The success of your follow-up can depend on you having a good idea of where your first shot hit.

By Craig Boddington

Competitive shooters know how important it is to learn how to “call their shots”—-to know, instantly and absolutely, exactly where the sights were when the trigger broke, and exactly where on the target the bullet landed. In hunting this is even more important, but there are actually two parts of it. The first is no different than in target shooting: Recognizing where the sights were, and thus where the bullet theoretically landed. The second part is validating this data, with the two primary keys being the animal’s reaction and the sound of the bullet hitting. Once in a while actual bullet impact can be observed, but this is less consistent.

Evaluating the hit is not a perfect science. The hunter pulling the trigger must have a very good sense of where the sights were when the trigger broke—and then, equally difficult, be honest about it. If you feel good about the shot, great, but if you know you pulled it a bit one way or the other, this is the time to ’fess up. As far as the reaction, well, the shooter is momentarily lost in recoil and muzzle blast; he’s unlikely to see the bullet hit and may not see the animal’s reaction at all. Depending on distance and the cartridge used, the sound of the bullet hitting may blend into the rifle’s report.

If you’re hunting alone this makes it even more important to be able to call your shot, to have a photographic memory of where the sights were when the rifle went off. But these are not things to dwell on. Even if the sight picture looked perfect, there is no guarantee that the bullet did what it was supposed to do, so the post-mortem can come later. After the first shot the shooter’s job isn’t to stand around and wait to see what happened, but to get ready to fire again instantly. Americans are really bad about backing up their own shots. African professional hunters call this “admiring the shot,” and it’s a bad habit, especially on large animals.

When the shooting is over and the animal is out of sight, then there’s time to think it through and try to figure out what you’ve got on your hands before you start looking for blood. Again, if you’re alone, your best indication is probably what you saw through your sights as the rifle fired, but if you’re quick, or the animal remained in view for a few seconds, you may have seen much more.

If you have a companion or a guide, then you have multiple opinions to compare. This can be invaluable, but it takes both experience and keen observation to be a good spotter. Only time provides the former, but the latter is a matter of concentration, and trying to ignore the muzzle blast when the rifle goes off. The whole point is to try to figure out what happened, so you have some sense of what to do next. To put it bluntly, do you go looking for an animal that’s down and dead, or are you expecting a wounded animal that must be followed up and finished off?

The first trick, I think, is to make sure that you and the shooter are looking at the same animal. This isn’t always as obvious as it seems. Just the other day, on a free-range oryx hunt in New Mexico, we had an interesting bit of mass hysteria. We got on a herd and collectively picked out a big, old cow with extremely long horns, distinctive in that her left horn was bent slightly outward at the tip. We’re all focused on that animal. The shooter, Mack Hunt, saw correctly that there was another animal right behind her. He scanned left and switched to a heavy-horned bull we hadn’t noticed.

We clearly heard the bullet hit, but it was kind of a wet thump, not the solid sound of a good shoulder hit. Not good. Worse, the cow we were looking at showed no reaction except to run with the herd. But as they ran, she was dropping back in the herd, at the rear of the group as they went out of sight. That was good.

They had dropped into a little depression, so we walked toward the last spot we’d seen them, hoping to find blood. Nobody was saying much, but oryx are tough and this could be a long afternoon. Holding some faint hope the herd might have stopped, we were just about to peek over the edge when Mack announced quietly, “There was another oryx right behind it, so I didn’t shoot at the one you guys told me to.”

We walked a few yards and I did an instant replay. The bent-horned cow had fallen back as if she was hit--but there had been another animal behind her. I tapped Jens Klingshirn, Mack’s buddy, on the shoulder. “We need to go back. There was another animal behind the herd.”

Jens turned to me, looked beyond me, and pointed. “There’s an oryx down!” A hundred yards behind us, through a window in the low bush, lay a beautiful bull oryx.

When following up wounded game there are two primary schools of thought: Follow immediately, or wait a little while. The “go now” boys reckon that an animal that is hurt is likely to be confused, so if you go quickly you can get the drop on it before it gathers its wits and moves on. The “wait a while” school figures a hurt animal, if not disturbed further, will go just a short distance, lie down, and stiffen up.

