Misses

[dejake]

I've seen quite a few posts of folks saying they "missed."  Unless a bird is extremely close, my opinion is that the majority of misses are actually hits.  Curious as to how many "misses" actually end up dead from being wounded.  Opinions?

[chadly]

A miss can be a miss.  With tight shooting patterns and close shots I can see people missing as you said.  As far as misses and actual birds getting hit I'm sure that happens too.  Two years ago my son shot a bird at 30 yards.  It immediately took flight.  Looked to be a clean miss.  We watched the bird land about 200 yards away.  I could not see how he could have missed.  I was unsure of what to do as other birds were still vocal in the area.  I wanted to look for the bird but I thought it was best to wait a while.  We sat for about another 90 minutes.  Went out to look and sure enough a bunch of feathers were at the place of shot.  We then went to where we saw the bird land.  And there the bird laid. 

[Happy]

Most misses are not complete misses. Unless the birds body is obstructed by a large obstacle such as a log or tree trunk.

[stinkpickle]

I don't know.  But based on the previous, healed over injuries I've found on turkeys over the years, some appear to survive such "misses" fairly well.

[zelmo1]

All true statements  according to my experience. Several birds I have shot have had healed over injuries that I believe were pellets from the previous year. 2 years ago I shot a bird on the last day at a spot my partner missed one on the second day of the season. It had gangrenous oozings on its back, but acted normal. I suspect it was the same bird. 

[g8rvet]

My first spring bird had been shot with a rifle right through the breast.  Nasty!  Green and stunk to high heaven. No telling how long, the bird appeared normal, was normal weight and still wanting to breed.  I think he would have lived (if not for the load of #5s at 25 steps). 

[MK M GOBL]

Have seen what I would say are misses, some due to not being on the gun stock right and the shoot high... I had a miss with a young man this past weekend, we were videoing the hunt and could see he had shot way low, he also had the shotgun "wrong" on his shoulder, his bicep hurt after the shot. He had the butt plate on his arm... We watched 2 toms work into us in a field and down a "field road" that was on crest of hill, he shot at 31 yards and bird should have been dead, after we reviewed video we could see it. The next day we were set in the same spot and almost on cue the 2 toms came back out from same area that I had been scouting them from, came down the field road again and this time I had him wait until I said to squeeze the trigger and killed him at 14 yards!! We determined it was the same bird as in video as he had triple beards as the vid bird did.

I'm sure they don't all go like this and there are losses due some "poor" shots taken, hate to say part of turkey hunting and one of my things to killing them close

MK M GOBL

[dejake]

That's a great story, glad he got him day 2.

[dutch@fx4]

If hit you will find feathers. Always watch were Thy run or fly and spend some time looking if you find any feathers or blood

[maddog3355]

I've seen several misses and I've missed several times through the years. Don't get your head down on that stock and you will shoot over the bird every time. If everyone had a sight on their shotgun there would be a lot less turkeys in the world.

[Gobble!]

On some misses the bird probably takes a couple pellets but I think it takes a lot to kill a bird. At the same time, 1 pellet at the right spot will kill him.

[hotspur]

Sit an old turkey years ago with copper plated shot, when I cleaned him his breast had black lead 5s just under skin on his breast, shot a stinky Texas bird one time with an arrow through his breast, both birds gobbed and struted like normal

[briton]

Shot a bird this morning on public land with #9, while cleaning him I found a large lead pellet against the breast bone that divides the two breast and no injuries or holes in the area of the pellet. Apparently he had been peppered up last yr by someone. There is two number 9 beside what looks like a number 4 lead pellet

[silvestris]

The few "misses" I had, I considered bad hits unless I later laid my eyes on him and could discern no obivious harm.

[howl]

Yeah, they'll get sprayed. Its not uncommon to find multiple sizes of shot in a bird. It's going to get worse now that people think they can kill a turkey at 80 yards with a pattern that drops out of the kill zone at that distance.