any miracle shots out there?

[LarryFlew]

When I was about 13 I was walking some woods for squirrels with an old Crossman .22 pump pellet gun. A rooster pheasant got up about 50 feet away. I quickly got the gun up and fired a shot. The pheasant set its wings and glided down onto an open field and just laid there with wings still spread. I ran over to find I shot the top of his head right off.

Next story needs a bit of set up. When #2 son was 13 (now 38) I took him on his first duck hunt. He had only shot at hand launched clay pigeons before that. I purchased semi auto 12 gauges for each of the boys when they where 13 but only allowed them to load one shell so they knew the first shot was the only shot. They both became very good shots due to that and still tell their friends about how they "learned". More set up. At that time I shot trap on a AA team that shot from the longest yard line all season. I had (4) perfect 25's and (3) 24's that year with a low score of 21. Sitting in the duck boat in blind and a blue wing teal came whizzing in from my side. Boom, Boom, Boom and he is going out on my sons side, Boom and he's down. Still hear that story often Had the bird stuffed for him. Taxidermist that had been in business for over 50 years said he never stuffed a teal b4.

Lets hear some!!

[farmerj]

1100 M iron sights with an M14 onto an Iron Maiden target. 19"X40". Guess I would have thought it a fluke, but I went 9 for 10 that day. Shortest range was at around 850 meters.

[forcefed]

When I was younger, my old man tossed up a pop bottle to see if I could hit it with my Red Ryder. I hit it the first time. He says "Nice shot, bet you can't do that again" He tossed it up out in front of me again, bang hit it again. Then he says "Ok, if you can do that again I will give you $20" I hit it two more times after that just because I was having a lucky day

[Shipyard]

i was out shootin with my brother and two of his more "redneck-y" friends. he had just gotten a savage bolt action 17 HMR with a bull barrel, accutrigger and nice scope set up. the two of them were punching pop cans at about 50 yds and thinking they were pretty cool.

i said something to the effect that anyone with two eye balls and three fingers could do that - and then i got lippy . this led to a very polite and dignified discussion along the lines of "ain't no city boy can shoot like us there country boys"

$20 a piece on the hood of the car was laid down, and i put two rounds touching the "e" on the side of a miller can.

easiest money i ever made - fun too

[Rem700]

Recurve bow, Blackbird in the top of a tree about thirty yards and about 20mph wind that had the tree really swaying back and forth.

[photogpat]

Dragonfly off a daisy at 15yds with my Red Ryder when I was 10 or 11.

[JJ]

My buddy from tech school and I were shooting his 22 and my 17hm2 at targets in his pasture at about 100yds. We looked out on to the plowed field and about 700yds there was a single blackbird picking grain. Stiff wind about 15-20mph in our faces. We both took a long poke just to see how close we could come. The first shots were 20-50 feet off target. My 3rd shot with some serious kentucky windage hit the dirt clod he was standing on and I watched the blackbird take off. I missed, but would have never guessed I could get one that close on target.

[LarryFlew]

AWESOME - keep 'em comin'

[Seismic Sam]

Probably about the time I was 25, I had a Thompson Center Contender with a 256 Winchester Magnum barrel (that's a 357 mag case necked down to 25 caliber, but you leave all the powder in the case!! Muzzle velocity was an easy 2300+. ) While I was going to put a scope on this thing, all I had at the time were iron sights, and my mother, who was a bird person and had several bird feeders in front of the kitchen window, noticed that there were cowbirds coming to the feeder. Now cowbirds are the bastages of the bird world, and they find the nest of a bird of another species, roll the eggs out of the nest, and then lay their own in the nest and leave the other birds to raise their own young!! Plus, they're ugly black and brown anyway.

So I'm wandering around outside, and see a cowbird land on a pine tree next to the bird feeder. I had a clear shot with a hill behind for a backstop, and I'm probably 35 yards away, and line up the shot the best I can with the iron sights and pull the trigger. There is an enormous KABOOM!! with a 256 and this 10" diameter baby sun appears in front of the barrel, and the bird just settles down on the branch a bit. NUTS!! Missed him!! #@&^&&(^$^#&%#$^^*%*&$%$@^ (HammARspeak) So I walk over expecting the bird to fly away, and it just sits there. Get a good close look, and the upper back half of the bird is GONE. Just sheared away by the sheer hydrostatic force of the 256 bullet.

