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I HOPE THIS GETS AS BIG AS THE SEMI NONSENSE THREAD ON BARKING A SQUIRREL.
I HAVE FAILE D IN POSTING A PICTURE OF A GIANT DEER VIEWED BROADSIDE FACING LEFT/
I WAS GOING TO ASK THE CONGREGATIONTO PUT A MARK WHERE THE IDEAL SHOT SHOULD HIT IF YOU WANTED THE DEER TO DROP IN ITS SH ADOW.
I HOPE SOMEONE ELSE NOT NICKEDNAMED THUMBS SCHOULTZ COULD VOLUNTEER SUCH A PICTURE AND WE COULD PROCEED.
OVER THE YEARS. READING HUNDREDS (THOUSANDS ACTUALLY) POST I CAN REMEMBER ONLY ONE THAT HAD A BROADSIDE PICTURE WITH AN X WHERE THE WRITTE HAD PLACED WHAT HE THOUGHTWS IDEAL.
MAYBE THE REASON PEOPLE WERE AIMING A HITTING THE POOR DEER IN ODD, NO FATAL SPOTS IS BECAUSE HE HAS NO IDEA WHERE TO AIM IF EVERYHING WAS GOING RIGHT.
I WILL AWAIT THE PICTURE TO SEE HOW MUCH WE AGREE OR DISAGREE.IF THIS WORKS OUT I HAVE MORE PICTURES OF DEER IN OTHER POSITIONS THAT I WON'T BE ABLE TO POST FOR FURTHER EDUATION.
THGIS COULD BE THE MORE VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION WE COULD MAKE. I WILL MARK WHERE THAT LONG AGO HUNTER SUDDESTED..
DUTCH SCHOULTZ
 
355C9633-C448-412F-B20F-838506262F0D.jpeg
 
For some reason I’ve shot some deer higher than intended so I’ve been focusing on going lower. High hits give poorer blood trails.
This image is one I liked and saved. Not my image.
 
The picture is pretty close, though it's not quite dead broadside. The best place is straight up the front leg about 1/3 of the way up the body. That's where the heart and the largest lobes of the lungs are with nothing but ribs in the way, and deer ribs are not particularly stout. Many people shoot too far back, archers especially, for fear of hitting heavy bone, but the humerus angles forward from what would be the elbow joint, I guess, for lack of the proper term.

Shots above the centerline of the body will take out the lungs and will be fatal, but most of the bleeding will be inside the chest cavity, so blood trails will be sparse to nonexistent. The good news is, they rarely make it 100 yards with a double lung shot. The bad news is they can be darn hard to find with no blood trail.

Shooting too low may mean hitting the heart but not the lungs. Again, it is a good news/bad news thing. The good news is, you will probably have a pretty good blood trail. The bad news is they can go a lot farther with a heart shot than a double lung.

Shooting too far back but not so far as to hit guts means a liver shot. It will kill the deer, but it can take a long time and they can travel a long ways. Blood trails can vary. Usually there will be a fair amount of quite dark red blood at first, but sometimes fat can plug the holes and blood becomes sparse. If it is an archery shot, the deer will often run a short distance and lie down. If you give them 3-4 hours, they will normally be quite dead. If you push them, it can be a long and often frustrating ordeal. The problem with shooting one in the liver with a gun is the noise scares the snot out of them, so they often run a lot farther before bedding and the blood trail can peter out before they stop.

Shooting back behind the liver is going to be a nightmare for both the shooter and the deer unless you get lucky and hit an artery, which means you shot back and high since the arteries mostly run up along the spine and over the guts. Either way, the blood trail will be sparse, and it can take hours to days for the deer to die.

I'm an old fart, so I've seen just about all of these scenarios. I've been fortunate in that the bad news ones have been someone else's shots, but I've spent hours helping them try to find the deer. Not always successfully, unfortunately.
 
I like to shoot only the lungs as I like to eat the heart. Plus we get a lot of shots at deer in a meadow, so here is where I aim....,
BUCK DEER BROADSIDE PLACEMENT.jpg

Because what I'm usually looking at is more like this but even thicker, and I don't like the ball passing through that grass as the grass can hide a fallen tree with a branch sticking up....,

BUCK DEER BROADSIDE In BRUSH.jpg

The other place that I will aim, and this is new for me, but the results were BANG-Flop.....

BUCK DEER HOULDER SHOT.jpg

These are stock images that I used for illustration. I wish I saw a lot of bucks that pretty....

LD
 
LD's explanation is good. But, really, and in my experience, anywhere forward of the rib cage is a quick killer. Mine drop before 50 yards. They take what I call a 'reaction leap' then plow up dirt with their noses. FWIW, I use a .45 cal. prb and 65 gr. real black. Very effective deer medicine.
 
