Ok, I am going to chime in here.
First, a high shoulder shot IS a CNS shot.
Second, if you don't hit CNS with something, then you will never get a reliable DRT animal. PERIOD. Even the "I shot it behind the shoulder and I got a DRT" shots, if you do a good necropsy, you will find that a piece of bullet or bone hit the CNS. All mammals are built such that they can take a good amount of abuse to their internal organs and still function for a while. You have to sever the connection between the brain and those organs in order to get a "lights out, right now" effect..
This is not true.
I have killed several deer that were DRT with a bow. Those deer had untouched CNS. They did not die instantly either.. Two hit the ground and died within seconds, one took a minute or two.
I have killed at least 8 deer in the last few years with an arrow that died within five seconds of being hit and none of them were CNS shots. Five seconds of life after impact can allow a deer to cover considerable ground. Five seconds of life to bleed one out completely can also be accompanied by zero blood trail or, a very, very sparse one. I have killed a number of them by driving a broadhead down through just above the sternum which runs it through the heart and the out near the umbilicus. That usually hits a little of one or both lungs, and regardless of broad head it would have to produce very similar results. At least one would think so. Yet, in my experience the results are neither better nor worse than typical behind the shoulder shots, but did produce one DRT. I have passed arrows and bullets just above the heart severing the vessels and leaving the heart loose in the chest, which should for all intents and purposes be equivalent to hitting the heart, yet the results have been inconsistent.
I have seen a couple deer shot in the skull with rifles that it looked like the legs kept moving for a coupe of strides. I don't know as that would fall into DRT category since those deer both were running as fast as they could at impact and they quit moving a good 30 feet past impact. I have seen deer hit in the head which more ore less evacuated the brain box but they went down and lashed around enough that they might not qualify as DRT, having moved 20-30 feet from impact.
The only hits which I have seen which have thus far been 100% DRT have all been brain stem shots which uniformly caused a sort of slow motion head drop followed by the body. Those hits also have shown me legs moving after a minute or so, but that was not with any speed or force and I just assume it was lack of oxygen induced. and had no chance of moving the deer.
