Shooting deer in the shoulder. Need some info and experience.

[thallub]

I've talked to some guys around here who do dog tracking for wounded deer. They universally tell that every hunter is CERTAIN that they made a PERFECT shot right through the lungs/heart.... the physics of the obvious dictate otherwise... and when the deer are found, they're NEVER the "perfect" shot. If they were, you wouldn't need a dog tracker.

This.

i track 15-20 wounded deer and elk every year. i often use one of two wire haired Dachshunds that belong to a friend who is too old to track. About half the hunters who make a bad shot will fess up. The others lie, of course. One guy told me that the very nice buck i recovered 1/2 mile from where it was shot was not his deer because he double lunged his deer: It was gut shot, of course.

i like the vivid tales of double lunged deer going long distances after being shot.

[Saltydog235]

High shoulder where the spine dips back down to the blades. You hit the scapula (I think thats the proper term) and 95% of the time they won't take another step. Blows up the spine and DRT. I killed two does this past weekend, one with a .243 and the other a .308. Both dropped right there, the .243 cause a little death throw action but the .308 was a DRT no flinch dead shot. Doe's get the high shoulder or eyeball shots.

[Toney]

Tracking down a deer is almost the funnest part of hunting. I've lost a couple of deer, but i was'nt for not looking for them. I will get down on all 4s and crawl leaving gloves hats jackets and when that fails i'll go get help. One of my girls will always pick up the trail agian.
Yeah i Knocked one down one late opening day with my 270 and rolled it. Looked down to catch my brass, looked up and my deer was running off!!! Got down there and there was a fist size pice of liver and LOTS of blood. Never found another drop, i looked untill my batterys went dead then drove to town to get the wife and daughter and a coleman lantern and more lights. I think someone got it while i was gone. Some one had shot at the one that run off after i shot mine.

[Brian Pfleuger]

I'm not sure I agree about the fun, but tracking well hit deer is not hard.

I've tracked deer on which I made bad shots, under VERY difficult situations. I have literally crawled on my belly through stuff I wouldn't think a rabbit could get in, much less a deer. I have slugged through swamps where you sink up to your waist if you make a wrong step. I've tracked them in rain on my hands and knees for hundreds of yards looking for blood on plants and trees and the ground.

However, I've also tracked LITERALLY dozens of well hit deer and we've NEVER had a substantial problem finding them. These are deer hit with everything from bows to 12ga slugs, both traditional and sabot of many brands, rifles and muzzleloaders.

There's a simple truth... If you get beyond roughly 150 yards, that deer is NOT "well hit". "Well hit" means both lungs or/and the heart. Even the 150 distance is a flat out, full run and very unusual in my experience.

Having no blood pressure and/or taking their last breath immobilizes an animal in VERY short time.

I don't care how perfect a shot looked or felt or how much the shooter *KNOWS* it was a perfect shot. If that deer goes beyond that rough 150 yard range, it was NOT a perfect shot. Either the shooter or the bullet failed. Most often, it's not the bullet.

[Todd1700]

I'm willing to bet you did not get both lungs with the .243.

Agreed. A deer shot through both lungs is not going real far. In my experience typically less than 100 yards. I don't care what kind of pattern a deer runs or what the terrain is like, you should be able to find a double lunged deer. I have also helped trail a lot of difficult to find deer that a friend or family member thought were well hit only to discover when we finally found it that the hit wasn't so great after all. If that has been the case in 100% of the difficult blood trails that ended with us finding the deer, then I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's probably the case in the ones were we didn't find the deer as well.

That said, a 130 Cor-Lokt out of a 270 should kill any whitetail you shoot in the shoulder. But just be aware that it will also destroy a lot of the shoulders if you plan to use that meat for anything. Some people could care less about shoulder meat but I like to make hamburger or sausage out of it. Good luck.

[Todd1700]

If you get beyond roughly 150 yards, that deer is NOT "well hit

I'd agree with that statement.

