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Photo Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0

Shot placement and the follow up

Where to put it, when to wait, and how to track what you hit.

What you need

How

  1. Take the broadside shot. Behind the shoulder, a third of the way up the body, is lungs and heart and it puts the animal down fast.
  2. Let a quartering away shot come through into the far shoulder. Pass on quartering toward you unless you know exactly where the bone is.
  3. Do not take the shot you are not steady for. There is another day.
  4. Mark where the animal stood and where you stood, then look and listen before you move. Watch the way it ran and pick a landmark on that line.
  5. Wait. Half an hour on a lung hit, longer on a gut hit. Pushing a wounded animal drives it miles.
  6. Take up the blood in daylight if you can, marking every sign with tape so you can work back to the last one you are sure of.

Watch for

Danger
  • Know what is behind the animal before the safety comes off.
  • Bright frothy blood is lungs. Dark blood with gut matter means back off and wait it out.
  • Hair at the hit tells you where you struck. Look at it before you follow.
  • Tag it and report it the way the licence says, and know the season and the area you are in.

Notes

A clean kill is the whole job. If you cannot make that shot from where you are, you close the distance or you let it walk.

shot placementtrackingethicsmoose

Updated 2026-09-05

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