Neither approach is right or wrong; it depends on the situation. When bowhunting, it is probably better to wait a good long while. With firearms, factors include the density of the cover and how much daylight remains. But perhaps the most important consideration is the collective judgment of all witnesses as to what happened.

If everyone is very sure the animal was mortally hit, then it’s probably OK to catch your breath and move ahead. You may not be exactly right, but indications are you aren’t dealing with a superficial hit. If the collective wisdom believes the opposite, that it was a bad hit, then I tend to think you’re better off to wait.

Judgment must be based on what was seen and heard, and you make the most educated decision you can. But this is important: No matter what you think happened, you might be wrong. No indicators are foolproof. So proceed slowly and cautiously, and be prepared to finish the job.

African trackers rely heavily on the sound of a bullet striking. A solid hit, as on a shoulder, sounds like a solid thunk. A legbone hit, which is not a good thing, can be more of a sharp crack, but a shoulder hit can sound similar. A hit in softer tissue, whether behind the shoulder or well back in the abdomen, usually has more of a hollow whump.

Again, these sounds are not definitive, and sometimes you don’t hear the bullet at all. Other than distance and wind, I honestly don’t know why you don’t hear it all the time, because when you hear it, the sound is loud and definitive. Generally speaking, it absolutely indicates a hit--but if your bullet hits a tree or other solid object you may be fooled. Absent any other indicator, the sound of a bullet hitting is plenty cause to spend some time looking for blood, but you should always do this anyway because no indicators are certain.

Visual indicators are somewhat more reliable. One visual indicator is the animal dropping in its tracks. That’s a good sight, but not necessarily a good thing. Most shots are intended to go into the chest cavity. Very few animals drop in their tracks to a heart, lung, or shoulder shot. So, absent an intentional neck or head shot, an animal that drops in its tracks probably suffered trauma to the spine. This usually means the shot went higher than intended. If the spinal column is actually severed, then of course the animal isn’t going anywhere. However, if the hit is just slightly above or below the spine the trauma may drop the animal instantly, but it may get up again just as quickly. Animals that are “stunned” by a near miss to the spine and then allowed to get up and escape are only rarely recovered. So if an animal drops as if hit by the hammer of Thor, it’s important to be ready, and shoot again if there is any movement for more than a few seconds.

Body shots give visual clues. A normal reaction to a good chest shot is for the animal to buck or sometimes rear, then take off at speed. A hit too far back will generally make the animal hump up--a bad sign. If a shoulder is solidly broken, then that shoulder will often swing outward at an unnatural angle. A leg hit is generally obvious, but it’s important to understand that no visual indicators are definitive.

Just the other day I watched a hunter shoot a nice whitetail at a quartering-on angle. Three experienced witnesses, me included, saw the shot, and we all concluded a perfect chest shot that broke the on-shoulder. So we went looking for a dead deer. We jumped him fifty yards into some thick stuff, and several hours later lost the trail completely. Thanks to exceptional luck the buck was recovered a day later, still very much alive. Quartering shots are tricky. A bit to one side and you’re too far back; a bit to the other and you catch the inside of the off-shoulder. Or, if the angle is acute, it isn’t terribly unusual for the bullet to turn and skitter along the shoulder blade. In all three cases, indicators often suggest a well-placed shot!

American hunters have an abhorrence of wasting meat, and perhaps an exaggerated sense of our omnipotence with a rifle. On really large game I believe strongly that one should keep shooting as long as the animal is on its feet. On smaller game it’s okay to make a judgment call based on what you--and any companions--saw and heard. However, it’s a horrible thing to lose a game animal, and even worse when you know you could have fired again and failed to do so.  Of course, there isn’t always an opportunity to fire a backup shoot, and if the animal is disappearing at top speed that second shot will be a whole lot more difficult that the first. When the echoes of the shots die away and the animal has gone into the brush or over a hill, then it’s time to evaluate the indicators and proceed accordingly. Just remember that nothing is certain until your animal is in hand.