Guest Mistake Stories...

[MySRT8U]

I invited a buddy to hunt with me last season. I pretty much gave him the go ahead to shoot anything except yearling doe and nubbin bucks. Well it's out first night and I hear a shot about 15 min before the end of shooting light. He texts me and says he shot a doe but needs help tracking it. I get out of the stand and head his way. Get there and start to track and I find his "doe" about 50 yards off in the woods. Mind you this thing is about the size of my weimaraner so I'm already wondering why he shot it. I get up to it and say I thought you shot a doe? He says he did. I pull up on leg and say well this is the first doe I've seen with a ******! He shot a little nubbin buck. The poor little guy couldn't have weighed more than 50 lbs. We made fun of him the rest of the weekend but all in good fun.

[SwampRabbit]

In 1989 I was guiding/hunting on a ranch north of Burnet(14,000 acres).I was ask to help guide a big corporate group from Houston and do some skinning. I could also do a little hunting. This particular ranch had a good population of aoudad sheep and some good ones too. This is what I would be after. We'll the corporate big wig great white hunters showed up that night from Houston. We where setting around the lodge talking about different animals and watching a Mike Tyson fight when aoudad sheep came up. Well one of the big wigs just had to shoot a big one. That's all he talked about for the next day and a half. Finally the ranch owner ask me to put him on some sheep as he was a very good customer in the corporate world. So I did. This guy shot a 35" sheep(Biggest I've personally seen to this day). A monster. We load him up and head in. I'm dumbfounded at his size. We'll we get there(skinning area)it's dark and the celebration begins at the skinning rack. Back slaps,high fives you name it. The ranch owner is extatic. He is more excited than the hunter. He keeps going on and on about how big he is and that he has to be a record.
The rancher looks at him and asks "how are you going to have him mounted? Life size or shoulder mount?" And the hunter replies "I'm not going to have that nasty stinking thing mounted. We can throw him away for all I care" :0 !!!
Wrong thing to say!!!!
It got ugly quick after that and he was ordered to pack his stuff and leave the ranch now,as in like yesterday now..and to NEVER come back.And he did.
All these years later it still blows my mind at how clueless this guy was!!!

Wow... simply wow!!!!

[Tx.Fisher]

Ok so when when I hunted Ozona we had a one of the hunter bring a guest out and that guest shot a 2.5 year old typical 12 point. He could have cared less about it and just cut the head off and said he could use the meat. He did not come back.

[JHarrell89]

who's got more?

[Bowhuntamistad]

just cut the head off and said he could use the meat.

I have never understood this mentality. We have stores...if you need the meat that badly, go buy it....or am I wrong?

[SwampBuck]

My uncle used to take me to his lease in the hill country to shoot spikes and doe. Pretty cut and dry, nothing really too hard about that unless you bust a nubbin buck thinking its a doe. which was not the case here.

First afternoon im sitting in the "mountain stand" he told me there was an older long horned spike showing up pretty regularly as well as a few big deer that I could watch. I was young at this time but i knew my hunting but it didnt take much of a big buck to get my blood flowing. Sure enough, two "huge" 9 points came out a few minutes before the feeder went off. It was weird, they almost looked like twins. They start pawing around and stomping and making plenty of noise between the two of them, they did a little sparing here and there. It was a good show thats for sure.
So here I sit, buck fever tearing me up an I didnt even have a rifle in my hands yet. I was just watching these two bucks like a hawk.

I happen to look back at the feeder and there sits the spike. I raise my gun and try for about 5 minutes to take a steady aim...couldnt do it. The two bigger deer had me so shook up i end up jerking the shot and missing the spike.

Deer evacuated, it gets dark, i head down the hill and back to the road.

My uncle -"You shoot"
Me- "nope, thought you did"
uncle - "nope, you sure?"
me- "yeah.....i missed him"
Uncle - "you got buck fever over a spike?"
me -" no i got buck fever over your twin nine points stomping around all over up there"
uncle - "So you saw my babies huh?"

He thought it was hilarious, I was mad and had to swallow my pride. next morning I dirt napped the same spike I had missed the night before. To this day he still gives me heck about that and calls me names like "doemaster" or "spikemaster"

[fullsizeaggie]

Not really a guest mistake, more a "guide" mistake. Last fall, my younger brother and I were hunting. Had 5-6 deer under the feeder, 2 does, 4pt, short spike, 6pt and a nubber. I had my eye on a bigger doe and told him to shoot it. Well they played musical deer for a while and we were still following the same doe. I told him to shoot her and he did. Yep amidst the confusion he/we shot the nubber. Exactly the one I told him to......