[deermaster]

How did I know they were good hits? Frothy bright blood, just not much at all...very very little. It dosnt lie, that is a lung hit, either directly from the wound or blown outta the deer's mouth or nose. I never said they went over or under any certain distance, I said they got in woods thick enough to make a rabbit nervous, and I lost the blood trail. I also said I wanted to know about making a shot that would drop a deer near instantly, and did not want this to turn into a tracking or caliber war. The .243 kills, and kills fast, I had 4 deer in the freezer as proof of that. But a little bigger and a little different shot placement may kill even quicker. Its not rocket science.

[Brian Pfleuger]

Well, there's a lot more to be said but that's just an argument.

You're right, it's not rocket science, I'll keep it simple.

A 270 isn't going to change your fortunes. Deer are not hard to kill. If you want to shoot for the shoulder, do it. A 243 will kill them just as quick as a 270 and a 270 won't kill them if a 243 wouldn't on the same shot.

It really is that simple. Shot placement is all that matters. When there's a problem, it's shot placement, not cartridge choice.

[Sarge]

I started shoulder shooting about 30 years ago; using handguns was the impetus for that decision. As has been menioned above, a high shot gets the spine. Centering the shoulder knuckle is good and I dropped a nice forkhorn on his chin with a 30-30 in that manner, at nearly 240 yards. A slightly low shot still gets the heart. This is with broadside or slightly angled presentation. If the deer is facing me, I try to center the neck at the top of the shoulders, and this has worked much better for me than the center of the thoracic cavity. Angling away, I slip one through the ribs in line with the off shoulder if possible. Straight away, I will only shoot if I'm above the deer and can see the crease down the spine. I have somersaulted them by slipping a 44 or 45 SWC into that crease.

I have cleanly killed deer in this manner with everything from the .40 S&W, through the heavy .44's & .45's, the old 30-30, 7 Mauser, (original rolling block) 308's and the '06. In fact the only deer I had to track any distance was a high double-lunged doe that I puched with a 44/300/XTP at an honest 1300 fps. She went damn near 270 yards down a drywash, spraying blood everywhere along the way. Sometimes they just won't lay down until the brain shuts off.

Yes, I've lost a couple of well hit deer, in the big 80-100 yard wide thorn thickets common to MO crop land. Yes, I can track. If you shoot enough deer, sooner or later you will lose one. It sucks when it happens but it's part of the game. We still must do our best to shoot well, use enough gun and hone our tracking skills whenever possible.

PS- On ruining meat... I always got more meat from the deer I found than the deer I lost. I don't use any uber-high-velocity cartridges though and I always used common old hunting bullets in my rifles, and the same or SWC's in my revolvers.

[603Country]

I spoke up early in this chat and I forgot to mention the biggest reason that I shoot deer right behind the shoulder. When I used to hunt back in Louisiana, and back before range finders, I would often get long shots where I'd have to guesstimate the range and do it quickly. If you aim just behind the shoulder and at or slightly below the spine, you have about 15 to 18 inches of kill zone below the aim point. With a 270, that gives you about 350 to 375 yards with the bullet still in the kill zone. That has always worked pretty good for me. And as for the bullets, I'm a Nosler Ballistic Tip user, but I'd be perfectly happy with CoreLokt, or SST's, or Sierra Gamekings or several others. No need for the really expensive bullets. They'll all do the job if you do your job. And my opinion on the 243 is that it's marginal for deer hunting. It'll do, but the 270 is far better for the purpose. If I thought there was an obviously better cartridge for deer hunting, I'd park the 270 and buy the other cartridge. The 280 Remington is a good one. The 6.5-06 is a good one, as is the 25-06.

[huntinaz]

Something to think about...a high lung shot will clip the top of the lungs but not hit major vasculature or spine, and only partially deflates the lungs. So the deer can travel a long way before it dies. This may be what happened. I've decided that I'm sold on shoulder shots for a few reasons. One, if you break a shoulder, that animal is going to have real trouble running away. Another reason is that the heart and aorta are mostly behind the shoulder. If you don't break bone, your hitting heart/aorta which is better than the lungs any day. Also, if you miss a little it's usually still a good shot. A few inches wide and you're in the lungs instead of guts etc.

I will admit that I so not have much experience with these shots yet. But it makes sense. The down side as people have mentioned is the loss of meat. But I have a color blindness where I'm not so good at seeing green/red. I can't see blood on leaves/ground. I just can't see it unless there is snow. So I don't like them to run very far.

