<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Iowabowtech</div><div class="ubbcode-body">By and large I consider shotgun season to be amateur week. I realize it's a somewhat unfair blanket statement cause there's some good guys out there for the right reasons but there's a ton of once a year guys that don't have the respect for other hunters, the game they're hunting and the land they're on.</div></div>
I strongly agree..
On Saturday morning, a buddy and I went patrolling down south on some properties that he hunts and saw quite a bit of orange. We managed to catch up with one group as they were sitting outside their "camp" and walked up to them to see if they had shot anything. To say they were amateurs would be an overstatement - these guys had no clue.
This group had shot one huge buck that would have easily went over 160 as a ten pointer. Which they claimed was also only a 2 year old by showing us the bottom front teeth on this buck.
We then began to ask all the routine questions about it.
"Whoa who shot this?" as I pointed to a shot that landed right on the shoulder. One of their smarter more appropriately dressed hunters answered, "Well, I made that shot."
A perfect quartering to shot that punched right through the front section blew out lungs, liver, and exited through the guts. The deer only went 30 yards after he had hit it /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cool.gif. But this is when my buddy and I almost threw up.
Another kid (seemed a little inbred if you asked me) said, "Yeah but 2 bad. He dont getta claim that der buck cuz my pal hit him first and in our group da rules alwaze been first woondin shot gets da deers. Its been dat way for thirdy sum years and thats da way it has bun and always will be. Too bad all we had to trak was da fecal madder. There was a lot of fecal madder comin from him."
O my god.
"Oh really? Where did your buddy hit him at exactly?"
He pulls the deer over and shows my buddy and I a scratch on its leg, right between the dew claws and the hoof. The hit was so questionable as to if it was even caused by a slug!! There was no blood coming from it (or fecal matter /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/confused.gif) and it was hardly noticeable. A flesh wound, if that. The hunter who had put the VITAL shot on the deer was absolutely depressed
. We had some special words for him.
"Call the CO! He will make it right!!"
He said he couldn't though since he knew if he did that he would never be able to hunt on these guys' property ever again.
"Who cares! Find something else to bowhunt!"
That made our stomachs hurt damn near the whole day. The saddest part of the story is the hunter who really did KILL that deer had thousands of trail camera photos of it during the summer. He was the only one who bow hunted, scouted, and ran trail cameras on that property and now his buck was going to ride home in the back some guy's pickup that didn't even have a clue about deer hunting. Its sad to think that buck is in his hands only because he scraped its foot!?!?! It pissed me off!
The only thing I know though, is if I had made that shot on that buck it wouldn't have been going anywhere accept on MY wall. Sorry to that unfortunate hunter and to that buck for more than likely going to the back of someone's garage to collect dust. I have a picture of it on my phone and he also showed us a bunch of the trail photos of it but I don't think I am going to post it. Lets just say - it was BIG.
I'm not blaming it on every shotgunner in Iowa, because I KNOW that most every other group would have had enough common sense to realize what is right in this situation. But ethics wise, unquestionably, this case was insane.
