Inside Bambi.....In Color.

[64Springer]

Hesitated at starting this thread. But there are a few hunting threads going on right now that make it relevant.

I'm sure some of you have seen this diagram online and some of you haven't.

This has been my go-to Bambi anatomy picture for decades. I review it each and every year. It helps me to get my bearings again. It tells me that Bambi is not some big tan thing. It tells me what's really important. It tells me what's going on inside Bambi.

This is not to pick on the guys that use paper plates as a guide to determine the size of the vitals area. It's to show that the area you really want to hit is much smaller than a paper plate. The area is the size of a softball.

The area you want to aim for is the heart. And all of the fat, juicy, bloody arteries surrounding the heart. This area is tiny. But if you put a ball through this area, that deer is dead on the spot. No tracking. No frustration. Bang-Flop. But to do this you have to be able to hit this area. Consistently. And practicing on a 9 inch target does no good when you're really wanting to hit a 4 inch target.

When you have a deer in your sights, don't look at the tan skin. Look through the deer. Look into the deer. Memorize where the heart is in relationship to the front leg and aim for the heart. If you miss the heart, then you have lungs. But the lungs should not be your prime target.

We've all watched The Patriot. And you know what I'm about to say. That's right. "Aim Small-Miss Small". Nothing could be truer. I watched a show one time and a professional shooter was asked what he aimed at to make his shots. He said "I don't aim for the center. I aim for the center of the center." Brilliant!

Some will appreciate this thread. Some will reject it. But I promise that if more hunters followed these guidelines, there'd be more venison in the freezer.

 

[Omahkapi'si]

…Not to mention a humane kill.

 

[SDSmlf]

Hesitated at starting this thread. But there are a few hunting threads going on right now that make it relevant.

I'm sure some of you have seen this diagram online and some of you haven't.

This has been my go-to Bambi anatomy picture for decades. I review it each and every year. It helps me to get my bearings again. It tells me that Bambi is not some big tan thing. It tells me what's really important. It tells me what's going on inside Bambi.

This is not to pick on the guys that use paper plates as a guide to determine the size of the vitals area. It's to show that the area you really want to hit is much smaller than a paper plate. The area is the size of a softball.

The area you want to aim for is the heart. And all of the fat, juicy, bloody arteries surrounding the heart. This area is tiny. But if you put a ball through this area, that deer is dead on the spot. No tracking. No frustration. Bang-Flop. But to do this you have to be able to hit this area. Consistently. And practicing on a 9 inch target does no good when you're really wanting to hit a 4 inch target.

When you have a deer in your sights, don't look at the tan skin. Look through the deer. Look into the deer. Memorize where the heart is in relationship to the front leg and aim for the heart. If you miss the heart, then you have lungs. But the lungs should not be your prime target.

We've all watched The Patriot. And you know what I'm about to say. That's right. "Aim Small-Miss Small". Nothing could be truer. I watched a show one time and a professional shooter was asked what he aimed at to make his shots. He said "I don't aim for the center. I aim for the center of the center." Brilliant!

Some will appreciate this thread. Some will reject it. But I promise that if more hunters followed these guidelines, there'd be more venison in the freezer.

Not saying practice on ‘realistic’ targets isn’t important and helpful, but how do you get the deer/critter to stand 90° or perpendicular to you like the target?

I have seen folks use the same aim point no matter the angle the critter stood, resulting in gut shot, and non penetrating shoulder shots with arrows. Early on I put a hot loaded .440 roundball into a deer quartering to me at a little over 100 yards that didn’t make it to the vitals….

I also disagree with the heart being the main target, because in my experience, unless you destroy one or both shoulders, it’s going to run. If you are the least bit low you have an animal with a broken front leg, fatal, but not any time soon. I have see many deer that upon postmortem showed a destroyed heart than ran over 100 yards after being shot, some with arrows, others with significant caliber bullets.

Back when I taught archery hunter safety, I had a small 3D model of an anatomically correct deer with one side open. There were through holes for arrows at various angles. Got more than one golly gee moment as the students realized the importance of aiming point relative to the angle of the deer.

Personally, I aim for a point in the center of the chest just behind the front legs about a third of the way up the deer. Imagine the points on a compass and you want your bullet/roundball to pass through the center point of the compass. Or imagine a soccer ball centered between the shoulders you want your projectile to pass through the center of. As the angle changes, so does your aim point. Animals are not 2D flat paper targets.