Jimmy, I agree with you. I won't take someone elses deer if they made a good shot and I happened to finish it. As a matter of fact I did finish a deer once that was hit in the heart, but stopped in front of me....I didn't see it was hit....I dropped it with a neck shot. That young man trailed his deer with his dad and arrived about 5 minutes after I had gotten to the deer. After seeing the blood trail and inspecting the wounds I new that deer was dead before I shot. When they got there I congratulated him on his first buck and went on my way out the ridge. The look of gratitude on his dad's face was evident and all three of us were happy.

All that said, ethics are a big part of hunting and unfortunately in this great state of PA we have many guys that take to the woods with no ethics at all![:@] I had my first buck taken from me by none other than my uncle. It was a spike that I put a shot through the lungs....it stopped 50 yards after the shot then a barage of fire followed. I picked up the blood from were I hit him and followed to my unlce standing over that deer. I was 13 he was 47 and put one round in the deer after it had fallen to 'finish it' as it was still breathing. I was devasted that my own uncle would do that to a kid, but looking back it made me stronger....that and knowing it was only the second deer he had ever shot in 35 years of hunting. I've since killed seven bucks and countless doe in my measly 12 years hunting. The first story only happend about 3 years ago, and I was happier than all get out to see that kid take his first deer with a great shot.


It does no good to the sport to be like that, but many guys don't give a rip about anyone else as long as they got their buck. I've killed some good ones and some scrubs, but I refuse to stoop so low as to take a great memory away form someone only because of my own greed....that little incident of mine may have burned that into me. My uncle has never killed another deer and has given up hunting since.