Yeah if that .243 didn't hit lungs or heart then it hit in the spine and dropped the deer. The problem is a lot of people may think the spine in a deer runs close to the top of the back, but where the neck comes into the chest the spine is almost a third of the way down into the chest. So a "high lung shot" right behind the shoulder blade is going to hit or disrupt CNS a lot more often causing the deer to drop than a heart shot would create hydrostatic volume pressure shock to cause the deer to expire quickly.

Let me clear what I just said, the CNS shot is the best way to drop an animal. In the deer, it can be accomplished with a shot about a third down from the top right behind the scapula.

A heart shot has two ways to kill. Hemodynamic shock, or loss of blood flow. Will take about 5-10 seconds before enough oxygen isn't fed to the brain to cause the deer to pass out, and another few minutes to fully expire. In that time a deer can run quite a ways.

The other way a heart shot can cause almost an immediate death is hydrostatic shock...the pump pushes too much blood into the system and essentially strokes out the deer. Takes a lot of energy to do this, but it is a possible outcome of a heart shot. In most, I think this is a really rare experience, but you hunt long enough and you can see it happen.

I was well aware of that shoulder neck junction. Poachers, drunks, and liars- mostly relatives- told me stories about it my whole life. And used a .22 mag.

Damnit...I came for a good ole Gaymoor bashing thread and turned into a wiener measuring...I'm so disappointed.

Yeah, the 6.5 Gaymoor sucks...let's get back on track here

You want the superior Gaymoor, find a 6 or 22...then you gots something...

I've shot more deer than I can remember with a HP 100 grain 243 that dropped like they were struck by lightning from a behind the front shoulder hit in the heart/lungs. I've also had them run 80 yards with the exact same hit and cartridge/bullet. The only difference was how drove up the animal was before the shot. Get a lot of stress causing chemicals being released by the brain before a shot and an animal can react completely different than a calm one. I saw the same thing in people after getting shot. This is why I could really care less about the actual cartridge. I use a bullet weight/construction appropriate for the size of game and could care less about some new cartridge that squeezes an extra 150-200 fps out over what's been used for 75 years.

Ain’t nothing gay about it. Alls you needs is a goodo’ 22 mag. The swedemoor drops em like Thor’s hammer. If you lost him you missed.