Close up Deer and Shot Placement

[Fox]

Every deer I have ever taken was hit in the bread basket behind the front shoulder and I have never had one make it further then 20 yards after being hit. It is the largest target and deals the most amount of damage. Shooting the neck just wastes an awful lot of meat, IMHO.

Lucky on the 20 yards, even a full bore slug through the heart has no guarantee of dropping them and sometimes they can go for a long ways without a vital organ or two.

[Big Jack]

Mike - you are lucky you haven't had one run and its only luck. Just like anybody shooting for the boiler room doesn't mean a perfect shot will ensue. Animals will move as they see fit and you will miss. Anyone claiming they have never missed a shot while deer hunting in a long career is suspect to me.

I would never take a headshot. Hate the idea of neck shots too but I would take one if things looked perfect. Nothing wrong with taking that perfect shot but that doesn't mean I don't accept the fact that a miss or wounding can occur. It can and will happen. It certainly does not mean I am not confident in my shooting skills either. You are not punching paper after all.

My two cents - you have a big target with a boiler room shot, why not take it?

BTW - I pulverized an 8 point bucks heart and lungs with a clean slug shot and it ran 80 yards before falling down. Nothing is guaranteed.

[MikePal]

My two cents - you have a big target with a boiler room shot, why not take it?

BTW - I pulverized an 8 point bucks heart and lungs with a clean slug shot and it ran 80 yards before falling down. Nothing is guaranteed.

You asked and answered your own question Jack....as I said in my post to Fox...it's all about the recovery...why take a shot when chances are it will run... over a shot when you know they won't..

Oh...and yes I will disagree..if you sever the spine of a deer it will literally drop dead...100% guaranteed.

[annuvin]

Lucky on the 20 yards, even a full bore slug through the heart has no guarantee of dropping them and sometimes they can go for a long ways without a vital organ or two.

I shot all of them with a 30-06 using 180 grain Winchester Power Points. One dropped in its tracks and the other three left a blood trail large enough for a blind man to follow.

[johny]

You asked and answered your own question Jack....as I said in my post to Fox...it's all about the recovery...why take a shot when chances are it will run... over a shot when you know they won't..

Oh...and yes I will disagree..if you sever the spine of a deer it will literally drop dead...100% guaranteed.

Drop, but not necessarily dead.

Spinal shot-- you need to know some anatomy.
Dorsal spine--- over the chest--- you'l paralyse the back legs. There may be some front leg movement but no ability to get upright and run. They can still breath with no impairment. It will need a finishing shot quickly, please.

Neck spinal shot---in the lower half of the neck, paralysis of both legs occurs but they can still breath and lift their head off ground. It will need a finishing shot quickly, please.

Upper neck in the C1/C2 region where the head and neck meet-- you'll get a paralysing shot and they will not be able to breath or lift their heads off the ground. But their hearts are still beating and so pumping loads of oxygenated blood to their brains-- so they stay awake until oxygen depletion with can take at least 5-10 minutes. The only exception to this would be a hit that severed both carotid arteries and both vertebral arteries. That's not something you can judge from the look of the wound. So again, to be kind and ethical, it will need a finishing shot quickly, please.

And those finishing shots should be the broadside/ through the chest/ double lung heart shot that you should have done for your first shot.

[Fox]

I shot all of them with a 30-06 using 180 grain Winchester Power Points. One dropped in its tracks and the other three left a blood trail large enough for a blind man to follow.

You are still lucky that you have not had to follow any, even a 30-06 will not drop a deer with a boiler room shot 100% of the time. I know from experience, not from deer I have shot but from deer others have shot, no gun stops then 100% of the time unless you break the spinal cord or hit the brain, those are the only 100% anchor shots. Dad hammered a busk at about 30 yards with a 30-06 180gr in the lungs and heart, deer still went 75 yards. 270 to the lungs, deer went 1/2km, it had dogs on it and the adrenaline was up, there was no blood trail for the last 10 yards or so when we found it, just kept going on nothing.

[Big Jack]

You asked and answered your own question Jack....as I said in my post to Fox...it's all about the recovery...why take a shot when chances are it will run... over a shot when you know they won't..

Oh...and yes I will disagree..if you sever the spine of a deer it will literally drop dead...100% guaranteed.

The arrogance of your statement is something else.