Okay, now I had a dead bird on my hands. I holler for my mother's cat, who was an incredibly leathal hunter, and dangle the mangled bird in front of him, and problem solved!

[xd ED]

After putting up some wood duck houses in my yard, I discovered what aggressive, cavity nesting birds starlings are: They would swarm the nest boxes and drive away the ducks. Being an exotic species( like pigeons, and house sparrows) they are not at all protected. On the advice of noted BlueBird house designer, Dick Peterson, I bought a medium power, but very accurate German air rifle. Over the course of the season I shot probably 250-300 starlings(they still haven't returned some 25 years later). Several times, as they poked their heads out of the boxes I was able to shoot the beaks off them from a range of 10-30 yards. Twice I actually dropped flying birds. Good fun, and over the following years averaged 2-3 pair of nesting ducks in my houses each spring.

[westhope]

Maybe 35 years ago, we had an employee's club black powder shoot at the local range when I worked at the Owatonna Tool Company. Someone had gotten a few scrap 1/2 metal plates about 6 or 8 inches in diameter from work to shoot at from about 75 yards offhand. I was shooting a Thompson Hawken in 50 caliber. Iron sights. I had shot the gun some and knew how it shot. I knew from 100 yards on a bench I could easily hold a 3 inch group. It took me some work to get the rifle to shoot that well.

I took one shot. No gong from the plate. Took another shot offhand from the 75 yards, again, no ringing of the plate. Only a one or two of the dozen guys shooting, rang the metal plates. The metal plates had a 2 inch or less diameter hole in the center. I told the guys, I couldn't have missed the plate twice. No one believed me. We all knew each other from work, so I received much friendly abuse from the crew.

I told them I can't be missing and must be shooting through the center hole. Again, no one believed me. I grabbed some masking tape. Went downrange, taped over the center hole, went back to the 75 yard offhand position and shot again as everyone watched. Again, no ringing of the plate.

I went downrange to see a hole through the center of the tape. I brought the metal plate back to the shooting position and threw it on the ground in front of all the guys from work. I never said a word, put my Hawken rifle away, got a bunch of the free food and sat down to watch the other guys shoot.

I know I couldn't repeat that today.

[RAGGED]

Once saw a buddy drop a crow at 150+ yards with a bone stock cheap ass 10/22 with a $20 BSA scope sighted for 50 yards, 1 shot one kill, couldn't even believe it.

[VikesFan1]

14 or 15 years old. A buddy and I are hunting with shotguns. He says, "Watch this." I look waaaay up and here's this blackbird floating around in the earths upper atmosphere, barely more than a spec in the sky. I laughed; to this day, it was an impossible shot... Well, he takes the shot and nothing happens. A full minute later, or so it seemed, the bird folds-up and begins spiraling toward the earth. In retrospect, it seems like it took another minute or better for it to hit the ground. Fortunately, it was indeed a blackbird, and not some protected species, and my understanding of a shotguns capability has been skewed ever since.

[mrp]

When I was young and stupid(er) I was laying in the back yard with my wrist rocket taking shots at birds flying overhead. It didn't take long to bring one down, at which point I had to finish it off. That's the day I learned not to shoot at things I didn't want to kill. Only later did I learn not to throw snowballs at things (read: siblings) that are so far away I couldn't possibly hit them in a million years. Also somewhere in there I learned that when swimming in a lake and coming across a dead bullhead, tossing it at your sister who's ~30 feet away is funny, unless it impales itself in her shoulder and just hangs there until the screams bring mom and dad running.

[Ironbear]

When I was in college, we were out at a gravel pit shooting. I found a pencil and jokingly stuck it in the dirt for my buddy to shoot. He tossed the challenge back at me, and I not-very-seriously brought up my .22 pistol and cut it in half, with a direct hit, with the first shot, from about 40 feet. After we picked our jaws up from the ground... we burned about 200 rounds trying to (unsuccessfully) repeat the stunt.

My mom told that, years ago, one of the relatives would occasionally stop by with pheasants that were head-shot with a .22. My dad said that he recalled the same relative out shooting thrown clays with a .22 rifle.