Other peoples shot in my birds...

tod osier

tod osier

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It seems like over the years I've found an awful lot of shot that wasn't mine in birds I've eaten.

Jen and I were eating some soup yesterday made from one of my turkies this spring and found a lead 7 1/2 in it when I shot it with #6 Winchester high density. I once shot a jenny in the fall with #4 steel only to find lead #6's in it pretty well healed. I've killed at least 5 or 6 ducks with shot I'm pretty sure wasn't mine, one that had a lead 6 in it's beast all healed up.

Am I amazingly lucky or do other people see this? It sure does seem to speak to the number of birds out there that have taken pellets and survived.

T
 
Every duck season I take a few birds with healed-over shot in them. Not many, but at least 2-3. Usually it is in the breast, just under the skin.
 
I used to hunt with an old USF&W biologist who worked on a research project in Canada where they stuck ducks under floroscopy after they were banded to see if they contained any foreign objects. To his amazement roughly 25% of all the >1yr old birds scoped showed signs of shot still in their bodies. These were summer banding studies which showed the birds had obviously survived their encounter.
 
Good, then I'm not crazy. Mark, 25% is a crazy number and says to me a lot about the crippling rate.

T
 
Yep....rabbits , pheasant , geese and ducks. I got a buck one time that had a 410 slug that went from one side to the other through the chest..lungs and all that had healed over..it was against the hide on the off side.
 
I have never seen or rather noticed other shot in the birds, however a couple years ago, I shot a nice buck that had a healed hole in his ear, just about the size of a 12g slug. Always wondered if it was a miss at a head shot or just a bad shot/clear miss at another deer.

Andrew
 
Wow great stories, Keep them coming. My uncle has a mount of a very nice buck that has a perfect 3/4" hole in the ear.

T
 
Todd,
That's what we thought. I have no reason not to believe this guy and he was the one who actually stuck the bird in the scope. He brought this subject up right after 4 of us unloaded on a flock of 100 mallards. Sure 4 or 5 birds fell but how many birds in the back of the flock caught a stray pellet? How many average guys flock shoot (Aim at a mass of birds rather than pick one out) It doesn't take but just a couple encounters at a few duck blinds in a birds lifetime to get to the 25% point. I'm talking birds that are over a year old remember. Large broods are obviously going to lower that percentage when you take in to account birds of the year.
 
I've only noticed a few pheasants that had been previously shot. They weren't what I would call healed, kind of gross but the birds flew fine as I remember. I've seen several wood ducks with missing legs. Not sure if they were shot off, some kind of genetic thing in this one area or if turtles grab them and they were just lucky to get away. I've notice screwed up legs and feet on other ducks but not missing.
Shot a nice 4x4 once that had a whole load of shot in it's rear end. The wound was only a couple days old at most and he was dieing one way or another. We gutted him but it didn't take a meat expert to know nothing was edible on it. Too bad, he was a pretty buck.

My brother in laws brother has a deer mounted that has a perfect slug hole in not one ear but both ears. What are the odds of that lining up? Looks like it was involved in some kind of african tribal ritual.

Tim
 
My buddy Tony Vandemore was telling me about a friend of his who has a gobbler on video from this spring with an arrow sticking through it. Crazy thing is that the guy who shot the video also shot the turkey last fall with his bow. Apparently the arrow is anchored in the bird in a non-fatal spot.

I have not seen the video myself, but the source is a reliable one.

Also, when I worked in a checkstation in college my boss shot a buck during rifle season with an arrow sticking out of both sides of its neck. It was trailing a doe and grunting when he shot it. One of our regular "Bass Pro" customers had shot that deer with his bow a month earlier about a mile from where it was killed.

They are some tough critters!
 
I shot a buck several years ago with a 22 bullet in his hip. It had been completely covered over by scar tissue and was about the size of a golf ball. When we cut it open, there was the bullet.
 
My friend Lou shot a female black bear 2 years ago. When they got to the bear and started to look it over, it had a sizable nick taken out of one ear and a straight running scar across its back about 8-10 inches long. The year before, Lou's dad missed a very similar looking bear in the same tree stand. They believe very strongly that the bear Chuck missed was the same one that Lou shot. Kind of funny.

