What is the closest shot you ever made with a rifle?

With a firearm, probably about 15 yards while dove hunting.

With a pellet rifle, about 8 feet at a possum through a gun port. I mean a cat door.

Closest....about 12 inches to a mouse...not a rifle but a shot gun and a funny story....

We live in the country, our house is in the middle of what was once a cow pasture. We get mice in the house, no way around it. Well I had a glue trap out and a mouse got stuck.....If you have ever had this happen you know the little suckers just scream and scream till they wear out and die....well this was the wee hours of the morning and the wife and I are in bed trying to sleep...and she hears the squeaking....she tells me to do something...me being the devoted husband that I am try to pretend to be asleep....she keeps at it....finally I tell her it will be quiet in a few minutes after it dies....she tells me that is terrible and to do something about it...that requires me getting up I say, and that it will be dead soon....but not soon enough. Mouse is still squeaking, and the wife is getting insistent....ok I say I will get up and smack it on the head with a hammer.....oh that is so mean....you can't do that....ok whatever....so I get up, grab shotgun, grab mouse stuck to trap...go outside, put mouse on ground and blammo....no more mouse....not sure where he went, but he is gone, and I go back to bed.

One pre dawn morning in 1993 I was crossing a small stream on the way to my tree stand on the opening day of Nebraska's firearm deer season when my right foot slipped from the make shift bridge I had made pre season . I went knee deep into the water soaking both boot and socks in the just above freezing temp. I may have uttered a bad word or 3 in the stillness. Once across and to my stand I shared one dry sock off my left foot with my right foot, left my soaked socks and boot at the bottom of the ladder and went on up. Less than 5 minutes later a buck with an average rack but nice body ambled right next to my tree and stopped about 4 yards from the muzzle of my Marlin 1894 .44 mag . He went down on the spot my tag filled and season over. I still call him my Devine Intervention buck , God being very merciful that morning to a clumsy fool who would have been forced down off his stand pretty soon to a bootless and chilling foot and me not having to spend any additional time in that wet boot after I climbed tracking him.

I turn around and there's a nice buck about 25' away, looking right at me. I pivot my body around and he's still looking at me. I thumb the hammer back on my .308 Browning BLR lever action, and pull the trigger. A combination of cold gun grease and a hard military primer results in...... click, nothing. He's still looking at me!

I pull the hammer back again, and this time it fires. Darwinism at it's finest.

Deer hunting in Michigan.
Not sure how far just imagine how far you can throw an orange peel from your stand.
She was trying to est it. Hit her with the 270 just behind the shoulder. A 270 at point blank range really can tear up a dear.

less than 5 feet with a model 94 30-30 at a boar in heavy brush.

Not me. My brother in law. Deer hunting. He laid down in a honeysuckle patch...on his back. Rested his head on his day pack. Knees up and holding his S&W mod 29. He was three feet from a trail. Said he could smell burned hair from the muzzle blast. The deer didn't go three steps.

He would try anything.

Mark

closest shot.

I was hunting "On Stand" (Actually sitting on a rock) in Northeastern California. I was looking mostly down at the valley below me and had been there for over 3 hours. A Muley buck stepped out from the sagebrush about 12 yards away. We looked at each other for a moment while I turned my scope down as far as it would go, then I quickly brought my rifle up and put a bullet through his heart. Clean, quick kill.

I was turkey hunting near a creek and had seen some hogs out in a clearing. I decided to try and get close enough to them to take a shot with my 12 ga. I was walking along in the creek bed when something moved next to me. It was a pig about 6 feet away eating in the briars. I put a bead on him and shot, the recoil moving him from my sight picture. When I came back down he was gone! Turns out when I shot he jumped into the briars three feet off the ground and died. Had a nice hole in him that came out the other side going right through his heart. I was using 3-1/2" magnum #4 shot

This goes back a few years when I was a teenager out hunting small game. I had a Boito dbl barrel 12 ga and I was sitting under a big tree on a nice fall day. Anyways a big old squirrel fell out of that tree and landed about 10 feet from me. On instinct I pointed and fired and obliterated him. Scared the crap out of me and well did worse to him. Lol

Squirrel, 2 yards.

My story

Was the summer of 1980 or 81 we both worked nights, wife call me said she was sick come get her, we got home about 10:00 PM. She herd a noise out side ( I did not ) looked out the door and there was a skunk trying to get a baby rabbit that I rescued from some dogs a week earlier in a home made cage I built on the ground.

The only thing I owned was 7 MM mag with scope. Well it was dark couldn't see threw the scope so it took 4 shots to hit the skunk. Fur went everywhere (Pouf) shots were fired from the front door to the skunk was maybe 30 ft

Lights started coming on at neighbors houses, father in law called from there farm house ¼ mile away, waked every one up close by. The next day he brought down a 22 for me to use.

Turned out the skunk was rabid and I had to kill my cotton tail rabbit I was hopping to raise.

Good thing she heard the skunk I didn't and the rabbit could have gotten infected and we would have been in danger of rabies from handling the cute little guy.