John B,

You help me prove my point better than I can do myself.

You, in one paragraph, blame yourself for a poor shot on an animal by placing the round in a spot where it is totally inadequate as far as penetration.

Then, in the next paragraph, you blame your weapon for being underpowered???

So if we are going to compare arguements to arguments, like you did about comparing stands or scent control to long shots, I guess we can compare this scenario to " People don' t kill people, Guns kill people" .

I am sure it was totally your weapons fault that you pulled the trigger after placing the crosshairs on the wrong point of entry.

This sounds like an example of " A poor workman blames his tools."

Am I saying that a 300 yard shot is too far?? It must have been for this case, because a poor decision was made before thought, and the trigger was pulled, wounding an animal.

What if you would not have caught up with this animal???
Was it in a pen, where you were certain to catch up to it?
What if you tried this shot on that same animal at 800 yards??
Would you have even attempted to catch up to it at all??
How many times has this gone on in the name of production of a show?? It must have gone on some, this is by your own admittance.
Every response or scenario you put in your threads, makes me have more and more doubts about the type of hunter you are.

Why were you carrying a rifle of his caliber during an elk hunt??
I know this weapon can kill very large game, but what if you had shot it with your larger caliber weapon?? I am sure it would have penetrated the shoulder, and put down the animal. So, is your reasoning just to take a weapon small enough to harvest a coyote(good eating there?) and not to tear up the hide?? Or were you concerned about that at all?? If you weren' t concerned, why not take a rifle that would do adequate damage to both, where the shot placement (shoulder)was the same?

It is situations like these that proves my point to where there is too much human error that is not factored in when taking these shots. This wasn' t a " long ranger" by your standards, but it proves my point that that same shot attempt at the yardage in question, is greatly increased.

When you say " to each his own" or " it' s a personal thing what you get out of your hunt" , I hope you got a great thrill in some of those misplaced shots you said you have on film, but won' t show on your program to show the results of bad shots to everyone.

Don' t want to make the spon$or$ upset, now do we.........