Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Running dead…

Shot one last weekend. Hit on side shoulder, heart, exit. The heart was actually off when I gutted it. Deer made it about 30 yards somehow.

A heart shot is a heart/lung shot. A lung shot is just that. If the heart is circulating blood there is O2 at the cellular level. If the heart is taken the cells must survive on present O2. If the lungs only are taken there is a residual oxygenated blood supply available to be circulated, though limited.

The net projected effect is a heart/lung shot animal will travel further than a lung only shot animal. That’s also my personal experience with exceptions. And it is a redneck version of oxygenation any pulmonologist here is welcome to critique.

Or just a high lung shot at the rear of the shoulder. Bangs the spinal cord, most likely damages the dorsal aorta, and they just can’t recover before deoxygenation shuts down the brain. Drop at the shot. Wife shot a 185# buck this morning right there with a 7/08 120 BT over 40gr RL15. Not a hot rod at all.

I shot a big buck last Saturday at 35 yards. Slightly quartering away, 160 gr. Nosler Partition from a 7x57R. Took out the top 1/3 of his heart. He ran about 65 yards…

I think the fastest way to kill them outside of a CNS shot is keeping it below the equator, in front of the diaphragm and leaving the heart intact. That gives the best blood trails as the pump works against them.

One thing I’ve noticed with heart shots is that very often the blood trail is chunky or gritty, for lack of a better term. Not congealed blood, but solid. Almost like bloody relish or sawdust…I don’t know if that’s because the damaged heart comes out with the blood or if the heart releases a protein that coagulates. But I’ve seen multiple heart shot deer have that.

Simply put if a deer runs off after I shoot, I screwed the shot up.

Hunting in north AL yesterday evening, just trying to fill the freezer. Shot a doe standing broadside at 110 yds. 7X57 with 140 gr Sierra Pro Hunter (MV 2840 fps). Expected her to drop dead. She ran.

I ran out of daylight searching for her and had to return later with help and flashlights.

Found her almost 200 yds from where she'd stood. Had hit her exactly where I was aiming. Field dressing revealed the top third of the heart and both lungs were trashed. Hard to believe she'd made it that far with that injury.

It happens, though. I don't consider that shot a screw up.

I Agree. Rio7

"Simply put if a deer runs off after I shoot, I screwed the shot up" - could not disagree more! I shoot for the boiler room (heart/lungs), my experience most deer shot here run 50-75 yards, they are dead, just don't know it yet. My objective is for a clean, humane kill with no wasted meat if it can be avoided, in interest in blowing out the shoulder. Most deer shot in chest cavity are going to run a bit but that's ok.

i used to shoot deer in the shoulder or behind the shoulder about 1/3 of the way up. i killed them DRT and after they ran (15 to 25 yards is average). i had one doe that managed to go 300+ yards after the shot, it was behind the shoulder, 1/3 of the way up. i was using a 243 Winchester and 85gr Barnes X-bullet and i think IMR4831. the doe was 35ish yards away and the shot was right on the money, but she ran. there was little to no blood to track her, a drop or two every 40 - 50 yards. it snowed 2 or 3" so tracking was easy. the way she ran tho, was a mix of mountain laurel, huge spruce trees and jagged green vines. i found her and dressed her. the bullet was a failure, it never opened up, just a pin hole sized side thru the doe. it was the last time i shot a 243.

my son was using 7x57 and 139gr Hornady FN with IMR3031 and he shot doe at 25ish yards. it was a bad shot, instead of behind the shoulder, it was shot 1/2 way up in the bottom part of the lungs, diaphragm and liver. the doe then ran into the brush. there was blood galore, so i tracked it and found it there dead. 125ish yards was its last run.

normally i shoot behind the shoulder and some are DRT and some go, but i always find them.

Unless legs or spine are taken out, an animal will run until the brain is no longer receiving blood. It could be a few seconds or ten seconds. Every animal uses those seconds differently. Hit only one lung and they can go a far piece.

