Cleaning up some bad shooting

[Skyline]

Wounded game is a lot more common than we think. When I worked at a butcher shop as many as half of the moose that came through had been shot previously and the injuries had healed.

There are a lot of hunters out there that are not good shots. They rarely if ever practice and many hunters also have limited knowledge of big game anotomy and where the 'boiler room' is actually located.......not to mention differences from one species to another.

Poor bullet selection for the job at hand is also a factor. We tend to hang out with other that have similar interests, so it is easy for most of us to assume that most hunters have a working knowledge of bullet construction and ballistics. Unfortuntely that just isn't the case.

The majority of hunters take very few big game animals and so their ability to 'read' the animals reaction to the shot is questionable. That coupled with poor tracking abilities leave many wounded animals in the bush that hunters assume were 'missed'.

Lastly, good old-fashioned 'buck fever' and 'Murphy's Law also come into play.

I find wounded and lost deer on my ranch every year. Deer that were hit and eventually ended up on my property before dying of their injuries or being taken down by coyotes. Sad but true.