Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 9 second death?

3 of the last 4 I've shot with my 308 have dropped in their tracks: 2 direct heart shots and one head shot.

the other was a double lung and he went only about 20 yards.

none were on alert, 3 were grazing thru a field and the other was right behind a doe (so he may have been distracted )

I miss reading 'ol Herne from the UK from that other forum. He seemed kind of surprised that when he went from the 140's out of his 6.5 to the faster 129's that he got quicker kills. Softer bullets kill deer quicker because they destroy more tissue. Most of my deer have run because I was using heavy for caliber bullets to guarantee an exit wound. Then I lost a nice one using a TSX, so I'm in the softer cup & core bullet camp now. Whitetails are only about a foot across through the brisket, so I want something that opens fast with enough weight to penetrate.

Sometimes animals fall from pure rib/lung shots, and sometimes they don't. In my experience, including a number of cull hunts in various places around the globe, bullets that disintegrate more kill quicker with such shots, and the percentage of instant drops also rises. The quickest killer I've used is the Berger Hunting VLD, regardless of initial or impact velocity.

Have also yet to use ANY hunting cartridge that always drops deer-sized game on impact with rib/lung shots, whether ultra-velocity rounds or bigger cartridges up to the .375's. Haven't used anything larger on that size of game, however, so maybe a .416, .458 or .577 will do the job.

Will also note that Betsy Spomer, wife of my friend and fellow writer Ron, dropped a Cape buffalo instantly with a lung shot--using a .375 H&H. So apparently there isn't any totally firm rule about any of this.

I'm not going to take the time OR the space now but I have several pix from the last few yrs.

Head, Neck, Hi shoulder (spine) shots. I have YET to see ONE move ANY part of their body.

I'm NOT saying it has not happened. I have seen too many Instant Dirt Naps......it doesn't take MUCH time.

I've had heart and double lung shot deer drop dead and never flinch and I have had them run a quarter mile.

You described CNS shots.
There's a big difference between CNS shots and hear/lung shots.

These two things may have a lot to do with the consistency of his results.


Okie John

If my math is correct then a deer running at 20mph for 9 sec would cover about 96 yards. Does that sound about right?

Interesting to see that I"ve made probably as many if not more head shots than most hunters, and you can still see them breathing a bit, hair stands up, hair falls down, heart beats until it runs out of blood and so on.

On high shoulder spine shots, they can move even more.

One head shot my wife made the deer was doing back flips for a few seconds, no top of head left actually, just an ear and thats about it really.

I'm just going to bet that you don't observe after the shot immediately and with a higher power scope or binocs... I tend to run a few higher power scopes, you go bang, rack the bolt and stay on the deer for usually about a minute just in case.

Obviously we are getting some differing results, but its weird I'm seeing what I"m seeing, and you aren't seeing anything.

Well, you'd LOSE that bet. I always stay on the sticks.....watching. I have PIX of several DEAD deer and you SEE the blood where they fell.
It's easy to post quite a few PIX of deer SINCE 2012. If you want to see them, I'll do it.


I can't prove that they didn't run or even take a step..... but they have NOT.

All my scopes are 4-12 X 40 except 1 --- 3-9,

We DO have differing experiences. These are mine.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

? Hit in the heart and both lungs and ran 440 yards? What caliber, weight and speed of bullet? What bullet? I did have some hogs shot high in the chest with a .30-06 155 grain Scenar and run off a long ways on a high hit below the spine. Don't believe I would call those shots necessarily heart/lug shots. Seem to do better with other bullets like Speer Hot-cor. Win Power point, SST and my daughter uses Nosler Partition to good effect. If deer are shot in heart and or lungs with those bullets they will be down pdq.

Well, "The current men's world record for the 100 yard dash is 9.58 seconds, set by Jamaica's Usain Bolt in 2009."; so I figure maybe a deer could do the same! Besides nobody was shooting at Usain Bolt ! Maybe the starter's pistol startled him!

In my experience, deer usually live long enough to effortlessly dash approximately 2/3 of the way down whatever canyon I am hunting in. That normally takes just a few seconds. Dragging them out the exact same distance takes a laborious 4-6 hours.

I have shot abut one out of three deer as head shots across a lifetime of hunting. Over the last fifteen years I started shooting for just the brain stem. I did this because often enough a brain shot lets them flop and lash around which can get you messy when you shoot them right under your stand. Brain stem shots seem to stop all that pretty well. I have observed in maybe1/3 to 1/2 of the brain stem shots that after a couple minutes legs will sort of male a slow walking type movement. Usually only one or two legs, and only one or two "steps". The way it's been timed, I suspect it's just the muscles running out of oxygen. I have never sen a brain stem shot deer lash around.

I think 9 seconds is about it with a fatal heart/lung shot from a rifle. A little more for arrow shot deer. For shots that drop blood pressure to zero instantly that in my experience has allowed a run of up to 200 yards. The hardest to get my head around was one that made it a little over a mile after I put an arrow (4 blade broadhead, 3 inches of cut and all 4 blades did open on the way in) through both lungs and bled so well I could follow the blood as fast as I could walk. Sometimes you don't get the expected result or a means to explain what you did get.

What a colossal waste of hunting opportunities.

rost,

most likely the autonomic nervous system at work with what you're seeing. I don't doubt you a bit. The brain may be dead, but there are a lot of parts in the body that don't need signals from the bridge to keep operating.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=autonomic+nervous+system&t=ffsb&ia=web

Hence, the term "brain dead".

Differing results in killing things for sure.

Geno

A number of years ago there were a couple of French guys who did some ammunition testing. They shot hundreds of goats in controlled conditions with [handguns] . I believe they recorded and commented on every shot. Heart shot goats either lived and continued functioning for several seconds or they collapsed instantly. Post-mortems were conducted on EVERY animal. The animals that collapsed instantly showed severe brain hemorrhaging, the ones who lived 9 seconds (I just inserted that number validate this post) had no such hemorrhaging. The researchers concluded that when they hit the heart, the condition of the heart (which chamber was full of blood) determined the quickness of death. When the ventricle was full, it sent a shock wave to the brain, when emtpy, it didn't.

I had to read through this whole research paper as we were selecting duty ammo for our department. Bottom line, if you take heart shots, you have no control over whether it is the proverbial bang-flop or a death run.

9 seconds to death, sounds right to me.

Shot one yesterday eve. 4 blade broad head, quartering away, head down. In 4-6 inches behind shoulder. Cut 3-4 ribs, passed just above heart. Down instantly kicking and flopping quiet about 10 second later.

The Strassburg Goat “test” was debunked a long time ago. It’s a fabrication from Marshall and Sanow to back up their nonsense about “one shot stops”.

See Martin Fackler, Gary Roberts, etc.