WHERE TO AIM

Loyalist Dave said:

The ball doesn't fragment either.

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My experience and therefore also my opinion is a pure lead roundball doesn't fragment but stays together. Somewhere, I have a .45 cal. roundball that hit solid spine bone and simply flattened. It is still close to 100% original weight. Range was about 50 yards. You woulda thunk that an oak tree fell on that deer the way he went down. But, not ded. Only deer I have had to give a cous 'd gras.

Base of the tail, drops em like a ton of bricks.

I like double-lung for whitetail just behind the foreleg and about 1/3 of the way up from the lowest point of the chest. They may not drop immediately, but seldom take more than seven seconds to drop. And there is little meat damage. Bow, ball or bullet. Same. Violate both lungs with a .54 or .66 and they are hurting.



Regarding marking a spot on a 2-D image - I always consider where the projectile may exit. A trick that helps with sightless bow shooting and also when shooting smoothbore that lacks a rear sight. A lot of times the angle of the deer or elevation differences may make for a very different sweet-spot.

I’ve shot a lot of deer in a lot of places with a lot of things, but the only ones that I remember going straight down got their neck or spine broken. Most of them have run a little, I guess I’d say 30 - 50 yards was the norm.