MICANOPY: I suspect experiences vary depending on what part of the country you hunt. I have seen far too many deer killed during the gun season brought into the deer check station with broadhead wounds festering in legs, and shoulders to question Roundballs statement. We can't use buckshot here, so I won't comment. I did get a box of 00 buck and used them up on the pattern board, to see what was possible, and then fired the rest of the box off into a deadfall tree that was blocking the river,and eroding our bank. Knocked off some bark, but otherwise did little damage to the trunk. I was not impressed with the penetration. I am sure it works on humans, and on game at extremely close ranges. I have hunted some areas where deer were taken at 10 feet and less simply because you could not see any further, so I understand the kind of hunting conditions where using buckshot is warranted. However, the deer I saw taken in that thick stuff died quite nicely with a single shotgun slug to the lungs. When I was a kid, it was still legal to use buckshot to shoot red fox, because there were bounties paid for their ears. When the state repealed the bounty laws, and put the fox in the protected species category, buckshot was soon outlawed for use in taking any game, other than unprotected species like Coyote. Now, Illinois has clouded that issue by making a coyote a fur bearing animal, controlled by its trapping regulations. Buckshot apparently is for shooting people, only. We regularly warn Hunter Safety students to check over the entire deer carcass before gutting the deer, to avoid being serious cut on any broadhead that might be in the body cavity. And, you are correct about too many poor shots resulting in broken or amputated legs, and other crippling injuries. Those kinds of bad shots are factored into the kill quotas by the States when setting season, tho'. All we can do is encourage hunters to practice shooting, and to know their limitations and stay within them when they hunt. Accidents will happen. A ball can be turned by an unseen twig or branch, causing a bad wound, when it would have been a good killing shot otherwise. Those are the rough ones. I think you can not say you are a hunter until one of those kinds of shots happens to you. You try to follow up and find the animal, but weather can close in, as well as daylight ending, that terminates any reasonable chance of finding the wounded animal until the next day or so. I have helped hunters track down deer they have shot and lost, and they are always upset when I first meet them, and thrilled when we find that deer. Good hunters accept that responsibility, and those feelings are to be expected. Its the slob hunter who never follows up anything he shoots at, even to see if he did hit it.
I had a friend who was hunting on one farm when a deer staggered up a game trail towards him with an arrow in it. He killed it with a chest shot at about 15 feet. Then he tracked it back to where it had been shot on the neighbor property. He looked up and saw a guy sitting in a tree stand, who had not bothered to say anything to him as he approached or even complained that he was in his hunting area. My friend aske him if he shot a deer about 15 mintes ago, and the guy admitted he had sot at a deer, but " didn't think he had hit it because it ran off!" My friend made the guy get down, and come over to the kill site, and put HIS tag on the deer. Then they got his truck, and my friend helped him gun and load the deer on the back of the truck. My friend was furious. In conversation, the guy indicated he just planned to sit there shooting at deer, until one of them fell down in front of him! That is the kind of hunter that we can all do without.