If the animal goes more than 100yards, then I consider I screwed the shot up.

Shot a fat doe in October, 60 yds., was with a buck. 7-08 120 Gr TTSX. Hit her in the shoulder, she just stood there for 7-8 seconds and then keeled over. Buck tried to wake her up, was not happy with her.
Dead broadside shoulder shot, exited out the middle of her body, a funky journey. Zero steps

Our problem with tracking a hit Critter is this whole place is sugar sand with heavy brush, and it has snowed here twice in the last 125 years and the snow was gone by 10:00 am, that's why we use tracking dogs and favor DRT. Rio7

And....anything off the senderos in that brush will either stick you, scratch you or even bite you.

RL, Very True-------Rio7

I have shot a couple in the heart with some big caliber guns. 450 Marlin and 45-70. Both loaded with top end charges under 300 JHP. Neither one drops them where they stand if you don't shoot through both lungs. The double lung shot is always the best. But in my case I had to shoot low as that was the only shot presented.
I have had similiar experiences with archery. Lung shots result in much shorter travel after the hit.
The heart shot stops blood flow so until all of the oxygen in their blood stream is depleated and they lose consciousness, they can run. The lungs keep working until the very end.
The double lung shot created more of a hydo-shock which crushes the lungs and imparts a great shock to the nervous system. No blood circulation so their system shuts down sooner if not immediately due to the damage.
A high speed bullet causes two types of damage. There is the permanent damage done by the patch of the bullet. There is also the temporary "cavity" damage done by the effect of that high speed bullet hitting the soft body tissue which is mosty water. Think of it as a balloon suddenly inflated inside of the ribcage. The pressure forces the lungs to compress and collapse, destroying their function.

In case that was too much info... double lung shot is the best.

I hunted the King a few years ago…I don’t know if you agree with my experience, as I have only a handful of deer and about 12 pigs in it, but that sugar sand does not make for easy blood trailing. I would have thought white, fluffy sand would be easy. I left feeling very thankful for the ground where I typically hunt.

On a run, the deer's legs and movement are somewhat circulating the blood after the heart is shot. Lungs are still working. They can cover lots of ground in 10-20 seconds

Petro,

Our east gate is about 15 miles West of the Encino Gate of the King Ranch, pretty much the same here ocean bottom sand, only rocks on this ranch were hauled in to build with it's not like tracking in snow. Rio7

Yes thick dense muscle, which is why above the heart in a way is better, opens up those arteries which the still functioning heart pumps all the blood out of.

Myself, I've moved my bullet placement up. I don't like losing the meat, but while I'm a VERY good tracker all things considered, I'm colorblind and can't blood track unless it's ropes of blood. Try as I might, I can't. Even in snow, unless the snow is deep, I can't tell blood drops from mud drops. My nephew shot a doe last week, and while we could see it dead 50-60 yards away, for practice we "tracked" it. He was picking up leaves with blood drops and showing them to me, asking if I could see them. I can see the drop (when he showed them to me), but I'd never pick it out on the leaf floor of the forest. I was pointing out the disturbed leaves way ahead of him, which way and where the deer had gone, which was lost on him, be spotted all the blood, little as there was, of which I saw none.

I want to create a large sucking chest wound and anything forward of the diaphragm with a good size exit wound should do that. If the animal can't pull a vacuum in their chest cavity (pneumothorax) they can't breathe and will die from asphyxiation. Just dying from blood loss alone (exsanguination) would take way longer. Too hard a bullet on too small an animal doesn't create a large enough sucking chest wound entry or exit wound to cause as rapid a death as a softer bullet IMO.

A couple years back, I shot a deer in the neck and broke it's neck. I went to it right away and it was still kicking it's back legs though it was clinically dead. I asked a doctor how that could happen and she said that a body doesn't die all at the same time. Interesting.