[American Made]

Shoulder shot? Well....It depends on where you're hunting. Around my area the woods are very dense and we have grizzly, wolves, etc, etc. So, I like the idea of one shot equals one deer not running around..

[Gunplummer]

Yes, shoulder shots are O.K. I don't see the meat damage people complain about. Both I and a Buddy had issues with certain .257 bullets opening up at close range (We both shot .257 Roberts) and all the bullet did was poke a hole through. Could be what happened to you. I also shot a doe with a 7-30 Waters high in the lungs and it did not open up. That deer went a long way and bled inside with out leaving a blood trail. I am guessing it finally suffocated. When it comes to deer about anything is possible, but some one that tells me they shot a deer in the shoulder and it ran away.......

[tynimiller]

I mean absolutely no offense with this, but you are doing the deer an injustice simply aiming for the shoulder. I have shot two does in the last four years that only had three good legs anymore...the 4th had a bullet in a front shoulder (one appeared to be of the 12 gauge variety while the other appeared much smaller perhaps small muzzleloader round or an illegal rifle cartridge (in IN) ).

I also shot a buck just shy of 150inches 2 years ago and our meat processor found a broadhead lodged in it's shoulder (had completely healed up on the outside skin) and the buck also had a half broken rib from what he guessed was a gut shot.

From those experiences I am a firm believer in if you're going to hunt deer you need to shoot it in the boiler room, Lungs and Heart. It's the easiest to target and the quickest kill. Yeah you shatter a shoulder that deer may drop, but I've witnessed deer that had lived with no 4th leg....meaning they could escape predators like coyotes still.

You double lung a deer it will go down and it will go down shortly after being shot if not pushed. If tracking is tough due to moisture or rain...you can always stop tracking the blood and start treating it like a search party, you fan out and search by quadrants...you will find the deer.

[Art Eatman]

Out of roughly four dozen bucks, I guess I've hit maybe two in the shoulder and those were bad shots. Still, Bambi hit the deck, plumb dead. But I've killed far more deer with neck shots than anything else. Other shots were to (roughly) a high-heart/low-lung vicinity. When you get a double-handful of mush from that hit, it's DRT.

Of all deer, I've had maybe two or three go down, come up, and then run no more than 50 feet or so before going down for good.

About half with an '06, mostly using the 150-grain Sierra; half with a .243 with the Sierra 85-grain HPBT.

[Yankee Doodle]

Well, FWIW, last year I took deer #101.
I am fortunate enough to have lived a long life in a good deer area.
I have never shot a deer through the shoulder. I have found that a bullet placed behind the shoulder, one third of the way up fron the bottom will drop a deer within 20 yards every time. This opinion has been formed over many years of hunting with numerous calibers, ranging from .222 through 45-70, .50 & .58 cal. M/L, and 12 gauge shotgun slugs.
Anything that punches a hole through both lungs will drop them like the hammer of Thor.
Hitting bone reduces penetration, damages more meat, and doesn't kill any better.
MY only exception to this is hunting dangerous critters that tend to hunt back. My first shot at any big bear is intended to break the shoulder bone so that a charge is prevented. Other than that, behind the shoulder every time.

[Saltydog235]

I mean absolutely no offense with this, but you are doing the deer an injustice simply aiming for the shoulder.

Personally, I don't aim just for the general shoulder for my shot. Looking at the skelatal make-up of the deer, the shoulder blade and spine form a junction about 4"-6" from the top of the back. Hitting that junction and blowing that area up is DRT, not another step. I've never had an issue with excessively destroyed meat when I hit them there.

I'm not big on the lung shot at all because of the type terrain I hunt in. Shooting a deer where it can run off in the thick planted pines or cut overs can and often does mean some pretty good tracking on hands and knees in dense briars and under-growth in pitch black conditions. I'd rather see the animal drop dead than having to hit those places especially knowing the amount and size of some of the boars in those places.

[Todd1700]

You double lung a deer it will go down and it will go down shortly after being shot if not pushed.

