Wife shot a cull this morning with a 270 at 100 yards. double lung shot and he ran 250 yards before he dropped
Glad we had the dog with us cause he ran a lot further to the North than I had him marked.

Good thread. Anyone that says every deer they shoot is "DRT" automatically pegs them as inexperienced, full of , or both. Deer are tough creatures, shot results are unpredictable (even with perfect shot placement). It does not go according to Hoyle every time.

This one went 150 yds. Shot her at 130 yds with a 7mm Mag.

One thing I haven't seen anyone bring up is the range + bullet construction + speed at impact combination. I have shot several deer w/ several calibers at several different ranges. Close-in shots with a 'tougher' bullet at high speed seems to just zip through without doing significant damage. Add another 100 yards and that same deer hit with the same bullet in the same place drops in their tracks or barely covers any distance after the shot.
I shot a doe earlier this year at 30 yards with my 7mm-08 loaded w/ 140 gr NBT. The exit wound on the deer was barely a 30 caliber hole. The deer ran about 80 yards before piling up. I shot a doe this morning at 180 with the same load in nearly the same spot and the deer fell, got up and fell for good 5' away. Exit wound was nearly an inch in diameter. Same load, same bullet, same muzzle velocity different results.

I know several folks that swear by the neck shot, and that's great for you and them. I've seen several of then drop big deer where they stood with the perfect placed neck shot, but to call a heart shot trying to hit a 3" target you can't see is not really what is happening. If you shoot for the heart/lung area you have much more than 3" of target. You have the area of a paper plate to hit a vital organ that will kill them quickly. I am not saying that every deer hit in that area will drop where it stood, but if you have a quality bullet that hits that area (preferably a rib on entry) then it will do massive damage to the lungs and maybe the heart also.

That is a long ways to go with that type of wound.

Yep. Shot a small doe last season with a .270 using 130 gr. Hornady SST handloads @ 3000 FPS at 200 yds. She ran approx. 225 yds. despite having a baseball-sized exit wound and large chunks of lung spewed several feet beyond the impact point. When we picked her up, you could see all the way through her. I had pics but they were pretty gruesome and I deleted them.

I had to shoot my deer in the neck remember.....

Every shot is different

I went on a shooting spree at a buddies place earlier in the year with my .270 and hornady softpoints.

With this combo I've killed 50+ deer not counting the 6 I killed that day

I was shooting does in the neck and dropping them. Shot two in the lungs and dumped them

One doe came out that was partially hidden by some trees at the edge of a field in the road. Due to the obstruction I put the crosshairs behind the shoulder and let one rip. I see dust fly and she starts running into the field just fine. I'm thinking I missed and keep the gun on her. She angles off slightly and I see blood pouring out her side from a silver dollar sized hole.

She made it well over 100 yards before piling up

I typically shoot for the high shoulder when I can get it to break the shoulders and hit the spine. This is a DRT shot. What most people think is a shoulder shot actually hits the heart/lungs.


Bullet contruction absolutely makes a difference I've had more deer run far distances using a .300
And 7mm and Barnes bullets than any other type of load.

Partitions are the second.

I believe in using softpoints for deer unless your shooting a very fast gun or a light caliber

In all the deer I've shot or seen shot (well into the mid 100's on body count) the most consistent producer of DRT or short tracking jobs with body shots have been with standard calibers and softpoints

Think you may have got some things mixed up there.

Deer and hogs are tuff critters, they can cover some ground after being hit no doubt. I also think there are far fewer perfect heart and double lung shots than are reported on the internet. And no im not calling myself perfect either, occasionally the bullet doesn't go where my mind wills it go.

I agree with Nogalus, I shot a buck like this doe, almost exactly, in the snow, and tracked it nearly 3 miles over 5 hours...

I agree with tth85 on the softpoints. They are by far the best choice for thin-skinned medium sized game IMO. There is a bullet for every task, and they are the best for that task.

I used a 150 grain Winchester PowerPoint on my sheep.

Again, in a standard caliber. If you just must use an itty-bitty cartridge, a tougher bullet is the way to go.

I have had good success on deer using soft points in my .243 (kids) and it has not failed to kill a deer yet, but that tells my inexperience or lack of experience hunting.

I shot one buck with a 30-06 180gr silvertip and it was perfect double lung shot that completely obliterated both lungs and he still made it 30-40 yards, fortunately we watching him drop in the brush (wouldn't have been a hard track job at that place but spots on that ranch would have been terrible to go 30-40 yards into).

Have shot 3 deer with 25-06 with 117gr Hornaday SST (first year with this gun) and with two heart shots and a chest shot it created a 5 yard track 70 yard shot), a 60 yard track (85 yard shot), and a 15 yard track (185-200+ yard shot).

However, shooting same bullet at 4 coyotes has created one dead coyote at 70 yards, one wounded with good blood trail to the fence at approx 100 yards, one wounded with scant blood at 150 yards and one wounded from 175 yards but didn't look for blood as we watched him run off over hundreds of yards. Couldn't believe the coyotes didn't drop, two of the shots spun the coyote around and down, but they both got up and ran off. The one with good blood trail had pieces of meat and big fur at impact site but he ran off as well.

Being involved in medicine and seeing the trauma of war on human bodies, it is amazing what a human can withstand as far as gun shots as well. The drive to survive is a strong instinct in most animals. Some never have it and they are obvious, but so far haven't seen a non-human animal that didn't have it.

