Neck Shot Disappointment

[Hard rock]

Hang in there brother,your not the first to miss the sweet spot by a hair and won't be the last.
I hope the Axis deer made it through the shot.I have seen deer take a shot and recover.Hang in there!

It happens , I like more vel with that weight of bullet in the 6.5 cal , so it wouldn't be my first choice of a bullet for the Grendel . I think a 85 gr Hammer or something similar in weight would give better terminal performance , and I would keep my shots 200 yds and under. I would think 3000 fps would be achievable with the 85 gr Hammer in the Grendel . No matter what though every Now and again if you hunt long enough, it will happen and you won't be able too explain it , better luck in the future.

 

[Terry Scott]

Sorry he got away . It is always dis heartening and has happened to all of us who hunt. on some hunts it also gets expensive.
That said I agree with Kirby, a little more gun probably won't give you recoil issues and it is better to hit them a little harder than needed
maybe consider using a little more horsepower.

 

[Wedgy]

Head and neck shot can be very effective but those parts are the ones that move the most. When a feeding deer hears a noise his head immediately moves ~4 feet from being on the ground to upright while the heart and lungs will stay in the same position. It's a high risk/high reward shot but sometimes a must when in thick brush where you might not recover the animal if it runs 30 yards. Hopefully he lives and maybe you will see him again, otherwise look for vultures or whatever scavengers you have in that part.

 

[Clem Bronkoski]

I really don't care how confident you are with your equipment. There is absolutely zero excuse for shooting game anywhere but the heart/lung area. If you shoot behind the shoulder there is very little meat damage. Yes a well placed shot in the head or neck will destroy the nervous system and render the animal dead immediately or soon after but why risk it and wound the animal having it run off and likely die somewhere unrecovered.

 

[MtPockets]

I really don't care how confident you are with your equipment. There is absolutely zero excuse for shooting game anywhere but the heart/lung area. If you shoot behind the shoulder there is very little meat damage. Yes a well placed shot in the head or neck will destroy the nervous system and render the animal dead immediately or soon after but why risk it and wound the animal having it run off and likely die somewhere unrecovered.

I dont see the need to roast the guy and try to force your ethics on him.

Would I ever take that shot? No. But I know a lot of guys who have done very well with it, and he obviously has had very good success with it, too.

Does the shoulder shot guarantee success? Hell, no!

What next, you gonna tell him what caliber and gun to shoot?

 

[sp6x6]

I shot game in head for years in timber, large numbers, neck also. Then one day I came up on bedded 6pt and thought ill just shot him in neck right under jaw .He was 1/4 to me,Hit him with the 340 and he spun out of there,I was in dis believe.Took me a hard 1/2 mile and back tracking him in cows to catch him in rugged mountains.I missed neck bone and you could of put '4 rebar right threw whole in neck.Next year I tracked buck off top,jumped him ,game over.I cut down off mountain and dumb luck ran into him in thick timber and snap shot him.This was with a 325 wiz bang and barns, tracked him 2000 vert back up.Then jugged a whole drainage side hill and caught him.First shot was a neck shot.Buck in my avatar,4 am to 11 pm day with two trips to the top. I have never taken a neck shot sincerer head either

 

[akdad]

My personal dumbest ( this point is debated) I shot bedded 6 point in the head he tipped over so started taking him apart and then decided to check the wound. I had only grazed the antler. I was pretty fortunate that one didn't go wrong a million ways.

 

[SteveALA]

Straight up the leg middle of the body puts them down. And larger room for error.

 

[belldar]

Used to be a neck/head shooter. Shake me head at myself just thinking about it. Heart lung shots bleed the animal better than a brain shot that bleeds extremely little. Same with most neck shots. Others have allready stated the larger kill zone. If your hunting for the table I have found chest shots are best. I have seen to many instances like the OPs where the bullet was not enough for a head shot kill or missed the mark on a neck shot and the animal either got away or needed more rounds. Even trapped coyotes are better off being heart shot for a quick CLEAN kill.

