Ethics

[shoot-n-lead]

Ethics: rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good and bad

Have we lost sight of ethics as it pertains to humane (high percentage quick kill) shots that we take on game animals?

Seems like this may be taking the same road as ethics in all other aspects of our lives.

I, for one, have passed on MANY shots because there was not the opportunity to put the shot in the VITALS of a deer. I have never considered the gut, to be the vital area of a deer. Also, I have never regretted letting an animal walk, due to this practice.

[gideons301]

I also worry about ethical questions, like, Am I sure of a backstop. I have passed on many shots that were skylined or in line with a road and no dirt bank to stop a projectile. I have seen numerous other hunters take shots that I would have passed on or at least waited to see if the animal moved to a better spot.

[Prodigal Son]

I see some have started their own thread about my shot! The PC police have got on this forum too! I have passed many shots if I thought I would wound a deer! Taking a shot you might not take is not unethical, how many ethnical shot do some take and their marksmanship sucks so bad that's unethical! I fortunately can came make a shot most won't take! I shot my deer right where I wanted and died within 10 yards! How many deer with a good heart shot run a hundred yards? Hunter as a group are small having people knit picking someone's shot devide us up, small groups are easy to conquer! Go be PC somewhere else! I know this post was about me Shootin-Lead! If you had any ethics you would have called me by name! Not only are you a self righteous, but spineless as well! I left 24hourcampfire of people like you! Get a life, stop judging people take a look at yourself, oh you already did your Jesus Christ!

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Ethics, like honour and principle, is a word most often used by those in whom it is deficient. But as regards wounding an animal or risking shooting someone, it is justified.

I encountered a different sort a few years back. We have a year-round season for our roe deer, the does kicking when the six-month season for bucks expires. This was in the rut, in a long-abandoned and overgrown railway cutting, boggy on the former roadbed, in the last minutes of daylight. A deer ran from me, hidden by undergrowth, but I didn't hear it touch the wire fence at the top of the cutting. So I stood off-balance for several minutes in a puddle. Then it came down the slope, still hidden, until it appeared and stood broadside-on eight yards away, framed by low trees in that beautiful red light.

The trouble was, its head was obscured by a branch, and I couldn't see whether it had the antlers that made it lawful. In fact I'd been told no does with fawns had been seen, if I had been hunting on my friend's land he'd have regarded it as a harmless technicality. But the land belonged to a friend of a friend he had only just taken me to visit, and I didn't know how the latter might have felt.

I stood there for what must have been a full minute. I had no dog, and the light to find him by was fast disappearing. Then I snapped my fingers very gently, which will sometimes make them move slowly. So it did, but his antlers stayed obscured, as neatly as ever a stage magician did his hands. Only once under cover he gave a bark I was pretty sure was male. But I was able to say "Administratively speaking, you lost." I still count it the best stalk I ever had.

[44man]

Very important. Super good post. No animal should suffer or a shot towards a man because of greed.
Seen it with stocked pheasants that were sluiced on the ground and shots taken towards other hunters. My friend was sprayed with shot.

[runfiverun]

with a heavy cast boolit a going away shot through the liver and into the lungs is a humane ethical shot.
heck with a good jacketed bullet a shot driven forward through the ribs and into the chest cavity is a clean killing shot and has a higher percentage of stopping an animal than a low chest cavity shot from the side.

what about shooting straight down on something or straight on?
I have heard not to take either of those shots because of the high likeliness of hitting bone.

if you don't want to shoot something or ain't sure it's a legal animal then don't shoot it.
if you don't know your equipment well enough to know the projectile will make it to a vital area of an animal then don't shoot it.

[shoot-n-lead]

with a heavy cast boolit a going away shot through the liver and into the lungs is a humane ethical shot.
heck with a good jacketed bullet a shot driven forward through the ribs and into the chest cavity is a clean killing shot and has a higher percentage of stopping an animal than a low chest cavity shot from the side.

what about shooting straight down on something or straight on?
I have heard not to take either of those shots because of the high likeliness of hitting bone.

if you don't want to shoot something or ain't sure it's a legal animal then don't shoot it.
if you don't know your equipment well enough to know the projectile will make it to a vital area of an animal then don't shoot it.

We will just have to disagree on this...there are plenty of folks that have cast more bullets than me...but few on this forum have witnessed more dead deer than I have. I have lived in this deer rich south all of my life with high bag limits for decades (current bag limit is 12 per season) and have seen a TON of deer shot and killed by a lot of very good outdoorsmen...these gut shots are not nearly always quick and humane kills. I guess ethical shots have become like everything else...it is whatever the shooter wants to do.

