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My story...
Posted by Michael Strahan on Oct 25 2005
Hoyt,
Thanks for opening this thread. I agree; it's something we rarely talk about, but it's an important topic I think.
Besides birds (I've shot lots of holes in the sky and rarely has a bird been in one of them at the same moment as my shot string), I can think of only two times when I was involved with wounded game that escaped. The first time was many years ago in northeastern Oregon (the Eagle Cap Wilderness area) when my wife shot a mule deer with a scope-mounted 30-30. The deer fell and in his "death throes", slid down a trail over the brow of a hill. We waited about fifteen minutes before following up and when we got there the deer was gone. We tracked it a mile or so; it had been hit somewhere in a lung. We never found it.
The second time involved a black bear here in Alaska. My hunter shot it at about 100 yards and it rolled downhill into some thick alders. It was hard-hit (I heard the bullet smack him) but we waited about fifteen minutes or so. I ended up crawling through the alders on my hands and knees for hours looking for that bear. I think we looked for four hours that day (until dark) and another six hours the next before we finally gave up. The blood trail was literally isolated flecks of blood the size of a pin head. It made us sick to quit, but we weren't going to find the bear. Two days later the same hunter shot a caribou and I figured out what happened to the bear. The hunter was using ballistic tip bullets and the projectile nearly disentegrated on impact. I think the injury to the bear was superficial. Well, I hope so. Regrettably there was no time for a follow-up shot. That was the last time I had ballistic tipped bullets in camp. I just can't afford to take chances like that.
So... it happens, despite your best intentions. I agree with the others that you did the right thing. This probably affects you the same way it does me. If it makes you more careful, you've learned a lesson of great value that will make you a better hunter. You said that this particular animal had outsmarted you for three years. You will miss that, and you'll keep looking for him on other hunts in hopes that he's still out there. I hope he is too.
Best regards,
-Mike
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