Calvin- you are just plain wrong. The painless, shock value thing notwithstanding - assuming it's even true. Who's to know?.
The ideal is instant or near instant death with minimal wasted meat - but this isn't a perfect world.
I go for the surest, quickest death possible under the circumstances. The animal deserves it, and if I lose a little meat, so be it. It is, admittedly, a sliding scale, depending on existing situation/placement opportunity offered.... sometimes it is a CNS shot, sometimes it's the old boiler room shot.
I favor CNS shots when acceptable, and "boiler room" shots as secondary at close range or primary at longer ranges in more open country. Or on fast moving animals at any range.
I lost most of my respect for Jack O'Conner after reading "Sheep, and Sheep Hunting" in which he relates how he - not once, but twice, deliberately shot animals in the ass to "slow them down to where I could come up on them" - once on a big horn, once on a mule deer. A "Texas Heart Shot" with a premium bullet is one thing- deliberately shooting an animal through the hams as he did to "slow him down until I could come up on him" is another thing altogether. Besides, with a single sheep hunt under my belt, the only use I got out of the book was the technical stuff on sheep species, ranges, and distribution- he had nothing to teach me I hadn't learned for myself on my very first hunt, and I wasn't agreement then, or now, 40 years later, on a couple of his hunting pointers.
There may be a lot of folks here who may disagree with part or all of what I subscribe to, but they ain't me.
Kill them as quick as possible, and with the most certain recovery, and discount necessary meat loss. But don't discount unnecessary meat loss either.
I say this as a meat hunter, who generally shoots the first available legal animal which offers me a killing shot- any killing/securing shot, but I'll take the best certain compromise offered with minimal suffering- assuming I have two or more options. Gut, ham, etc. shots are simply not acceptable, whether or not one is certain of eventual recovery.
