On TV yesterday, I saw a segment where a hunter shot at a Deer, and it ran away. A few feet away they found a tine from an antler.

Now, 50 yards farther, they find the Deer very dead.

Can it be that Deer died from the trama of a shot to the antler? Or do they just want us to believe that, just to make a video.

I have heard of an antler hit, and the Deer drops at the shot, and recovers in a minute or so and runs away for good, but never of one dying from it.

Help me.

Terry,

I have shot an impala in the horn once. He ran off and had to be shot again.

He was one of those really unlucky creatures - being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We were approaching a waterhole in late afternoon, hoping to find a sable bull we were looking for.

As we came to about 150 yards from the water, we saw one impala ram feeding. We decided to shoot him.

He was behind a slight rise, that the lower part of his legs were hidden from us, but his body is perfectly clear to shoot.

I was using my 375/404. At the shot, we saw "him" take off straight ahead in the direction he was looking. Roy said I have shot his horn off! As he could see him with only one horn now. He stopped after running about 50 yards.

I shot him and he dropped.

As we were walking to him, we were discussing how can I shoot so badly at an impala standing in the open??

As we got closer to him, we saw the other one dead on the ground.

It appeared that the one that had his horn shot off was feeding behind the one we shot first - but he was hidden from our view. The bullet hit this one, and went through and took the horn off the second one.

If the hunter was a female who had a pecan pie in the oven, I saw that show. It didn't look to me like the piece of antler she found belonged to the deer on the ground. As she held the piece she found to the antler, the coloration was totally different (the piece she found was MUCH lighter in color; like it was an old faded piece of antler) and it didn't appear to fit.

That's the show. I saw just that segment. When she shot, I thought it was very obvious she had made a shoulder shot, but too far forward. I don't believe the tine came from her deer, as it didn't look like her deer was missing one. It appeared that the shot had been where it looked like she hit.

My question was, if someone was filming this pie for all these hours, why didn't they take it out of the oven? I thought this was a pretty stupid segment. It seems to be a mission lately to show grandmothers, wives, kids and donkeys hunting to prove that hunting is a family sport for everyone. I'm all for that, but why should I have to watch a pie bake (or the woman hunting mule deer the same day who shot one, then didn't know how to put her gun back on safe) to prove it to me?

It was on the Texas Trophy Hunters TV show....I saw it also. It appeared to me that she did shoot it behind the shoulder ....maybe he busted off the tine on his mad dash outta there....I had that happen once.

The besy thing NRA did was to have a grandma as president. Followed up by Moses I mean Heston. I think he will be stepping down this year due to health problems, saw him in Reno last year and was looking feeble. How about Tom Selek or Barbra Mandrel for next pres.

Actually saw the exact little segment. Clear implact right behind the shoulder, right behind the heart.

He must have busted it in the mad dash. Dutch.

I have seen Cattle get killed in rodeo's from having a horn busted off by the header. The horn is pretty strongly attached to the skull and if you hit it hard enough it can break a section of the skull and the steer doesn't last too long after that.

Mind you have have busted off a horn roping before too and other than a bad nose bleed and a lose horn the steer was fine. We just made a brace out of re-bar and duct taped the horn back in place and took that steer out of rotation and stuck him in pasture......until he fell in a hole and busted his leg. Then we ate him.

Yep, that was the TV show I was watching.

It sure looked like a fine hit to me, and the Antler thing was a little too hard to swallow.

Do they really think we are that dumb?

Texas Trophy Hunters is usually a very good show.

I suppose it is possible some died from broken necks and I actually remember seeing that too. One steer ran smack into the fence posts and busted his neck. But others had busted horns when they get turned off for the heeler. Kind of just slump to the ground and get skidded.

Jack O'Connor had a list of animals that died under mysterious circumstances...

There was a rabbit that dropped dead from a .22 nick on his foot, and a deer that dropped dead from a near miss or something like that...

Dying of fright, I guess!

See below post.

[ 03-04-2003, 20:44: Message edited by: Terry Blauwkamp ]

I wrote to Texas Trophy Hunters about the segment, and here is their reply:

My name is Glenn Schmidt,and I run Mark Video Productions, and I edit the TV show.
What you saw was the exact way it happened. I cut the shot very close to the actual hit because of rules the Outdoor Channel puts on us.
The shot broke the leg of the buck and the bullet wound was large and messy because of the deformed bullet. The buck ran off dangling a broken leg and gushing blood. We just could not show that on national TV.
I have been putting the show together since day one and I had never seen this happen before.
If you still don't believe me, give me a call. 210-523-8824

How many of you want to call him today?

I would like to see what the Outdoor Channel's rules are. Hunting does involve blood, who are we trying to fool?

Terry I saw the same program. I think that broke off when the deer fell & hit a rock. The ground was very rocky. The broken tip did fit the broken antler. Those pecan pies sure did look good.

I shot at a 6 point buck one afternoon after having my rifle slowly slide off the top of the frost covered car and land on the scope on my boot. After inspecting the scope and seeing no looseness or damage I went on and took the M70 257Rbts to the blind. My "base of the neck" point of aim shot was at about 135+ yards downhill with the buck moving away from me on a quarter angle and the bullet strike in dirt was, I thought, high enough that I thought I had missed cleanly, but caused the deer to run wildly thru a mesquite thicket jumping and kicking. About halfway thru the thicket and with his head down in a charging position the buck butted a thigh thick mesquite square on and bounced backward about 6 feet. I shot him again and hit him in the heart/lung area from the stand at about 200 yards as he was flopping and jumping and he layed still. When I went to pull his head out from under the tree his antler was loose in the socket and I discovered that my first shot had knocked off about half of his middle tine on one side. His head butt had broken his neck and I discovered later that his skull was also broken, a crack that ran 3-4"s down the top of his head right between the antlers... I didn't kill him with the first shot but the pain of the broken antler drove him to head butt the tree hard enough to break his neck and crack his skull. I have the skull cap and antlers on the wall above my desk ... after I superglued everything back together! so it does happen but certainly not on purpose.
Ron

A guy told me just the other day that while he and a friend were out deer hunting his friend shot at a running deer and hit the antler. He said that the deer dropped instantly. All that they could figure was that a piece of the antler or skull got blown down into the deer's brain. There wasn't any blood at all. It doesn't happen every day but it could certainly happen.

It happened to me. My early hunting years I was no more than 50 paces from camp and even closer than that there was a Buck, I had time for one real quick shot and he was gone into the brush. I ran to where he was standing and looked to the left and poped off another quick shot, I didnt even aim really, just drew down and fired. His right antler went flipping up into the air and he dropped on the spot. There was no blood and the antler was broke off clean at the base of the skull and he never so much as flinched while I cleaned him out.

To this day I wonder if he was perhaps just knocked unconsious, it was mighty strange. The best part about it is that my brother watched it from the road nearby so I had a wittness..

I know of several instances wherein this happened..I shot a buck running one time and hit his horn and he flipped a couple of circles and broke his neck while tumbling in the fall I think...I saw a fellow shoot a buck in the base of the horn with a 300 Wby. and it broke the deers neck clean, it dropped on the spot...I know of another simular incident where a horn shot killed a buck...so I guess it happens from time to time. I can see where a blow close to the head would kill something, that takes no seventh son of a seventh son to figure out..I think that's an O'Connorism...