How many air-balls?
 

Just curious.. how many complete clean misses have you had with archery gear on bucks?

For me, 2

Two dandy bucks that still haunt me a bit. The first was on a beauty of 5x5 when I was in college. Missed him clean, shot right under him while bowhunting out of a man madeground blind. The second was operator error a couple years ago on my part on yet another dandy 5x5 mid 140s low 150's.. the old grunt tube hang up/caught my bow stringout of a ground blind.Oh I have one clean miss on an elk too. Shot right under him on a steep slope.. 5x5

How about you guys? Any air-balls you wish you could have back or one more chance at?

RE: How many air-balls?
 

i have yet to miss a buck but numerous does have had my arrow wiz by, i remember when i was 9 i shot all 5 arrows in one morning and still hadnt hit one!

RE: How many air-balls?
 

Maybe you should stop shooting at 5X5's they seem to be bad luck for you..

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RE: How many air-balls?
 

I dont know I have about a dozen of them hanging in my house..

RE: How many air-balls?
 

Just one whiff on a buck. Guessed him for 40... shot perfect for 40... he stood at 31...

I couldn't even begin to tell you how many does I've missed... dozen maybe... but hell I've killed over 40 or so. My percentage is pretty good. I've never had an arrow enter the body cavity of a deer and not recovered it... that I'm proud of.

RE: How many air-balls?
 

zero thus far...knock on wood....first ever shot was a mistake...alert deer dropped to run..i would liked to miss him. he took it high and was never found...im still betting he survived..atleast from my arrow.

other was a quick clean kill...how i hope they all happen

RE: How many air-balls?
 

Oh god. Dozens. Dozens and Dozens.

When we first started hunting, we were using freebie arrows that we dug up behind the targets at a local sportsmens club over the summer. Nothing matched. We bummed rusty old used broadheads from anyone we knew who had a bow. So, we stuffed our quivers with whatever we could come up with and went hunting.

We had junk bows, junk arrows, junk broadheads - and we made due.

We had no clue about stand placement, shot selection, ethics, bloodhounding, shot placement, etc... We just hunted. Willy Nilly.

13, 14 years old - out there with no adult supervision - 100% self-taught. See,my parents weren't exactly "thrilled" that I was running around the woodslike a wild redneck (instead of studying), so they weren't exactly thrilled about supporting my bowhunting habit, from a financial perspective. I had a couple grass-cutting jobs, (which helped), but I spent the dough on girls and the remainder onbowhunting gear. There was no free lunch for this guy. In PA you're supposed to be "supervised." I was supervised allright - supervised walking out the door, and supervised when I walked back in.

Young and stupid. We're lucky we didn't kill ourselves.

Honest to god, there were years where IknowI'd bust up 20+ junker arrows over the course of a season, just to kill 2 measly deer. As honest as I'm sitting here - if I could see the deer, I was shooting at it. I didn't care if it was 120 yards away.

I don't know if I'm the only kid who hunted that way... Or if I'm just the only one willing to admit it.... But that's what we did, and how we went about it. Just learning on the fly and driven by the sheer desire to show the world that we could do it. And in all honesty, I had a lot more fun hunting then than I do now. Now, I'm only happy when I succeed. Then, I was happy just to be trying.

RE: How many air-balls?
 

Missed the same buck....twice. He was about the 4th buck to come thru on a hot doe, the first three flew by w/o offering a shot. Missed this guy both times as he walked in front of me - both were in front of him. After I retreived my arrows I noticed my site was knocked off about 2 notches from where it should have been set. Must have bumped it as I raised it up to my stand that morning.

RE: How many air-balls?
 

Carry on sir....