Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Where do you shoot a deer in the neck?

+1, though I don't understand it.

I prefer to shoot a deer when it is standing towards me, looking at me and aim between the eyes. Having about 12 inches of vertical forgiveness is nice.



behind the ear works also and there seems to be a fair range of forgiveness here.



I am not saying that a neck shot is as forgiving as a lung shot, just that is you're comfortable with taking it, they have always dumped deer in their tracks for me.

ive shot a chit ton of deer in the neck. my ol man too. infact, i bet more then 90% of both our deer are head or neck shots. i think because we always draw on the head first to see what its wearing for horns or if any and then just drop a few inches and sqeeze. it happens that fast up here more often then not when still hunting or tracking. on running game we def shoot for the body but standing and bedded usually get it in the neck. we both carry 35 whelens, 350 rem mags, 375 winchester or 35 rem and '06. never once had one even quiver but i have heard lots of folks having issues w/ neck shots. the moose my ol man got this year was a neck shot and he went down hard and fast. he was in a trot, a quick glance through the scope at the rack to make sure it was a shooter and down a few inches and kerpowzo! lights out. i remeber always asking dad why he shot his deer in the head and neck all my little kid days of tagging along and now i find myself doing the same thing......??

10-4. You ever see how fast a deer can jerk it's head/neck up or around? I've seen a couple deer having a rough time of it without lower jaws. My guns are almost 3 in. high at 100 yds to be dead on at 300. I don't need the aggravation of getting a piece of windpipe only. I do like to head shoot squirrels though, with a .22.

I shoot what is offered

All I could see was a softball size pc of his neck. Core Lokt exited the nuts. He rolled over

They ain't always broadside at a feeder

Little fellas can pick a spot too�

Biggest mistake I ever made by not shooting a buck in the neck resulting me passing the biggest buck I ever had a chance on in my life, a 180" 8 pt monster....I had him at 65 yds with my muzzleloader in the scope only just his head and neck....I already had him mounted in my head and didnt want to ruin the cape so I didnt shoot figuring he would give me a better shot only he turned 180 degrees and walked off in line with a large tree.....regrets.

Btw, the reason I know he was 180" is the neighbor hit it with his truck a few days later.

I like a neck roast too much to plunk them in the neck.

I poke the neck quite a bit... the older I get

If you can bust some spine, you'll be just fine

I have shot many, many deer in the neck--it's the preferred shot for research/collecting/culling. I aim to hit the second vertebra below the joint between the skull and the spine. A hit in this area ruins very little, if any, meat. I have collected deer (and shot deer for my own table) with this hold using cartridges ranging from .222 Rem Mag to .30-06. The vast majority were taken with either the .222 mag, a .223 or a .22-250.

My wife likes this shot with her .280 and 140 Partitions, as there is no bloodshot meat to trim. It is a shot that neither of us routinely takes without a solid field rest. However, I have taken a handful of deer this way, off-hand, that were within 70 yards or less.

ditto

I usually shoot does in the neck to preserve all of the meat. Never had one take a single step.

Lungs do destroy the least meat, but it seems that a lot of our does around here don't pack enough beef in the neck area to worry about a roast. Some burger grindings are a given. I can usually get some good neck meat off most mature bucks, although I'm much more likely to take whatever killing shot I'm offered.

The nanny on the back rack was shot in the neck at maybe 25yds, and I doubt there was much of a roast to be lost, as her chicken-neck was fairly similar to the one on the front rack.

My take on this is that if you actually debone a half neck while its on the carcass, you find that the neck has spine in center as it dips out of the back, trying to get to the center of the neck low, and then as it snakes up to the head it transitions much higher as it has to enter the back side of the skull. So you have a long skinny target, basically about 1.5 to 2 inches wide that is in variable location depending on WHERE you shoot in the neck. I can hit it each time at any angle or place since I study anatomy and process my own deer, and many of them at a time often due to hunting in groups of friends and family. But for those that don't study, its a harder target than you think and there is room for error. Of course a fragmenting bullet can help, but PDS noted using a sierra, I'm guessing game king, and I've seen those pencil through a couple of times so nothing is perfect.

OTOH if you have to have DRT, the brain presents a ROUND target, often 4 plus inches in size. And if you take a head shot like I do, I've never seen one messed up. I simply watch them feed and when they pick their head up to look, I put the crosshairs on the center, and then let them move down to graze again, and then I make a noise to alert them, when that head comes up two things happen, first its going to stay there for 4-5 seconds, and it doesn't take but about 1-2 max for me to shoot, and second, the head pops up right where the crosshairs were already waiting, safety off, finger on trigger... bang. Plus I"m aiming at a round target that has a decent size. So I don't have to worry about angle of shot basically, round is still round and center of that is dead.

Now I do 2 other things that I used to not do. I shoot enough gun, as I"ve noticed that folks taht have messed up in the past, had they shot something more like a 308, their shots that missed the brain by an inch, would have shattered the skull anyway had it been a large enough round. We have used a 300wtby custom of mine for a LOT of heads. YOu have room to err there just in case. And I tend to err towards not quite center but high center, that way IF they'd actually move for some reason, they can't raise their head more and me get a low shot, i'd rather miss high than hit low. That being said many have said they've finished wounded head shots and I can't count how many I've done, teh wife, friends etc... and I've never seen one lost ever. 2 that I can think of, one just this past Jan we had to follow because my friend didn't do the shot properly, and we had to track her a bit and shoot her again. Not unlike muffed ribcage shtos though.

ALl that being said, long skinny target vs round centered target of the brain, I still take a lot of lung shots over anything else. With a non BT type bullet you don't even waste much rib meat if any to speak of. And its a bigger still target.

The bottom line if you are going to take a neck or head shot then study the actual anatomy(you'd be surprised when I taught hunter ed how many couldn't place bone or vital structure on a deer picture that we used... even folks that had hunted all their lives....) and make sure you are 200% sure of whatever shot you choose before you pull the trigger.

Good luck, Jeff

Any drawings or pictures of where the spine runs through the neck?

Somewhere I have a carass shot but I don't know if I can find it today to post, I"ll see.

There are some pics on the net if you search, I've seen them posted before.

phuggin photo bucket editors.... I gotta send them a nasty email.... removing some pics from MY album because they had blood... what idiots... But here goes... string is where the spinal column is.


the hair at the top of this one is top of neck at about C2/3 or so, showing how high the spine has to jump to get to the back of the skull at C1. The double string is hit between the strings ant its dead... throat on left, top of neck on right, and you can see part of ear on right.... second single string is layed out to the left on the cartoid artery/juglar to show thats also a vital hit, but miss by anything and you hit esophagus/windpipe/flesh and no vital hit.


I'll get an argument over the string here, but any larger caliber hit inside the string will hit the brain or shatter the skull such that the deer is dead by trauma ... bottom string got a bit low, should be line of that twisty...