Missing your shot is a painful, yet inevitable event every seasoned hunter has experienced at least once since their first time in the woods. It's a downright soul-crushing feeling to know you had an opportunity that you couldn't seize, and yet we all find a way to pick ourselves back up and embrace the challenge all over again. Perhaps it's in the name, as hunting and killing will never be completely synonymous, and that truth that lives within our self-conscious keeps us grounded enough to swallow our pride and try again.
While there's never a guarantee that any one hunter can fill his or her freezer throughout the course of hunting season, few of us will ever be as certain of that reality as the poor guy you're about to meet in the following video. Here we see a deer drive that had the potential of working to absolute perfection, as a young buck makes a beeline directly toward the hunter's position. However, the events that follow are as embarrassing as they are shocking, and all we can hope is that he brushed himself off and stayed true to the essence of hunting.
Watch the video below:
"Sometimes things work out for you, sometimes they don't."
That's the honest truth about this scenario, but we have to imagine it still stings a lot. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a deer in that close to me. To see him coming and to be ready for the shot only to totally blow it? And then to have such a missed opportunity on video? He's a brave man for uploading this to the Internet to share with others. We're sure his buddies are still ribbing him for it.
If you hunt long enough, this sort of thing is bound to happen. Back in 2003, I had a nice 8-point offer a perfect shot at 30 yards broadside. My first shot with my shotgun missed, but the buck did not flee. So, I shot again. After that, the buck just calmly walked away. I hadn't even touched a hair on his body.
I remember going home and shooting the gun again on target to check my scope. Everything was fine, my sights didn't get bumped. To this day, I have no explanation for what happened on that hunt. Like we saw here, there is no explanation. I ended up shooting a larger buck a week later, so that sting went away quickly, but that week between the miss and the buck I killed was a painful one for sure.
Well, he can look on the bright side. At least it was just a young buck and not the deer of a lifetime. Misses are a good learning experience and we're betting he was better prepared the next time he went afield.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
