You could always aim for the shoulder and get lucky by spining him, right Wildone?
still trying to figure out how you accomplished that , but hey it worked that time !
I got one that way once, using a 250 gr .338 mag slug. He was running flat out at 150 yards, straight away.
When he hooked to the left I got him quartering away, high through the shoulder blade nearside, and out the base of the neck farside, pulverizing about 6 inches of spine in between.Tthe spine takes a dip right there, but I was actually trying for a little lower and farther back, for both lungs. His momentum took him another 20 feet or so, out into 16 inches of water and muck lakeside, which was what I was trying to prevent (there wasn't that much thought process in that split second, when he hooked the "wrong" way from what I was expecting - I should have waited until he was on dry ground on the far side of that little neck connecting the two larger lakes).
I put an insurance round into the back of his head ( well placed I thought) from several yards away after walking up on him, placed the rifle against a birch sapling well back from the bank, and went out into the lake to get him out of there (It was a yearling forkhorn). When I grabbed his antler to start turning him around back toward the bank, he blinked at me.
Oh yes, I remember that bull quite well!