I have had very few run after the shot with a rifle and the majority dropped right where they were hit unless it was a poor shot. I have shot them in the head, neck, base of the neck, high point of the shoulder and behind the shoulder. 30 yards max...after reading this thread, think I will stick with high point of the shoulder

The third shot.....

He forced my hand

My BIL just purchased a .257 Mag and dropped several grand with a Nightforce scope, some sort of baked coating, a machined muzzle break, and 85 grain ballistic tip handloads. I laughed at him saying my Rem 700 .270 with Prostaff 5 scope would drop just as many deer (probably a little truth to it) than that little bitty 85 grain bullet. He did shoot a cull and doe this year at 100 yards with the very gun and both dropped straight down to my surprise. Anyways what I really found interesting is that neither bullet made a pass thru. When cleaning the deer it seemed the bullet just exploded inside the animals. We found one of the plastic (or whatever material) tips inside, but never any fragments. It did it's job I suppose, but still too fancy for me.

Sorry, I'm late getting back to this thread....

My point about the neck shots, is that they greatly reduce the chance of wounding and having to chase down the deer after you shoot it. Sorry about about borrowing the "DRT" phrase from other folks, but, I can say, my family has been hunting our property since 1976 killing an average of 10 to 15 deer (takes that many to keep us in sausage and ground meat all year) every year on 75 acres. We "outlawed" anything but neck shots on our property, sometime back in the 80's, because anything else messed too much meat and left us chasing wounded deer, (which would often jump fences into neighbors property and we'd have to go through that hassle). Our 75 acres is over a 1/4mile long, meaning that a deer never has to go more than 100yds to find a fence.... Needless to say, the math puts us at hundreds of deer over the last 30 years. You may have a "pie plate" sized target with the chest shot, if you include the lungs, but you have a much greater chance the deer will need to be trailed, because, even a heart shot deer can run and if you miss that heart, chances are you did hit something that will kill the deer,...eventually, whether it's lungs, stomach, shoulder or any number of other things. A spine shot deer cannot run, it takes out all 4 wheels, which will give it time to die where it falls. It greatly increases your chance for a miss, but I'd rather miss one than shoot one I can't find after it ran off. If you neckshoot the deer and don't shock the spine sufficiently to drop it right there, the chances are very good you didn't hit it hard enough to kill it, and it is essentially a miss. Note, I'm suggesting only the upper neck, that's the only area which has the concentrated target, the lower neck spreads out the important stuff too much.

Most powerful rifle used on this property is my brother's 6.5x55, the rest being a 250Savage, a 222 and a passel of 243s. I use the Berger 95gr Classic Hunter in my 243(around 2960fps), and my dad uses whatever 100gr soft point he can find for his 243. My Mom, with her 222, has yet to miss or have one run off.

I know I'm not gonna change the majority of you to being neck shooters, but if you feel that you're a good enough shot to take that gamble, you'll be rewarded with a critter that drops where you shot it, or you didn't make a good enough shot,and the critter will be OK and you don't have to worry about it.

I will say, that on our property, it's difficult to get a shot over 100yds due to the blind placement and lots of brush, but the end result is the same even at longer ranges. If you can make the shot, a high neck shot will put the deer down where you shot it, with a much higher percentage than shots placed elsewhere, If you need more rifle or better skills to get out there, then so be it. Shot placement is the key, and the most likely shot to make them drop where they stand is the upper neck. If you miss that, you'll get air, but most likely, only your pride will suffer.

DPSTX

To me, that shot looks too far back. Billibob's placement looks better. Or you can flat shot them through both shoulders; it's hard to walk without legs, a heart, and lungs. As to meat loss; will not be much as fronts are used for grind usually.

Um, I always make bone-in roasts out of the front shoulders and that would be a lot of meat to lose.

The internet has made everyone fall in love with acronyms and we see the use of DRT a lot, but a behind-the-shoulder impact will often produce a run of 40 yards, which is good enough for most folks. Sometimes, though, they do drop on the spot, but I would say that's maybe 25% of the time.

As for those two photos, I am shocked at how far those deer ran -- I would have predicted the first one down within 100 yards and the second one down within 40 yards. Just goes to show we're always learning.

The shoulder shot only breaks bone if you hit low -- or high. The middle of the shoulder has no bone because of the way a deer's legs and shoulder are constructed.

Yep, low or high, and no front legs.

interesting reads yawl
I do know the will to survive takes over in many cases
no matter the shot placement
watched a many a deer over the years with various different wounds from rifles
run a terribly long distance when they were obviously not going to survive
we had a huge 3 legged doe on a place a while back
she even raised a fawn minus that front leg
the ranch manager wanted her gone
so my bud shot her low in the chest one evening
it took out her other front leg
she still went 50 yards into the brush and buried herself like a gopher under a log pile
I was amazed at the amount of blood and people looking for her including me that were baffled by her ability to hide so well and make it so far on 2 legs

I've seen deer hit in the neck recover, jump up and run away. Head shots that blew the bottom jaw off leaving the animal to die a slow grisly death. Shoulder shots only for me, with the exception of the 'Texas heart shot' I had to take a couple of seasons ago. And most of the shoulder/heart shots taken, the deer do run a good 20-40 yards. I've never lost one though. Yet.