Wounding losses

Please learn about and practice range (distance) estimation. See earlier post about this, please. Do not shoot at game animals out of range. Simple as that. Wounding losses grow due to poor decisions from out of range shots. The lethality of your shots drops at increasing distance from the muzzle. When you are uncertain, do not shoot. Just that simple. Please learn about internal, external, and terminal ballistics. Read, study, ask questions of knowledgeable persons. Practice on inanimate objects, like clay pigeons, paper targets, and similar items. When practicing in a safe location, this is the time to learn from your mistakes and errors. Do not practice on live game animals, please. I heard yesterday (12/15/2021) a neighbor he had taken a new hunter out, using her father’s hunting rifle. She had never shot that rifle before. Nearing dusk, a small but shootable whitetail buck walked out within a reasonable range, so neighbor promoted her shooting it. Several opportunities to make much better decisions were offered, most of which would have promoted a more pleasant outcome. The deer left, hunters then walked looking for the dead or wounded animal. No credible indication was seen, so it is presumed she missed the animal completely. I do not know details of this series of events, but I am certain a great number of unfortunate choices were made including multiple people. Of course, she may well have completely missed the animal. Sure, that is one of the possibilities. I shutter to think it was simply wounded and will die a slow painful death and feed coyotes and other critters in the woods. I am not an expert shot nor expert professional hunter, however I do spend time at a rifle range practicing with different firearms in preparation for hunting trips. Ammunition and reloading components are both difficult to purchase and quite costly so I fully understand the hesitance to conserve those resources, and minimize the expense of practice. Please understand I fully and passionately support blood sports, and hooks, pellets, and bullets are some of my very favorite things. I do support the ethical and moral taking of game animals, but not the useless wounding losses suffered by oh-so-many afield. I recently watched some YouTube waterfowl videos, and in each and every single one, the people shooting would choose to take unethical shots. In each video, wounded birds flew away, not to be recovered by those slob hunters. It sickens me seeing this behavior demonstrated time and time again, then published on-line for the broad public display of slob and moron. One more painful fact is many uninformed do not know this is horribly wrong, so they go afield with the same actions and results. Be ethical, please choose to do the correct thing when afield. Thanks, I appreciate you reading and considering this.