As I stated on another post, not one hunter out of ten can hit a deer at 300 yards with any consistancy. A deer is a pretty small target at 300 yards and very little error in range estimating or the slightest wiggle will cause a miss by yards at that range. Most hunters can connect at 200 yards most of the time on a still target with a good rest. I would be suprised much more if the average hunter could hit a deer at 300 yards than if they couldn't. This is just the plain hard fact.
I'd be suprised if the average hunter could hit a deer in the vitals at 200 yards more often than not. Working at hunter sight in clinics over the years, I get pretty darn excited when I see a guy shoot 3 shots into less than 2" at 100yardseven using a big pile of sandbags, a solid bench, and telescopic sights. Most of whom I see fire 1 shot, I mark it on the target, fire another shot, it goes 6" away from the first, I start thinking "ok, so he may have had a little oil in the barrel from cleaning it last time" (of course I just made the mistaken assumption that the guy ever cleaned his rifle at all, fires a third shot, which goes 3-4" from the second shot. The guy then asks me on where I should adjust his scope to. I usually sigh a little, and say, lets let it cool off for 5 minutes, in which time I coach him a little. He starts shooting again, by now he's starting to affected by recoil, (This is even worse when you have a novice who wants to buy shooting range by bringing his newly purchased 300 magnum from Walmart) but might be taking his time with his shots and is now shooting 4" groups that are almost workable for adjusting the scope. Invariably I'm asked "I'll be shooting across a picked cornfield, how high should it be sighted in at 100 yards to take shots out to 400?"
If the above example isn't discouraging enough especially after seeing it happen over and over and over again, I'm reminded by the fact that these guys at least attempted to sight in their rifle before deer season, and if not anything else, fire it a few times, I personally know a lot more hunters who never fire their rifles before the season let alone sight them in.
Another interesting bit- women who show up at these events are ALWAYS in the top 1% of the group as far as shooting ability goes, even the teenage girls seem to very well- they probably most likely come from families that have a strong firearms background. I'm not sure why this is, but my best guess is that the few women that hunt take it very seriously and are probably avid shooters besides, and aren't going to hunting camp to drink booze, play poker, and visit strip joints.