Still Kicking...

With all my WoW blogs, you'd think I don't play anything else. But that's not true - I play many other games. WoW just tends to be the only thing in which anything interesting enough to blog about happens. However, that changed today.

I was playing Hunting Unlimited 2009, my usual "play me for five seconds to calm down" hunting game. I chose to go after a group of Bison. I'm very good at sniping and getting head shots on larger prey (bison and elephants, specifically), so I did that from a distance. I watched the bison I chose and shot stagger and fall.

However, watching it through my rifle scope as I prepared to mount my horse and head over to collect my trophy, when I noticed something strange. The downed bison's leg was still twitching.

Ok, so maybe that was a glitch. It was about 300 yards away. I figured it'd have stopped moving by the time I got over there. But no - it hadn't.

In fact, when I got up close to my trophy, I could see that it was quite literally not a glitch.

The bison was still alive.

It was on it's side, mouth opening and closing, trying to struggle to it's feet over and over, and it kept falling back down. I stared at it for a long moment. I've killed hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures in hunting games - never have I seen a virtual animal go DOWN and still be alive. Usually when they fall, they're dead.

I walked around the Bison and gave a close look at it. The bullet had entered the head behind one ear, and exited the other side in front of that ear, cutting cleanly through the brain.

But the Bison was still alive. Standing right next to it, the "claim" button wouldn't work, because the trophy was still... kicking.

I walked around in front of the bison, leveled my rifle at it's head, and the next time it fell back to the ground in it's struggle, I fired. Right between the eyes. And then, only then, did I get the "Head shot!" exclaimation, and the bison stopped moving.

I pulled it into my bag, then went out into my trophy room to get a look at it, and I took the following screenshot.

The bullet wound in the forehead is the kill shot. The wound on the side of the head is the initial bullet wound that felled but didn't kill the bison. The trophy itself isn't that impressive (I have much more impressive bison trophies), but I will NEVER let go of it for this reason.

I spent an hour or two after this trying to recreate the situation with other creatures as well, unsuccessfully. Near as I can tell, this was a one in a million shot, and I don't think it'll happen again... But that doesn't change that it was... kind of awesome.