This story, “Great Misses I Have Made,” appeared in the January 1972 issue of Outdoor Life. It has not been altered from its original text and appears as it did then.
Twilight was near, and the afternoon air felt cold enough to jell. At 9,000 feet the thin wind cut like a knife. My two hunting partners ranged somewhere on the high Wyoming plateau behind me, and I thought how much more intelligent they were to keep moving and stay warm.
I had taken my vigil where two game trails crossed-one leading along the rim of the plateau and the other coming up from the brushy bottom of a canyon where elk or deer could travel under partial cover. The intersection of the trails lay in an open glade no more than 60 feet from where I sat shivering at the base of a tree, trying to convince myself that staying put was a more reliable way to see game than wandering around in the dry woods.
A stick cracked somewhere, and I was instantly alert. Another cracking noise focused my attention on a broad splotch of hide moving along the rim trail, and then a magnificent bull elk sauntered into view under the trees. I slid my rifle into position, and when the bull reached the forks of the trail, I whistled. As I knew he would, he stopped dead still, trying to locate the source of the sound.
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The shot was the easiest one imaginable. It was like shooting a hole through a tent from the inside; the body of the bull looked that big. There simply was no way to miss breaking his neck with a standing shot at that distance.
Then I had an inspiration. I was shooting my Kennon custom .308, and at 50 yards I could drive a tack with it. With the bull standing stock still in front of me, I decided to show my Wyoming partners how well a Georgia Cracker could handle his gun. I didn’t want to try a head shot that might break up the skull, so I put the crosshairs of my four-power scope in the middle of the neck just below the base of an ear and unhurriedly squeezed off a shot.
At the crack of my rifle the bull lunged a couple of feet but did not go down. I stared at the animal in complete amazement. It was inconceivable that he had not gone down.
The elk made another little jump forward, and I leaped to my feet for a second shot. The elk saw me, moved a step or two, and stopped again, regarding me with what must have been amazement as complete as my own. I was already shaking with the cold, and I am certain that to those vibrations were added the tremors of excitement. I ejected the empty hull, seated another cartridge, put my gloved finger on the trigger, and accidentally shot my rifle almost straight up into the air.
As far as I could tell, the bull did not even twitch at this second shot. He continued to stand there less than 60 feet away, probably fascinated by these strange goings-on. Hurriedly I slid back my bolt to get another shell into the chamber, but I didn’t pull the bolt back quite far enough. The empty hull and the fresh shell jammed together in the mechanism and would not budge.
I took off my gloves, dug out my pocket knife, and, despite having half a dozen or more thumbs, finally opened one of the blades. While I was working rather frantically by now-to remove the empty hull and seat another shell, the bull calmly walked off and stopped in the open woods no more than 100 yards away.
I was so completely exasperated by now that when I finally got my third cartridge into the chamber I had calmed enough to sit down with my back to a tree and prop my elbows on my knees for a solid rest. The bull was standing still, facing straight away from me, so I centered the crosshairs on that spot in the center of his tail patch and squeezed off a shot as deliberately as if I were on the rifle range back home.
At the crack of the gun the bull gave a little start, hesitated, and then trotted off through the trees. At the moment the only thing I could think of to do was to rather goofily check the remainder of my ammunition to see whether I had been shooting blanks.
I was still standing there, looking rather dazed (they said), when my two partners came up from opposite directions.
“You sounded like a Georgia dove shoot,” one of them said. “What in the world happened?”
There wasn’t time to make up a plausible story, so I had to admit the truth down to its last gruesome detail.
“I heard that last bullet hit,” he stated.
We walked over to where the bull had last stood. His hoofs had dug deep prints when he’d jumped, but otherwise there was no sign that the animal had even been startled. Nor was there any sign of blood.
“Those sights must be off,” one of the fellows suggested sympathetically.
We cut a one-inch square of bark out of a tree. I backed off 50 yards, sat down and got a solid rest, and put a bullet exactly in the center of the white square.
That episode had an unhappy ending. The next day another hunter found my magnificent bull dead just beyond the little ridge where I had taken my last shot.
In half a century of hunting I have bagged my share of gamebirds and animals, and during that time I’ve come up with what must be the worst goofups ever made by mortal man. Like the elk episode, some of those misses were totally implausible and must have involved some strange quirk in my mental or physical makeup.