You got that right. Two collapsed lungs equal total shut down of oxygen exchange with the blood stream. (in other words it's not like just holding your breath) No oxygen going into the blood equals an animal that is going to lose consciousness very quickly. I'd say that 99 percent of the deer I have shot through both lungs with anything, shotgun, muzzle loader, rifle, or bow went about 40 to 70 yards. A rare few exceptions have made it out to 100 or slightly over. But I have never lost a double lunged deer. Never came close to losing one. And we have some brier thickets in south Alabama that would make a jack rabbit change course.

You can however shoot a deer into the shoulder with a light weight highly frangible bullet (like a ballistic tip) and possibly only penetrate through into one lung. A single lunged deer might die but with one lung still functional they can also cover a helluva lot more ground before they do and can therefore be way tougher to find. A single lung shot would produce some frothy blood also.

[dahermit]

The first deer I ever shot was a small button buck on an antlerless permit. I shot it at about 100 yards with an 180 grain .303 British. The bullet caused massive damage to the near shoulder and went on to blow a big hole in the off shoulder also. When the deer (what was left of it), skinned, it was evident that the blood had infiltrated the muscles all the way back to the hips. A full one-third of meat was filled with bone fragments and/or blood and was thrown away. I never considered a shoulder shot again.

After that incident, and reading every gun/hunting/hand loading magazine I could get my hands on and noticing that they often touted the shoulder shot, I gave the aiming point for deer careful thought. I came to the realization that although I liked the sport of hunting its primary purpose for me was to collect deer meat. I then considered how large meat animals are killed...and found out that it was usually some variation of a shot to the head (home killed pigs, slaughter houses usually use a knife to sever the aorta of pigs), with the purpose of minimal destruction of edible meat. I considered the neck shot but dismissed it inasmuch as it was my practice to bone-out necks on deer and tie them for a boneless neck roast. In practice, a shot behind the shoulder, centered from top of the back to the bottom of the chest, results in double lung shot if hit a little high, heart shot if hit a little low, liver shot if a little far back, with very little edible meat being destroyed. In short, the shoulders of a deer are a very desirable hunk of meat.
I always wait for a shot that presents a standing double lung shot behind the shoulder. I am not so unsporting to take any other kind of shot; never facing away, running etc. I consider wasting meat, especially prime deer meat as being unethical.

[sc928porsche]

Well placed shot is not always a guarentee. I tracked one for almost 1/2 a mile before finding it. Split the heart with 150gr corelock 30-06 fired at a little over 100 yds. You explain it, I cant.

[Gunplummer]

Seems like one of you computer wise guys should post a schematic of where the organs and bones are in a deer. There seems to be some difference of opinion here.

[Brian Pfleuger]

[hooligan1]

The Army National Guard taught me to shoot center mass, but I've developed and infinity for eating venison, so I can say without guilt or second thought that any clear VITAL shot that the animal presents is the one I take. If I had it all broken down for instance, I'd say that I have never taken a head shot, only one neck shot, thirty lung shots, twelve heart shots, and five "high shoulder heart shots". Having said that, every time I pull the trigger on a deer the results are somewhat different. Those heart shots,( center-punched) were weird because the deer jumped straight up and kicked their back legs like a bronco but took off like a rocket, only to be found within let's say 40 yds or so.
These lung shot deer always seem to run off even farther but never over 50 or 60 yds.
The neck-shot deer dropped like lead to the ground,(never even flinched).
Now interestingly enough the "high shoulder heart shots" seemed to me to be more consistant to really anchoring those critters, I mean DRT, like almost spineshooting or such.. Its just my recollection.. not necessarily right or wrong but it's what I remember,

[Gunplummer]

Thanks for the picture. Now someone tell me how you shoot the leg off a deer by hitting it in the shoulder? Over the years I have killed deer that were "stumpies" that had healed over and my buddy, a butcher, got quite a few in over the years. That happens to be the leg, not the shoulder. I have hit at least 2 deer running stretched out like dogs in the flat part of the shoulder and they were probably dead before they stopped rolling. I don't care for a neck shot when they are standing broadside to me. If I absolutely have to drop them on the spot, the flat bone in the shoulder is it.

[Sarge]

http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...anatomy.gif?v0