Agreed on Drop Right the [bleep] Now shots. When they do that I'm always ready to throw another one in them. I feel much better if they take 2 steps and drop.
Those have started worrying me a bit too over the years. I put another in and get ready to a second dose.
To answer the original question, with a firearm I aim for the exit even if it means hitting a shoulder on the way in or out. With archery gear, I do tend to stay clear of the shoulder and if the angle isn't right, I don't shoot. I've "mentored" a few new hunters and one thing I stress is that that the so called perfect broadside shot is pretty much a fantasy. Pretty much alwasy (at least in my limited experience) deer are at some kind of angle to you no matter how slight. Aim accordingly.
Karma and Trouble have busses, and there's always an empty seat.
If I want to put an animal down right now with a shoulder shot, I am about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up the body, where the spine is between the shoulderblades. How far up depends on he animal.
+1
I love the high shoulder shot if I feel the need to anchor an animal in its tracks. If things look good, though, I like the double lung shot.
Last edited by seattlesetters; 03/22/11.
What could be a sadder way to end a life than to die having never hunted with great dogs, good friends and your family?
I had a very disappointing experience this fall and will give the lesson learned. I was shooting a 50 cal mzlr with a smokeless barrel, enough H4198 under a 250-grain saboted Barnes Spit Fire to give me 2200 fps; this load zeroed at 200 yds gives me about 4.5" groups at three hundred yards and at that distance they land right at the top of the heavy vertical post with the scope set at 6x.
Right after sunrise about 20 deer including a big, wide, grey muzzled, old buck worked over a ridge and into a pasture below the ridge I'm on. As the buck neared a blow down I'd lazed at ~ 200 yds and stopped I decided to take the shot and held on his right, front shoulder quartering on. The whump that came back to me sounded like a 2x4 against a mattress--he stumbled and stopped head down slightly. This deer was mine I thought and like a bonehead I watched, and watched, and watched some more..instead of stuffing the front loader again. With a centerfire I never do this always chambering another round and staying on target. The buck slowly turned around and his whole offside was covered in blood from an exit that seemed a bit high and back but which was surely and quickly going to be lethal. I watched as he slowly trudged back up to the ridge he initially came over and was gone. This is not good and I'm not happy. I quickly loaded now and in ten minutes I came over the top and jumped him out of some brush 80 yds or so below the crest. Now I was really getting concerned.
Long story short. It was 8 am and I tracked a sometimes ample blood trail--even seemingly arterial, spraying out laterally, and bright red--until 2:30 that afternoon, jumping him maybe three more times in the process. He hadn't lost a step; I just couldn't believe it. I lost the trail in a thick patch of cedars only a half mile where I had started after trailing perhaps 4 miles or so. He had simply made a big circle and was back home.
Conclusion: I believe he took a small step forward as the trigger broke. Still, I had hoped I had gotten the liver, the back part of the lungs, the aorta up against the spine, the kidneys..there's no way he survived this which greatly saddens me; yet he didn't seem at all affected and seemed to gain strength as I pushed him. I believe the bullet passed through no-man's land between the lungs and the spine, missing the aorta and forward of the liver and kidneys, perhaps getting a small pumper in some muscle that he kept open by moving.
Lesson: stop waiting for him to fall at your wonderful shot, reload the mzlr and shoot again! While I've never liked muzzleloading and the general hassle I view them as, it was my fault. I had enough time as the deer didn't see me or know where the shot came from; I simply didn't reload and shoot again.
The limited open country hunting I've done, I remember being struck by the seemingly easy post-shot logistics. Compared to 20-yard visibility in a jungle in the rain.
Or a willow/alder creekbottom where you'd be lucky to see 20 yards.
Have found lung-shot deer in those places by crawling around on my hands and knees for an hour or two. They were dead from a solid lung shot, but did the 50-yard dash.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
As both a rifle and archery hunter this is always a topic that I mull over during every season. The geometry of shot angles just can't be over emphasized and that is where bowhunting has made me a better rifle hunter.
Since I value every ounce of meat from an animal, I try to avoid shoulder (bone impact) shots when possible, but if that's the best shot afforded to me, then that's what they get. Animals with either lungs or heart missing tend to expire relatively quickly, but I've never had the opportunity to shoot a mountain goat so the need to anchor one in it's tracks is outside of my realm of experience.
Quick story regarding deer dropping in their tracks. I was guiding my dad a couple of years ago for elk when we had a monster mule deer wander up the opposite ridge line. I had a tag in my pocket and my dad was pushing me to shoot. We ranged the distance at 426 and I was carrying a .270. I shoot that distance about 3 times a month so I felt good, but not with that gun. I decided to take the shot and that buck dropped like a sack of rocks. I shucked another shell in the chamber and tried to get on him, but he was defiladed behind some rocks and all could see was this gigantic set of horns sticking up.
I was pretty excited but we kept an eye on him for about 20 minutes before we decided to get horseback. We had to ride around the canyon to get to him so it was going to be a 20-30 minute ride. We took off on our horses and about the time we made it to the canyon terminus, I checked back through my glasses to make sure he was still down, only to see his darn head trying to raise up.
We high-tailed it as fast as we could to get another shot, but we were still over 500 yards out when he jumped up. I jerked my rifle out of the scabbard and fired off-hand which had the same effect as throwing a stick his direction.
Needless to say, that would have been my biggest deer to date (well over 200 inches according the estimates of both my dad and I). I looked for him for 4 straight days and never found him. I've got a cattle permit for the area and every year while working cattle I look around for a really big rack and what's left of his carcass.
Even now I get sick to my stomach thinking about it. I wish I had not pulled that trigger.
I shot a pretty big 8 pointer in Missouri last fall, at about 130 yards or so, almost a broadside picture shot. I hit both shoulders with the .270/130, but he didn't even flinch, he just took off down a lane into a cedar thicket. I was sure of the shot, so I idled on down that way, giving him some time. I could see up the other side of the hill, so I knew he hadn't gone West, or south, and doubted strongly he'd go north, either. He didn't, he'd gone halfway down the hill, just pushing himself with his hind legs. I found him with a muddy face, and grass intertwined in his rack. Nice deer. We took the tractor to him, and picked him up with the frontend loader. It's nice to hunt farmground.
You can roll a turd in peanuts, dip it in chocolate, and it still ain't no damn Baby Ruth.