You can miss a neck shot and miss a boiler room shot. Deer can move and twitch at any time. I spined one at 70 yards and it tried to crawl away. My nephew heard it at two hundred yards away - Not pretty and I will never forget it. Looking back I did everything right but deer are wild and can move without warning. BTW the spine was severed above the front shoulders. Clean through.

That was a boiler room shot that went wrong cause the seemingly relaxed deer decided to move/duck quickly. Follow up shot was through the neck cause that is all I had to aim at and it was dead with that one.

So you never missed a shot on a deer or had one go sideways?....

[werner.reiche]

You are still lucky that you have not had to follow any, even a 30-06 will not drop a deer with a boiler room shot 100% of the time. I know from experience, not from deer I have shot but from deer others have shot, no gun stops then 100% of the time unless you break the spinal cord or hit the brain, those are the only 100% anchor shots. Dad hammered a busk at about 30 yards with a 30-06 180gr in the lungs and heart, deer still went 75 yards. 270 to the lungs, deer went 1/2km, it had dogs on it and the adrenaline was up, there was no blood trail for the last 10 yards or so when we found it, just kept going on nothing.

Take out a shoulder and both lungs will anchor a deer. That is the shot I used from the start of my deer hunting career up until about 10 years ago. With a .444 it wastes a lot of meat. I now try for a ribs only shot - and even with the .444, it leaves a tracking job - but its a pretty good blood trail and usually only a hundred yards or so.

As far as how far can a wounded deer run - no heart - about 15 seconds. No lungs about 45 seconds. How can it go in that length of time? I've seen guys tell of deer that had their lungs "destroyed" and ran 400 yards, but look at the gut pile and see it was only a single lung hit. A deer can go a long way on one lung.

[Fox]

Take out a shoulder and both lungs will anchor a deer. That is the shot I used from the start of my deer hunting career up until about 10 years ago. With a .444 it wastes a lot of meat. I now try for a ribs only shot - and even with the .444, it leaves a tracking job - but its a pretty good blood trail and usually only a hundred yards or so.

As far as how far can a wounded deer run - no heart - about 15 seconds. No lungs about 45 seconds. How can it go in that length of time? I've seen guys tell of deer that had their lungs "destroyed" and ran 400 yards, but look at the gut pile and see it was only a single lung hit. A deer can go a long way on one lung.

The shoulder is good, you break both of them and they cannot run on the 2 legs, 3 yes, 2 no, this is why the high shoulder shot is considered ideal on long range shots due to the anchor, although there is no way you can take out the 2 shoulders the lungs and the heart in one shot, unless you use a cannon ball.

As for the long run, I don't know what to tell you, the deer had no blood left in it but kept going, almost as if the deer was running dead.

The thought that if you hit the lungs then the blood cannot re-oxygenate and the deer will bleed out as well as have no oxygen to the brain and muscles or take out the heart and have no pump to circulate the blood, but the running of the deer acts like CPR in moving the blood around and the lungs are still functioning to oxygenate the blood. I have heard more now that the double lung is better than the heart shot as lungs bleed about as much as the heart but starve the blood of oxygen.

As for the time, deer can really move, a deers top speed is around 50 km/h, or 0.0138km/s, at 15s running that is 208m, about 200 yards, at 45s that is 621m traveled in the time it takes for the deer to die based on your numbers, it is possible and it has been seen by a number of people.

[MikePal]

The arrogance of your statement is something else.

You can miss a neck shot and miss a boiler room shot. Deer can move and twitch at any time. I spined one at 70 yards and it tried to crawl away. My nephew heard it at two hundred yards away - Not pretty and I will never forget it. Looking back I did everything right but deer are wild and can move without warning. BTW the spine was severed above the front shoulders. Clean through.

That was a boiler room shot that went wrong cause the seemingly relaxed deer decided to move/duck quickly. Follow up shot was through the neck cause that is all I had to aim at and it was dead with that one.

So you never missed a shot on a deer or had one go sideways?....

not sure Jack why you figure pointing out a logical conclusion in your statement is arrogant..it was just an observation.

I could, as could anyone else who has anytime in the field, tell stories of deer who have ugly deaths with boiler room shots so why you're singling out a 'spine' shot seems irrelevant.

The fact that you used a neck shot to finish off a deer tells me that you know it's a kill shot and that under the right conditions (as mentioned earlier in the thread) you could have used that shot as an option in the first place....which is what the OP was asking.