives me the adaptability to shoot deer and foxes in daytime ( the night scope not being brilliant in daylight)….

I answered 2-3 based on two deer shot ( both stone dead) but probably 150 foxes over the last decade ( I do have a young family and a proper job so I’m out only 2-3 times a month).

I’ve lost maybe four foxes in the time, annoyingly I think one made to a flooded ditch and floated off, I shot two in the week before Christmas the first stone dead the second jinked sideways- went down legs in the air, still, then legged it to a hedge and down a hole….just as was walking onto it. I don’t think it will have lasted more than five minutes, but even for a fox that’s really five minutes longer than I’d like…. It knawed at me for a day….

I try to make sure, I don’t shoot foxes or deer beyond 120 yards ( very small sample set on the deer I concede! ) but I don’t want to take a chance……

It’s a generalisation but I’m the UK we seem to want to be surer if the shot, if Meateatrrs brother says they don’t film the 10-15% where it goes wrong that’s disingenuous and really not good enough by my own personal standard - I’d struggle to justify continuing to shoot if my error rate was that high

 

[devon deer stalker]

Best not mention what some bow hunters across the pond lose/wound game animals when out hunting
Cheers
Richard