Y'all can defend this practice all you want...but these shots will NEVER be as predictable as shots directly in vital's area...and that is irrefutable. I have seen the evidence...over a long period of time and I will unapologetically take the position that repeatedly taking these shots is a mark of a poor sportsman.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Very important. Super good post. No animal should suffer or a shot towards a man because of greed.
Seen it with stocked pheasants that were sluiced on the ground and shots taken towards other hunters. My friend was sprayed with shot.

In the UK, in driven shoots, the woodcock has the reputation of being the killer. It usually comes low and quiet near the end of the drive, and there are so few that everybody wants to be the one who shot the woodcock. In the bizarre ethics of such circles (though ethics with a very low accident rate), peppering a beater was much worse than peppering a fellow aristocrat. I know of an ancient gamekeeper who was asked to what he attributed his long life, and he said "To the fact that man and boy, I threw myself to the ground every time the cry of "Woodcock!" went up."

[FergusonTO35]

I'm very happy that I've only lost one deer, it was a big doe about 10 years ago. I put a .30 WCF in her boiler room at 50 yards broadside with my Winchester 94. I did find alot of blood and searched until it was too dark to see, then came back the next day and looked some more. In my opinion it was a solid hit but she managed to get off the property before expiring.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

That's funny BIS! Reminds me of the Dick Cheney incident!

In my experience a gut shot is never a good shot. It's not instantly fatal, and many wounded animals get away to die a slow death. Not at all ethical.

When I had a shop, deer hunters used to come in with their stories. Some claimed to have routinely shot deer at 500+ yards. Some of them were easily identified as liars because the crosshairs in their scopes were thick, so that at 500 yds. the animal would be completely covered by the crosshairs both vertically and horizontally. Hard to call shot placement under those circumstances, and therefore ethically a bad choice to shoot.

[ChristopherO]

Let's see, a heavy cast boolet driven through the pounch into the liver and lung on a quartering away shot is not ethical. Turn this around; driving a heavy cast boolit through the lungs, into the liver and through the pounch is ethical on a hard quartering to shot is ethical. On both shots deer have dropped quickly. On both types of shots deer have run away unrecovered.
It appears the only deer we are allowed to ethically shoot are those that are perfectly framed broadside offering up their lungs and heart as an offering to the gods of the field. Oh, wait, there have been deer shot in this manner by perfectly reasonable bullets & boolits that have not been recovered, as well.
We may as well just quit hunting all together, hold hands and sing Greenpeace songs as we look down our noses at those who continue in this reprobate activity.

[tdoyka]

my own hunting ethics include not taking a shot at a running deer, not taking a shot if the deer is facing me or its ******* is facing me. i always try to break a shoulder, be it an entry or an exit wound. i don't do a "head shot". i don't do a neck shot. i don't even try to take out a deer's femoral artery. i take the best shot i can.

these are not for everybody(like the do/don't neck shot). but i do , so naaaaaaa!!!!

[Der Gebirgsjager]

When a deer is running, at a reasonable range, take the shot. But a broadside gut shot is not ethical. Head, neck, frontal shots don't bother me at all.
Shoot one directly from the rear and I'm sure after you clean all the intestinal contents out of the body cavity it will be your last time. If your primary goal is just to shoot an animal then you place that desire above recovery. An ethical hunter takes only those shots with a high chance of recovery because the goal of meat or the trophy is the motivation. If it's just target practice that can be accomplished at the rifle range.

[Friends call me Pac]

1 shot. Vitals hit. Dead deer. No tracking. I don't see the problem.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

And that, Pac, is the ethical, ideal outcome. A clean, instantaneous kill, and recovery of the animal.

[Smoke4320]

Nothing in this world is 100% well except for your death, taxes and politicians/salesmen lie

[jhalcott]

Range to animalhasa lot to do with my shooting. I have shot moving deer at various angles. Caliber and bullet weight also get figured in. The ethics that bug me most are those scumbags that will take MY deer as if they shot it.

[aspangler]

Aldo Leopold also known as the father of conservation said "Ethic is doing the right thing when the wrong thing is legal even when no one else is around."
I for one won't take dangerous (skylined, no backstop, etc.) or the doe with fawn or fawns. That is my choice. You may or may not agree and that is your choice. We still live in a free country. (Thank God) JMHO

[Premod70]

A deer shot in the vitals is good for at least a hundred yards before it's blood pressure flatlines. An old hunter put me straight years ago, shoot them in the shoulder, they can't run and usually die from the bone fragments severing arteries. Those that don't a second shot to the heart finishes them off.

[white eagle]

my ethics or in this case choice of shot on game
is my choice that I personally have to live with
the results of that choice
its not for me to say that another person's choice
to shoot or not is wrong or rite
they in turn have to live with their choice