Nate
 
The buck I shot this past season had a nice "X" pass though hole through the backstraps, just under the spine. Had completely healed over on the hide other than the hair wasn't grown back and one side had a little ooze coming out. On the backstraps themselves it was a little grizzle. So it looks as if it was from the archery season a month before.
 
Every year I get a bird or two with shot. Usually old geese have T's or BBB's buried in their chests surrounded by a cyst. I've had pheasants with gangrenous spot from previously being shot. I had a grouse once that had a broken keel that had healed and there was a single pellet lodged in it's breast.

Back in high school a guy shot this nappy little buck on my grandparents farm and it had all manner of bullets in it. As I recall it had a slug in it's hip and a .22 bullet somwhere and I think it had another wound. That poor sick deer...he shot it after watching it limp around the farm for two weeks. Most of it wasn't fit for consumption.

Not to get too far off topic but this reminds me of something. One summer I worked in a sawmill and we had this giant 9ft band saw. I'd always got stuck ripping 16 foot poplar blanks on it which was a mess as the saw threw tons of wet poplar and we lubed it with diesel...it was nasty. There was this little amish chick that sat next to me on a 5 gallon bucket running a giant Oregon moulder and she'd always put on a little show for me so it wasn't so bad(undergarments were not required in that hot building if you get my drift). In any case, one day I'm cruising along and the drone of the saw kinda made a funny noise. I shut down and looked over the wood and sure enough there was a .30 caliber bullet embedded in the board. The saw cut it perfectly in half lengthwise. The bullet was like it came of the box that day. It was pefectly preserved the copper was shiny as could be. It was the strangest thing. This was a huge poplar and this bullet was basically in the middle. Judging by the lack of deformation I'd say it was shot into the tree when it was relatively small because the bullet almost looked perfect. I can't remember what happened to it but somebody grabbed it and nobody took a picture. Crazy stuff.
 
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In our deer camp we have a front shoulder of a buck that has the broadhead stuck 1/2 way through the shoulder blade. We found it in a nice 12 pointer who was running strong. It was discovered while we were butchering up the deer, no gangrene or signs of infection, you can tell from the bone reforming around the broadhead that this had been there a LONG time. Neat conversation piece really.
 
A friend of mine sliced his hand pretty good on a broadhead while gutting a deer....said the deer didn't act strange or injured before he shot it.
 
Sorry to jump in here, being a Newby and all. I read about this a few years ago, so take it for what its worth. Seems a fella shot an Elk, and when they gutted it, they found a .30 caliber slug embedded in it's heart. They must be one tough animal !
 
I already handed a copy of Deer and Deer Hunting off to a buddy of mine, but there was a story with photos and x-rays of a buck killed and when the hunter boiled the skull for a european mount there was about 4 inches of an aluminum arrow with broadhead lodged in the sinus cavity of the deer. In the photo of him with the freshly shot(firearms season) buck there is no sign of injury to the deer. The story had been in the hunters local paper and the man that had arrowed the deer recognized the buck and came forward to explain how it happened.


Kyle
 
i shot at a buck in 2003 a small 8pt here on the farm he came running across this hay field i was watching and on the third shot i connected on the right front shoulder, after fallowing a heavy blood trail for roughly 30 yrds the blood stopped and the deer disappeared. in 2004 thanksgiving day i got off my seat to investigate the report of a gunshot that was well inside our property lines and wasent welcomed. after walking a short ways up on to this plateau i stop to look behind me and fallowing me up this hill was a dandy 8ptr chasing a doe. i dropped him at 30ft and after cutting him up i noticed the right front shoulder was destroyed, but completely healed. upon further inspection the bucks rack was striking similar to the buck i had shot the year before. this buck was shot 100 +/- yrds from where i had shot at him the year before. along with the gunshot wounds he carried a broad head wound in his brisket and a nick on his left g2 from the archery season and a massive gash on his neck and a chunk of a tine is his back.

he was mounted showing all of his scars

eddie
 
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