I have always passed up "brush shots" based on articles such as those cited above.
This was reinforced four years ago hunting elk in Colorado. I was able to take a solid rest on a fence post for a shot at a large bull elk about 150 yards away uphill. At the shot, the bull gave a large jump and scrambled away through the aspens. I thought sure that he was hit soid through the lungs. After trailing him over two miles to boundary of the ranch (there was a few inches of fresh snow on the ground), I had to give up. I could find no sign of blood and nor hair.
I went back to my fence post and looked up the hill to see if something could have caused my bullet to go astray. About ten yards in front of me on the line with my shot was a twig about the size of a thick pencil hanging by a thread of bark. It was about the last ten inches of the trunk clipped off of a a small sapling. It was invisible in my scope. I don't know where the 180 grain Scirocco went, but it sure didn't hit the elk...
Fast forward to the next September in Namibia. My PH, our tracker and I were following a group of kudu that contained one bull that looked pretty good. At some point, he left the group and ended up about 80 yards away, about 90 degrees from our line of travel. He stopped right behind a rather dense shrub, with his head and the front of his neck clear and only a bit of his rear end visible. The shrub was a little taller than his back line.
The PH set up the sticks and said, "Shoot where you think his shoulder will be". I shook my head. He said urgently, "Go on, it's the only shot you'll get". So, I shrugged and lined up on what I thought would be his shoulder and fired. As the rifle came down out of recoil, I saw the bull vanish in the brush. I was crestfallen, but the PH and the tracker assured me that he was hit hard.
Sure enough, we found him about 45-50 yards away, dead as a hammer. The 260 grain AccuBond smashed through his near shoulder and blew the heart to bits. It exited just behind the far shoulder, so we didn't recover it. I attribute our success to luck. I figure that this incident used up all of mine when it comes to "brush shooting"!
