I think Merlin has learned his lesson here so no sense beating a dead horse.

Not to say that some of killers concerns arent valid, but I cant say I have ever heard someone b!tch so much about a miss, assuming anyway that it was a miss.

A similarsituation happened to me when I was young. Not shooting a gun first is a bad idea. But I'll share my story soMerlin wont be the only one on the chopping block. My second year out, one of my dads guns was not working so we had to borrow one. I was a bit unsettled about taking a gun into the woods I hadnt shot but at the time my folks were poor and my dad litteraly told me not to practice shoot it because he could not afford to buy a box of shells (had 4 shots in the clip was all), and I always hit the same as my did with his gun. I hitthe buckpoorly but wont go into into the details for fear of people like Killer attacking me, butto the day I dont know if the gun was off for me or if it was since I took a free arm shot at a bit over 100 yards. We recovered the deer the next morning, after a third attempt of following the blood trail, so the deer was not lost.When I was 17 I was very gunho about hunting, and felt bad if I missed one day of not beign in the woods. It was only my second buck, and the biggest one I had shot in NY to the date, which probably influenced my decision to shoot. If it was today, I would have been sitting on the sofa that day for sure, until I could get time to get shells and shoot it, and since I usually dont have a lack of food. But back then it was "you cant put meat in the freezer if you dont pull the trigger" (although my dad tought me well when not to shoot - to the point he thought I was passing up too many shots)but whenI was young and had a nice buck infront of meI didnt always remember all the reasons not too shoot.

I am wiser now but even good hunters can have bad things happen. One other quick story. Cheapie 50 cal muzzleloader, shot at big buck at about 50 yards running full steam. I figured I had the lead on it right and touched off. This also ties into this post since I could not find any blood in the area I shot it. Since it was on snow I was able to track the deer, and picked up blood starting around 50 or 60 yards away atleast. And since it was on snow we could track it really well. To make a long story short we tracked it well over a mile before we couldnt track it any more. I lost this one and I will never forget. But who is to blame? I later shot the gun on paper and was getting terrible patterns. I did shoot this gun alot prior to the season and had a good 100yd grouping. I do not know what happened but the last it was shot the week before was hitting good. I later ended up ditching the cheap gun and buying a quality inline that I could not afford when I was on a college student budget and bought the $99.99 CVA. You cant always chock a miss or bad shot up to being poor skills. Not saying that ol Merlin wasnt responsible at all for his wifes problem, but some of the comments later mentioned seemed like if you have ever missed then your a terrible hunter that should be banned from the woods.

The truth is there are some who may actually never miss, but that is pretty darn rare and more luck than anything. Gun and equipment failure can happen to anyone. Heck a bird could fly across your path the instant you pull the trigger. There could be a localised burstof wind out there at 100 yards that isnt apperant to you, or a bee stinging you as you pull the trigger. Strange thingscan and havehappened.Anyone here can claim they have never missed and they might be true... regardless I dont ever beleive things like that since you can say whatever you want online. I could make such claims, backed up with all sorts of stuff like a phony picture of a ton of trophies for marksmanship, blah blah, or even impersonate some olympic shooter. Just take some folks claims here with a grain of salt.