I have always had a rule that I never take a shot at a running deer (I hunt with a rifle - if I hunted shotgun I might have a different opinion). I' m a very good shot, but I just don' t want to take a chance on wounding one.

The worst kill I ever made was a deer on a very slow walk at about 200 yards. This is a distance I am comfortable with and have made more than one clean kill from that far at standing deer. This was a nice 4 pointer and I took what I thought was a well aimed shot and he went down like a ton of bricks, but it turned out I had clipped both his rear legs. I waited a few minutes as usual before moving over to the deer at which point he tried to to crawl away and I had to finish him off. I felt pretty bad that he had to suffer for several minutes with a non-lethal wound.

And this was a very, very slow moving deer - just barely creeping forward and I missed my aim point by a good two and a half feet.

I won' t say I' ll only shoot at completely stationary deer from this point on, but I learned my lesson about shooting that far out at a deer moving at all. I like my game to be dead when I get to it.