Jim Gay and I were hunting one time on the Platte Ridge in southern Wyoming. This is a splendid sweep of country that falls off to the North Platte River, which flows out of the Colorado mountains. The ridge is wild upland range, generally flat on top and heavily forested, with more-open parks and ridges on the north slope, which drops off toward the river.
Jim and I have made many memorable and successful trips together. He is a noted taxidermist living in Laramie, and he enjoys himself in hunting season as a big-game guide. On this trip we were out after one of the big mule deer for which the Platte Ridge area is noted.
Early one morning Jim and I were making our way through the forest to an open slope where we had found abundant sign and some outsize tracks and where we expected to do a bit of glassing. The woods were more or less open, and we were hunting as we went, watching for movement at the limit of our vision.
Jim paused suddenly and looked back.
“What was that?” he hissed.
There was a crashing in some brush up the slope to our right, and my partner stooped to get a better look under the low-limbed trees.
“It’s an elk,” he said, “and it’s running toward … hell no, it’s a big buck! Take him!”
I saw the animal then. He was at full throttle, and he was heading straight for us. The area was rather brushy, with bushes and small trees, and from where I stood I could catch only occasional glimpses of the buck until he was about 30 steps away.
“Kill him,” Jim yelled, “before he runs over us.”
I suppose I let the buck get too close. When I threw up the rifle, all I could see through the scope was a moving brown blur that filled the glass. I had no idea what part of the anatomy I was looking at.
Missing at that range was utterly impossible, but I missed. With open sights I could have rammed the bullet home to some lethal spot; where the telescope sent it is anybody’s guess. It may have hit a piece of brush, or maybe the buck made one of his plunging jumps just as I fired.
The shot spooked him slightly off course, and he went straight for Jim, who stood a few feet beyond me. I was excited but had sense enough not to shoot in the direction of my partner. “Take him!” I yelled.
Jim was falling away from the buck’s line of flight, and his movement made the deer veer sharply. My partner threw his gun up and shot as he was falling down. Although the animal couldn’t have been more than 25 feet away, Jim apparently missed as clean as I had. The big buck vanished before we could collect our badly disarranged wits.
Unable to believe that we each had missed at such short range, Jim and I went over the ground foot by foot and tracked that mule deer for half a mile through the woods. We found no blood.
Then there was the fiasco involving a special turkey gobbler in the mountains of north Georgia that I’d been after for three full seasons. I’d seen this bird so often and talked with him so much that if we’d met on a downtown street I’m sure I could have recognized and spoken to him as an old friend. Frequently he had stood out of sight in the bushes to gobble and cluck and “putt,” and many times he had circled my blind, almost but not quite in range. While waiting in vain for a crack at this old-timer, I’d passed up smaller gobblers that came so close I could have touched them with a bream pole.
Morning after morning the old tom and I would talk together, and usually after a long conversation he’d go on about his business. I would have felt very discouraged about my inability to bring this bird close, except that none of the dozen or so other hunters on his trail seemed to be having much luck.
Only once did my succession of turkey sounds total up to what the wise old gobbler apparently thought they should be. That day, as I often did, I worked with the tom from the time he came off the roost until midmorning, when most gobblers lose interest in romance and go looking for something to eat.
I had first heard him as I sat on a point of ridge overlooking a small creek valley. Whenever I would putt or cluck or yelp, he’d answer immediately, loud and so shrill that it seemed his voice was about to crack-the sound of an old gobbler. But that seemed to be about the limit of his interest.
The tom’s voice revealed his approximate location in the valley, and I knew that if I tried to move closer his sharp eyes would spot me before I’d taken six steps. So I stayed put and yelped, and he answered from his usual place.
I even tried imitating a gobbler, holding my box call at the blunt end and working my hand as if I were playing a banjo, in order to scrape the lid back and forth across the edges of the box. From a distance this sound is a reasonable imitation of a gobble. The turkey answered each time, but with no more enthusiasm than he had shown at the hen calls.
Along about midmorning the old tom shut up. When a gobbler breaks off so suddenly and completely, it means that he either has lost interest or is on his way to investigate. Though all signs indicated that he’d decided to forget me, I took no chances. I stayed where I’d already sat for more than three hours. Every 10 or 15 minutes I’d cluck softly and hope for an answering cluck.
