A Post From Ernie

From Chapter IX, Detour By Water:

Jack Collins said it was a lie that he told lies. He said he never told anything but the truth. He said he was hunting deer one fall, and a beauty came out of the woods toward him four hundred yards away, so he pulled up and let him have it. Just as he shot, he said, the deer made a lightning reverse turn, and started back for the woods, but dropped dead after a step or two.
Well, they went down and started cutting up the deer. They saw that the bullet had hit the deer in the eye. Suddenly one of the fellows said, "Hey, what's this?" He pointed to a small tree nearby that had been freshly splintered, apparently by a bullet. So they looked around, and traced the splinters over the snow for about fifteen feet, and there lay the bullet. It came from John Collins' gun all right, and he had fired only one shot. Then they examined the deer more closely, but found no place where the bullet had come out. So, the bullet had gone into the deer, and apparently had not come out, and yet there it was on the ground. How would you explain that?
Well, here's the way John Collins explained it "Remember," he said, "the deer made a fast reverse turn just as I shot. Well, what happened was that the bullet went into the deer's eye but the deer changed ends so fast that the bullet, still traveling in the same direction, came right out of the deer's eye the same place it went in, and then hit the tree and bounced off. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw."

From Home Country by Ernie Pyle, William Sloane associates, Inc. 1947