[Fire_Hunter]

This thread is great. Lol

[Take em]

I have never understood this mentality. We have stores...if you need the meat that badly, go buy it....or am I wrong?

Sorry, but you cant eat bone. I hunt for the meat. What is on top of the head really does not matter that much. If I shot something that big I would at least euro mount it. JMO

[aggieman08]

Sorry, but you cant eat bone. I hunt for the meat. What is on top of the head really does not matter that much. If I shot something that big I would at least euro mount it. JMO

It's a lot cheaper to go to the grocery store and buy meat. I hope that you hunt in a high fence so you don't screw things up for the rest of us trying to manage and maximize the quality of the State's free range deer population.

[150class]

Sorry, but you cant eat bone. I hunt for the meat. What is on top of the head really does not matter that much. If I shot something that big I would at least euro mount it. JMO

It's a lot cheaper to go to the grocery store and buy meat. I hope that you hunt in a high fence so you don't screw things up for the rest of us trying to manage and maximize the quality of the State's free range deer population.

Guest mistake stories guys, guest mistake stories!

[Take em]

It's a lot cheaper to go to the grocery store and buy meat. I hope that you hunt in a high fence so you don't screw things up for the rest of us trying to manage and maximize the quality of the State's free range deer population.

I hunt MLD Property I shoot what I am told to take. But if you just want the horns you can give me your meat and save me the trouble of shooting the monsters for my freezer.

[bowhunterchris]

Wow... I hunt for meat also. It comes out pretty good when you don't pay for the property you hunt on. Idk how people pay thousands of dollars to shoot deer. But anyways, I don't have any bad guest stories. I don't allow many others to hunt my setups but I have been invited elsewhere many times and always shoot what I am asked/told to shoot. Carry on...

[JHB4]

Need more stories!

[Coach W]

I've always been very wary to shoot animals on invites. Dont get me wrong if you invite me IM COMING!!!!

So go ahead and PM me. I will be down QUICK!!! I leave the place better than I found it, and if I mess something up I replace it or fix it. My PM box has room

In the past I've passed on deer I never would have passed on my lease. I just really never wanted to be in the wrong. I'd rather pass than tick someone off and lose a friendship.

In college I was invited to hunt a ranch in Coleman. The whole ride down there we are calling eachother, and Im told about the great deer, and how Im not supposed to shoot anything I wouldn't hang on the wall. I pull into the ranch that night and I see a 150 class 10 and am pumped. I rode by myself and met them at the gate. The next morning Im setting in a blind and in trots this 20" wide 10, 5.5 -6.5 years old... probably scores 138-142 Hes a NICE deer to me... but thats the only deer I have seen on this place and decide to err on the side of caution. I watch this deer for an hour at 65 yards and he finally walks off. Later at camp I told them what I saw and they all flipped asking me why I didnt shoot????? oops. lol never saw that deer again, ended up shooting a couple ole stomping doe for meat and got the invite to come again next year.

Same group of friends in Terry county. We set up 1 of my box blind's and a few of my pig traps out to do some pig removal. I have a blast out there and kill plenty of pigs. I have been baiting the traps but not setting them because I cant get back out the next day because of school and work. Well one weekend I have Friday and Saturday so I set the traps on friday night. I go back saturday afternoon and saw I caught a momma and 3 lil piglets... Its cold and a storm is coming in. So I kill momma and open the door for the 3 piglets to try a lil skeet shooting with the piglets and my extrema 2... I get them all and its a bloody snowy mess around the trap. I load them all up and head back to the house. After I get through cleaning I check my phone and its been blowing up.

Landowner evidently saw the trap before I had and offered the pigs to a friend of his who drove in 90 miles to pick them up only to find a massacre. I immediately call and take responsibility for my actions. I offer the landowners friend all the meat already packaged and ready to cook... but he wanted them live. I ended up losing that place to hunt that night. I still know I was in the right, I set the trap (my trap), I caught the pigs on my bait, and I killed my pigs... all on his land. But it left a bad taste in the landowners mouth, and its his land so I just moved on. Too bad to because that place is just 15 minutes from my house.

Fastforward 2 years, I had found a new place to hunt in terry county for pigs. There was a website you could pay a fee and hunt year round access, you got a map of the place and access. I set up a feeder and bow blinds and was very successful arrowing pigs for 2 years. Then one day theres a new gate up with a sign that says call this number to get your stuff back. Turns out the guys running the site only had a sliver of the actual rights and the real owners got wind and were ticked. I did eventually get my stuff back, but I never did find another place close to home to kill stuff.

None of these are what I consider "guest mistakes" but its just part of hunting land that isnt yours...