Funny you bring this up today, dadgumit. I only shoot big mature deer with my gun, and have only shot two deer in the last 5 yrs with my gun. Yesterday morning, had a true hoss come in at 45 yards, hunting with the smokepole. Aimed right at the back crease of the shoulder and snapped a primer, the deer looked right at me and watched me pull a primer out of my pocket, open the breach, take out the shot primer, put the new primer in, close the breach, and he just stood there looking at me. He finally started feeding again and I pulled back up on him. He was behind a couple of large water oaks, I let him clear the oaks, they pulled the trigger, good fire this time. He bucked up and ran about 60 yards and stopped, I thought to die. Then he trotted into a thicket. No blood whatsoever, and then I saw where my bullet had hit the largest water oak there. From where I was shooting, there was no way I could have even hit the water oak, it was totally behind several other trees. I looked and looked and finally found a 3/4 inch sapling between me and where the deer was standing. Shot about 1/8 inch on the right side of the sapling and the bullet deflected about 1.5 ft to the right. I was sick, but glad it was a clean miss. This was only the 3rd deer I have ever missed in 25 yrs of deer hunting and he was the second largest deer I have ever shot at with either a bow or gun. 1/8" was the difference in a trophy mature buck and nothing. Never saw the sapling, guess it was just the bucks turn to win yesterday.