All answers are correct as far as lethality of hits is concerned. However, if you want to drop it in its' tracks you need to take out the nervous system. That means either a spine / neck shot, or a head shot. They won't take another step if you shoot them there.

The bad news of those is that the target is pretty small, and since you are shooting for bone, you need good solid projectile construction to ensure solid penetration on the terminal end. I've taken 3 deliberate head shots in the past, and all have been successful and were at very close range.

When I've hit the spine before it's been because I missed the bigger heart / lung area, which is where I usually aim if I can get access to it. More margin for error.

t seems that deer have an uncanny ability to stop behind a tree which shields that area however. That's why I only had a head shot, and at 15-20 yards the head was a reasonably sized target (for a non-trophy deer). I don't know what I would have done if they had been trophy-sized buck(s).
 
If one wants the deer to drop in its shadow like Dutch had asked... I say you need an “ anchor shot” you would want to shoot the deer in the shoulder.. should blow through the shoulder delivering a mortal wound.I know it’s a waste of meat.. but the original post had stated such. I’ve used this shot many times to keep the animal from running into neighboring properties.
 
The biggest problem with shooting at bone like a shoulder is keeping the projectile together to penetrate to the vitals. The suppository gun guys swear by partition or premium-construction bullets for that reason.

I hit a small deer in the shoulder with a "normal" bullet from a .308 Win at 20 yards one time and never did find the deer. That was the LAST time I ever used non-premium bullets for big game hunting. By contrast, I hit a big black bear at the same range with a partitioned bullet and the front half all sheared away, but the back held together and was recovered just under the hide on the far side.

With our pure lead round balls I would think they might be tricky to get that sort of performance out of. Too fast and they'll blow up. Too slow and they won't do the job.
 
The biggest problem with shooting at bone like a shoulder is keeping the projectile together to penetrate to the vitals. .....With our pure lead round balls I would think they might be tricky to get that sort of performance out of. Too fast and they'll blow up. Too slow and they won't do the job.

Actually one of the quirks of the patched round ball is that it very much does not behave like a conical nor a modern bullet.
(IIRC) Roundball spent 2014 and 2015 taking nothing but shoulder shots on quartering toward him deer, and he took a pretty good group. ALL dropped in their tracks. The one I took last January dropped in it's tracks.

What happens apparently is with the quatered-toward the shooter shot on the shoulder, the ball either finds the spine with a direct hit, OR it gets deflected by the shoulder bone, into the spinal column.

DEER SKELETON 3.jpg

I'm not a vet nor a anatomist, so I can't say, but I have seen shoulder shots from roundball, and tried one myself. The deer do go down like poll-axed. The ball doesn't fragment either.



LD
 
I gratefully yield to those with more experience and knowledge than me on the subject .

AH but that's just IT...., there really isn't much research.:confused: I've been hunting deer with a flintlock for more than a decade, and I NEVER would've thought about a shoulder shot, except, one of our members deliberately tried it for two straight years, and had very good success.... had he not … or IF I had poor success with my first try.... ???

Round ball impact research is pretty much limited to anecdotal information. Soldier reports from the ACW that the round ball took out a man better than the pointed conical Minnie. James Forsyth's book The Sporting Rifle and Its Projectiles, where he explains that he does not like the pointed conical, and also that he likes very large round balls, and very large powder loads. Neither of which are we normally using. (at least I don't think we have many if any members using a 165 grain powder load in a four-bore rifle for deer)

Forsyth comments that the ball does more "crushing" on impact than a pointed bullet, but all of the above is still untrained observation, and pretty much research was a moot point as the fixed cartridge came into vogue, right about the time that scientific data gathering was getting more precise.

LD
 
2019 buck 3.jpg


Dave, I've not tried the ML heart shot, but putting an arrow through one doesn't mean you can't eat it, lol. This one got pickled. I'm not a huge fan of pickled meat, but my eldest son loves it, so I save the hearts for him. I'd much prefer fried, but I try to be a good dad. :cool:

That second angle likely caught enough spine to make for a bang-flop. Note how far down the spine dips at the shoulder. There are also some pretty major blood vessels in that area with lungs behind that as well. I've had the same results from that shot.

256xNxdeer-anatomy.jpg.pagespeed.ic.jlboL1Gz26.jpg


As far as other shot angles. On quartering shots, I aim to hit the off side leg. From a tree, at 10 yards, that means the entry will be high (see the attached pics). The arrow in question stuck in the off side leg. After going through a lung and the heart pictured above. A shot from a muzzle loader would have the same effect.
 

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