Oh, Art. You already get the "aim small, miss small" thing. You said the same thing earlier in the thread, just in different words when you said that you aim at a spot on a deer, instead of at a deer. Even if you don't hit exactly where you mean to, when you're aiming at a specific spot on the animal, you'll hit within a small distance of it and have a similar effect. If you aim at the whole side of the animal, you may miss it entirely, or administer a lingering, not effective wound.
I have shot one deer with my muzzleloader. I shot it twice. Shot at it a third time. Each shot was separated by over an hour of tracking. I did not recover that deer. It was over ten years ago, and I can still tell you every moment of that day, especially how sick I felt watching it limp over and hop the fence between the farm I had permission to hunt and the Indian reservation I could not trespass onto without being arrested and having my weapon confiscated. She lay down in a grove of trees a couple hundred yards past the fence.
.50 caliber, 420 grain solid lead bullet. First shot, I aimed at the white spot on its throat. The animal was standing still, staring at me. I was in a solid position, less than 80 yards away, and that bullet should have killed that deer. I found a scrap of skin that looked like the bullet hit a high spot on the side of the animal and tunneled off a 3 inch long, .5 inch wide strip from her hide.
Drips and drabs of blood, hoof prints, and lots of tracking. I finally lost the trail and started casting wider for it, and found it standing on the edge of an alfalfa field, feeding. There was a blood spot on its shoulder -- I looked it over through my binoculars for about ten minutes and decided that had to be where I'd hit it. I was very upset, but calmed down, sneaked closer and farther south to be clear of some brush that was screening her chest, and sat down in a solid position. Broadside this time, again well under 100 yards away (which was my personal distance limit) and I aimed right behind her shoulder, 1/3 up from the bottom of her chest. I heard the bullet smack her side, she hunched up and ran the direction she was facing like a linebacker. I found hair and muscle flesh where she was standing. I cast around in the area, and found a thick, dry branch sticking out from the brush. It was broken, and there was a bullet burn mark at the break.
Now there was a steady blood trail -- 1 or 3 small drops every six to twelve feet or so. Some was on the ground, some hidden in the grass. More if she paused. She went into a creek bed and the trail was harder there. I resorted to stabbing twigs into the ground next to each blood spot, so that when I would have trouble finding one, I could back up, look at the line she'd been traveling, and figure out where the next spot should be, and then start looking in an arc in that area.
Finally came across her, nearly two hours after the second shot, bedded down in some grass and brush. She surprised me -- she jumped up and ran out of the creek bed before I recovered from my surprise.
She stopped and looked behind her halfway across another alfalfa field. I ran out into the field and rested my rifle across the pipe of a wheeled field sprinkler that was between us (didn't want to hit it, was why I didn't just shoot her from the bank of the creek). She was well over 100 yards away, tail on to me, and I just clean missed that time.
And then she limped over to that fence while I tried to speed-load my muzzleloader. Wasn't even a contest in that race -- she won, but I'm sure that she eventually became coyote meat in that grove of trees. I about threw up.
I went back and looked at where she'd bedded down, and there was a lot of blood.
That was the last time I hunted deer with my muzzleloader. I may again someday, but every time I think about hunting with it, I get sick to my stomach. I don't want to wound and lose another animal.