 

[Hard rock]

Used to be a neck/head shooter. Shake me head at myself just thinking about it. Heart lung shots bleed the animal better than a brain shot that bleeds extremely little. Same with most neck shots. Others have allready stated the larger kill zone. If your hunting for the table I have found chest shots are best. I have seen to many instances like the OPs where the bullet was not enough for a head shot kill or missed the mark on a neck shot and the animal either got away or needed more rounds. Even trapped coyotes are better off being heart shot for a quick CLEAN kill.

When I shot a bottom jaw off a doe and had a rodeo on top of a mountain , too never get another shot , I said never again , I was younger and less experienced .

 

[snookntarpon]

I'm with the lung, heart, shoulder shot crowd. Even with a target as big as this I have made bad shots, but not many. gut shots, brisket shots, leg shots snd even misses. unrecovered are a very tiny percentage. maybe two, but i can certainly remember one. Misses many more, even on animals bigger than whitetail. Last year I missed a buck at 80 yards completely. verified zero with a 400 yard rock later in the morning and dead on. No idea what happened. rest was good, not the best, but i can take that shot offhand with confidence any day. Shnit happens, even on larger targets. Pick a bigger target. Too many times have I seen animals missing a jaw or with a gaping hole in their throat.
SnT

 

[cantfixstupid]

Well, I have beat myself up plenty over the animal getting away, this is the 1st animal that I have lost in about 40 years and only 1 of 2 I have had to look for over 10 minutes after the shot to find, and that adds up to well over 100 hundred successful harvests from 80 lb whitetails to 900 lb elk. I have several rifles from 458 Cal to 17 Cal, each has its best use area. I develop loads for each and every one of them and all of them are tack drivers nothing I own, with exception to a 7.62x39 and a 458 SOCOM shoots more than .5 MOA at 100 and 3 shoot 1 tiny hole at 100 consistently. The reason I use the Grendel is due to the fact that, up until 4 years ago when I got the Grendel I used a 225 Winchester Model 670 with a 55 Gr Sierra pill to harvest the whitetail, smaller exotics, hogs etc., exclusively and have since I got the rifle when I was 12 years old from my old man, that was 1969. The Grendel added 65 Gr of projectile, about the same or less recoil than the 225 and was a little bit more accurate and held up better ballistically on longer shots.
When I have either of those 2 rifles or my 257 Bee in my hands there is no doubt about what the end result is going to be, until Monday afternoon.
My original post was not seeking advice, I know where all the kill zones are located on almost every 4-legged animal on the North American continent and several from Africa and Asia. My post was to vent about losing a viable game animal, with a shot placement that has been 100% effective until now. Maybe a heart lung shot would have dropped him right there but then again, I've helped look for animals shot in that kill zone and never found them, so nothing is certain 100% of the time.
I thank you all for your comments and laments, woulda, coulda, shoulda is all that I have, I would really rather be bragging on how good that back strap is.
Another big animal will come into range again this year and following years to come I hope, and I am cautiously certain of what the end results will be.

 

[lancetkenyon]

If the back legs are moving after a "neck shot" you didn't get spine. If this was an elevated blind chances are you hit just above the spine.

ground blind sounds like you hit just under the spine.

This. No way you hit spine if the legs were moving. Chalk it up to a through and through miss. He is probably sore as heck, but with no blood, you missed the main arteries too. My bet is he is alive and headed for NM by now.

 

[cantfixstupid]

This. No way you hit spine if the legs were moving. Chalk it up to a through and through miss. He is probably sore as heck, but with no blood, you missed the main arteries too. My bet is he is alive and headed for NM by now.

You are correct, meat shot through the neck, I hope he's still alive and recovers, I saw the impact and how it missed any bone or arteries is beyond me, it just hit that not so sweet spot, 1 in a million chance of that happening just passed right through. I knew when he started bulldozing that something was up, that has never happened before, it always been dirt nap instantly, I wanted to put another 1 in him but too many animals behind him to risk collateral damage on top of disappointment!