Disputes over who shot what.

Fella's;

Anyone ever been on either side of this type of situation?  You're starting to tend to your downed animal & sombody or bodies come up & make noise to the effect that that's his or their carcass?

Or have you just been waiting for one more step so's he clears the tree.  And somebody else's shot rings out & drops an animal that's literally in your sights?

Or do you always hunt in a party?  Do you ever talk about it in camp?  What's the concensus of opinion?

900F

Once I heard a shot. I was hunting blacktail in a small area that was basically a secret hotspot. I knew that just about anyone there would be a relative of my buddy. I eeased my way toward where the shot had come from to se how big the buck was. On the way I heard deer coming. The trailing one was a buck and I shot him. He went right down and I walked over to him. He had a bullet burn along his chest right under where his heart was. It took off the hair but just creased the hide. I was dressing him out when a few young guys showed up. The guy thought he nailed the deer but I showed him the burn. He shrugged and him and his buddies walked off. He turned out be my buddy's nephew. He got his deer and so did his friends later that day.

I shot a spike bull elk at 320 yards in a swamp. After the shot I heard a guy yell but couldn't hear what he had said. A minute later I heard a gunshot and couldn't see anything to shoot at. I went down to the elk and the guy met me there. He'd been aiming at the bull too and was trying to figure out his hold over when my shot went off and the bull dropped in his tracks. He got so rattled that when He climbed down off of the big old growth stump he'd been on he left his safety off. The trigger got caught up in creeper vines and the gun went off in his arms...that was the shot. He was mostly interested in us checking him over for a wound because he was too scared to look.

My sister is the only one I know to have an actual dispute over a downed animal. It was an elk she'd shot at 185 yards. She hit it and it just humped up and was obviously bleeding out and more shots rang out from the other side of the ridgetop. They all met at the bull and looked it over for holes. There was only one and the entrance wound was on her side. They still thought she was taking their bull even though they didn't even hit it. Some people....

Never happened to be, but I have been close. If a youngster would come up and thought he shot the one I put down , I would probably tell him yep, he sure did. They would get a bigger bang out of it than I would. I have killed enough elk, I don't really need ot shoot another one, so It's not all that important to me. I just like the meat. Fact is, it's darn hard work after you put one down anyway.