Obviously if someone is asking about breaking down or is my setup good enough for a shoulder shot, they are asking about bone.
And obviously as in my examples 'shoulder' the meat, covers much more than bone.
We have an elk camp on national forest while hunting the rez, at the same time there are Jr elk hunts in that state unit. Couple years ago a father with his son and son's friend were camped next to us. We have a large and family friendly camp and invariably most other hunters stop in and visit.
The father was somewhat physically challenged, in poor shape. His 15 year old son had a tag and the friend along for the trip, their first ever hunt. They needed help.
I told the father to take them out friday, the first day and if not successful I would take the boys into a roadless area saturday morning and kill a cow. That's how it turned out.
Driving and walking in we talked about lots of stuff, 40 years apart but they were going to the same highschool I did and on the football team. I also talked about shot placement... follow the front of the leg up above middle and shoot the shoulder.. no need to complicate it with long explanations.
A mile in we see a herd, work around for an ambush, a cow walks out at 50 yds, stands there broadside, young man is aiming, shoots, cow runs over a little rise, we walk over and she's dead.
I shot her in the shoulder just like you said!
Yes you did, great job!
And we packed her out listening to those boys retell the story again and again.
The shot was well back but still double lunged, if I had told him to shoot low in the armpit for the heart it would have been a gut shot.
Kent
