If you havent missed, or more accurately, let a wounded bird get away, then you just havent hunted long enough! I dont like it any more than anybody else, but the truth is we SELDOM completely "miss" a bird.
This is a good point!
Very few birds fired upon are totally "missed".
I believe an alarming number of birds presumed
"missed" actually die from their wounds within a day or two, if not but hours, often less than 15 minutes (but they've flown away & fallen in some thick cover, unrecovered by the shooter).
With a single pellet to an artery, a bird can fly away, appearing totally missed, yet die of blood loss a few minutes later. With a single pellet to the gut, the bird will typically die with a day or two.
IMO, the main reasons for presumed misses are . . . . .
1) Impatience
Those who are lacking patience are just more likely to take low-probability shots,
which results in a lot more unrecovered wounded birds.
2) A lack of respect for the game.
Those who don't care about how many wounded birds die unrecovered
purposely take low-probability shots.
3) Not using optical sights (properly sighted in with POA equaling the POI).
Sure, not everyone "needs" optical sights, but they can prevent most of the "misses" credited to poor shooting form, poor cheek weld, etc.
4) Not habitually using a rangefinder to ascertain distances to objects (such as certain trees
BEFORE you call from a new position). There is often no opportunity to range a turkey, but you can pre-range your surroundings.