Another hour passed, and finally I had to admit that the morning was another failure. Intending to produce a parting obscenity, I held the call firmly and beat the lid across the top of the box with as raucous a tone as I could create. It was a most unorthodox call.
An old gobbler may at any time do the unexpected. This one answered immediately, in a weird cacophony that almost matched my call, from his position at the foot of the ridge. While I sat there surprised, wondering what move to make next, he gobbled at me again. Now he was halfway up the ridge and coming toward me at a dead run. I’m sure he had only one thought behind his caruncle — to soundly thrash this interloper into his domain.
I was well concealed, so I put my gun on my knees in a comfortable position and waited. Almost before I could get the barrel into position, the gobbler was striding toward me, his head an angry crimson, snapping invectives at me with each stride. My gunsights on his head, I sat unmoving and let him come. I wanted him so close that I could not miss.
While I sat there surprised, wondering what move to make next, he gobbled at me again. Now he was halfway up the ridge and coming toward me at a dead run.
Most turkeys can pinpoint a call with uncanny accuracy, and this one certainly could. He walked to within 15 feet of me before he stopped. He could see me but couldn’t quite make out exactly what I was. My gunsights were right on his broad head, and I knew that this time he could not get away.
I squeezed the trigger as carefully as if that one shot would have won me a championship. In the instant before my gun went off, the gobbler made one step to his right (the first thing that a turkey moves when it steps is its head; I thought about this fact later when I was reconstructing the scene).
I jumped to my feet at once, figuring to pick up this old-timer I’d fooled with for three seasons. I think he was as flabbergasted as I was. For a split second we just stood there staring at one another. Then he gave a squawk of alarm, jumped at least three feet off the ground, and was suddenly airborne like a startled quail. I stood there stupidly with the gun in my hands and watched him fly away. I didn’t even crank another shell into the chamber.
I saw my gobbler during several subsequent seasons but never again got him within range. Then he disappeared. As far as I know, he died of old age.
Once, I crawled on my belly for half a mile over a cactus flat in Wyoming to get a shot at an antelope. When we first saw the animal we figured its rack might make the record. book, and we tried all morning to get close enough for a kill.
This area, like most antelope country, was expansive open range, and this pronghorn seemed to know all the locations that gave him a commanding view of a mile or more on all sides. There seemed to be no way we could approach either by jeep or afoot.
Around noon the buck lay down on a wide open flat in slightly rolling terrain. For an hour my guide and I glassed the country around the buck and tried to figure out a plan.
“It would take a lot of doing,” the guide finally said, “but if I was willing to crawl through that cactus and rattlesnake country out there, I think I could get within rifle shot of that critter.”
“If it’s possible, I’ll sure give him a try,” I vowed. “How do I go about it?”
To our right a shallow arroyo slanted toward the flat at such an angle that by crouching low a man could walk down it to a second gulch that, with luck, might get him within a thousand yards.
“What happens then? ” I asked.
The guide grinned and said, “From that point you’re on your own.”
What amazed me during the first part of that stalk were the number and extent of the arroyos that had not been visible from the crest. Some were so deep that I could stand almost upright and rest my back. I had to guess which series of drainages would put me closer to the buck, and from time to time, at spots where I could see the top of the jeep, I put my glasses on it for any signal the guide might have wanted to give me. He later confessed that he had sprawled in the shade of the jeep and taken a nap.
The bottoms of those arroyos were regular game trails for the smaller animals. I saw a variety of tracks, and once I got a glimpse of a bobcat.
The dry washes I was following ran out, except for one that angled away from where I had last seen the buck grazing. I allowed myself a peek with the glasses over the edge of the wash. The buck had disappeared. I looked for many minutes before I saw the tips of horns above the short cover of cactus and grass. The buck had lain down for a siesta of his own at least half a mile away.
I set out on the last leg of the trip. I must have looked like an Apache sneaking up on a wagon train. Then I slid up over the rim of the arroyo and crawled on my belly. If the antelope had been standing, it probably could have seen me, but its nap gave me a chance.
As I dragged myself forward I kept a sharp eye out for rattlesnakes. I got cactus thorns in my hands, elbows, and knees, and the gnats took over my eyes and ears.
The half-mile crawl took longer than an hour. It wasn’t the most pleasant trip I ever made, but once under way I was curious to see how close I could get for a shot. From time to time I raised my eyes just high enough to see if the antelope’s horns were still there.
With cactus needles stuck in various portions of my anatomy, I felt like a pincushion. I took as careful a bead as the conditions would allow and squeezed off a shot.
When I got within 150 yards I came upon a slight problem. The vegetation here was lower and the cactus thicker, like a mosaic of carpet sections, and any movement over that strip would have been visible to the buck.
Where I stopped I could see his head, neck, and upper front shoulder. I decided to try for a neck shot. With cactus needles stuck in various portions of my anatomy, I felt like a pincushion. I took as careful a bead as the conditions would allow and squeezed off a shot.
The buck rolled over onto its side, kicking, and I jumped to my feet and sprinted those last 150 yards, proud of the stalk I had made. When I reached the buck it made what I considered a last effort to get to its feet, stood momentarily, and fell again. It lay there for half a minute, got up, staggered away a few yards, and went down, apparently in the last stages of life. The buck got up a third time, and I considered shooting it again but gave up the idea because the animal was so far gone.
Amazingly — and suddenly — the buck seemed to recover. It made a couple of staggering bounds and disappeared over a little rise that I had not noticed. I ran to the edge of the rise b put in the killing shot, but the buck was gone as if the earth had swallowed it. The next time I saw the antelope it was 300 yards away and traveling as though the bullet had never scratched it.
We hunted that buck for the rest of the day and saw it several times but never again got within range. I have no idea where my bullet hit, but it certainly was not a crippling blow. As far as I know, that animal died of old age.
My most hair-raising “miss” had its own peculiar circumstances that left me eternally grateful about the way things turned out.
Far out on the Alaska Peninsula — back when I was young enough to have only a passing acquaintance with the Alaska brown bear — I conceived the youthful notion that an interesting way to acquire a brown-bear rug was to meet one of the rug-wearers at close quarters in its own backyard.
We were in a long cove on the west shore of Ugashik Lake. A heavy band of alders and willows paralleled the beach. This dense fringe of vegetation was crisscrossed with bear trails leading to a salmon stream that flowed into the upper end of the cove.
Our guides were off with the rest of the party on another venture; I’m certain they would never have consented to this scheme of mine. I took it upon myself to go ashore and penetrate the wall of vegetation where I had found fresh bear sign, including tracks so immense that I could only stare at them in disbelief.
I worked my way through the thicket and climbed the mountainside that rose beyond it, thinking that I might be able to look down on the trails. But they were too well concealed in the blanket of vegetation, so I slid downhill again and found a deep well-padded pathway that I figured was the main trail.
The limbs were so low that I had to walk in a crouched position and occasionally go to my knees. In some places the trunks and branches were bunched so close together that I had trouble swinging the barrel of my rifle. The crowded tunnel put a strain on my neck, and I had to pause frequently, squat on my haunches, and rest.
I had stopped in a thick place to get my neck straight again when I became aware of movement to my right. I swung my rifle barrel slightly in that direction. Instinct told me to move no more until I was sure of what was behind that alder wall. Suddenly I was paralyzed — there’s no other word for it. In front of me loomed a brown mountain of fur that looked as big as the side of an elephant. I was staring at the largest brown bear I had ever seen, and it was only 20 feet away.
A cluster of leaves about the size of a bushel basket hid the bruin’s head. The bear had paused in its shuffling walk as though it knew something was wrong but couldn’t quite figure out what. I could see that spot behind the shoulder where my bullet was supposed to go, but in those close quarters I suddenly lost all interest in getting a bear rug — especially one that might be wall-to-wall.
I have no idea how long the animal stood in its tracks, but I eventually realized that I was holding my breath and that the oxygen in my lungs was about to run out. I didn’t even dare to bat an eye, and my eyeballs were beginning to sting. I remember hoping that I was downwind of the bear, something I had not thought to check.
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After an interminable period the bear moved, and a moment later he vanished. I waited for at least two minutes, while the short hairs on the back of my neck stood on edge, before I decided to back out of that alder clump and make my way cautiously to the beach. I was as alert during that hike — and as grateful when I finally stepped into the clear — as I had ever been in my life.
Though I didn’t actually pull the trigger, that confrontation was certainly one of the greatest and most satisfactory misses I have ever made.
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