Whitetail POI...... What’s your intended Target?

[ndking1126]

Congrats on your first with a gun!
That's a memory that will stay with you forever.
Entering info into a ballistics calculator is never a bad idea, in fact I think it's important to run scenarios so you know what you'll be dealing with and what to expect. G.I Joes slogan is knowing is half the battle! Lol.
Now of course nothing beats actual practice, but theory is always a good exercise that's for sure.

325 yards with 20mph winds, I bet it moved at least that too.
Let me know if you run the numbers in ur cal.

Don't worry about combining 2 stories,
Stuff happens.
You cleared it up and that's what matters.

As for the archery Doe, how far did she run?

Trial, I put the numbers in as best as I can remember and got exactly 24" of drift at 25mph. 20mph gave 19.2", so my assessment seems to hold true. I think 2 ft is actual drift, so 25mph is likely how fast the wind was blowing.

 

[Chas1]

Any shot as long as it's ethical.

 

[Mike D Texas]

This is my typical aiming point.

 

[vancewalker007]

This is my typical aiming point.

That will instantly put the lights out. Seen it many times.

 

[charliewhisky]

Been hunting 25 years,
Have seen a lot from hair pickers to those who unfortunately break the shot soon as they see brown.

I myself am a heart shooter.
Some hunters aim for lungs, shoulders, or neck.

What's your intended POI and why?
Ie: do you try to preserve as much meat as possible? Are you Rack hunting and don't care about meat damage ?

I'm a meat hunter. A shot not taken is a lost deer. Any killing shot is good but given a choice I will take a high lung shot. My last deer was an almost straight on facing me target with only a slight view of her right side. I put it right behind the shoulder and it exited one inch left side of the anus. She bled out internally in 50 feet. not a single piece of meat wasted and a whole lot of luck used up.

 

[charliewhisky]

I bow hunt as well as firearm. Bow hunting I've had a few sleepless nights due to bad shot. I have lost a few deer. Kills me inside. I think deer are a beautiful animal and taste dam good.

I bow hunt my deer from the ground and like you, I have lost a few. I don't think most gun only hunters realize how many killing shots there are from any angle.

 

[sdakotaguy]

This is my typical aiming point.

Generally been a Lung Heart deer hunter. Last fall I was hunting close to property lines. Tried the Brachial Plexus for my first time. Lights out right now with the 6mm ARC at 254 yards. Meat loss was minimal.

 

[Otto6555]

This is my typical aiming point.

Exactly
High shoulder drops them
DRT

 

[Will Gray]

Exactly
High shoulder drops them
DRT

Yes, hits bone and that shocks the spine. Deer bleeds to death before it wakes up from the hit.

 

[Equalizer]

I used to go for the heart/lungs when I was using carbines chambered for pistol cartridges (Marlin 1894 FG 41 Mag 210 Gr XTP) with great success. Some light tracking with no deer traveling more than 30 or 40 yards after the shot with a couple bang flops.

A couple years later, Indiana opened up the regulations to include bottle neck cartridges if they met certain criteria (35 cal bullet, 1.8" max case length) so I rebarreled a Ruger M77 mk ii 308 I had to a wildcat that met the specifics, the 358 Hoosier. It's a 358 Winchester but trimmed to 1.8" case length. At this time I also switched to Barnes TTSX projectiles.

I was still hunting/stalking to my stand in the afternoon really going slow. Take three steps, relax for a minute etc. well a buck and doe come up out of a ravine on my right. I threw down on Bucky. Well, after 3 180 Gr TTSX perforated this guy he was still trying to get his legs under him & it nagged at me for months…. Why?

A few years later my eldest son dropped a good buck, and even though it was a fatal wound, when it got back up I put a 180 Gr TTSX through the shoulder. The deer literally flipped over. Like, emphatically dude!!!

Mystery solved! The heavier construction of the Barnes needed enough resistance to open the projectile and initiate energy transfer. Yes I lost a little meat. Exactly how much meat is on an average front quarter I don't know. I'll tell you having butchered my own and friends a few times there isn't much meat to be had there anyway.

So in summation, it depends on what gun/bullet combination I'm using. I'm pretty sure I'm going for the shoulder every time from now on……

If you could have seen that deer flip!!!!!!

 

[nicholasjohn]

I used to go for the heart/lungs when I was using carbines chambered for pistol cartridges (Marlin 1894 FG 41 Mag 210 Gr XTP) with great success. Some light tracking with no deer traveling more than 30 or 40 yards after the shot with a couple bang flops.

A couple years later, Indiana opened up the regulations to include bottle neck cartridges if they met certain criteria (35 cal bullet, 1.8" max case length) so I rebarreled a Ruger M77 mk ii 308 I had to a wildcat that met the specifics, the 358 Hoosier. It's a 358 Winchester but trimmed to 1.8" case length. At this time I also switched to Barnes TTSX projectiles.

I was still hunting/stalking to my stand in the afternoon really going slow. Take three steps, relax for a minute etc. well a buck and doe come up out of a ravine on my right. I threw down on Bucky. Well, after 3 180 Gr TTSX perforated this guy he was still trying to get his legs under him & it nagged at me for months…. Why?

A few years later my eldest son dropped a good buck, and even though it was a fatal wound, when it got back up I put a 180 Gr TTSX through the shoulder. The deer literally flipped over. Like, emphatically dude!!!

Mystery solved! The heavier construction of the Barnes needed enough resistance to open the projectile and initiate energy transfer. Yes I lost a little meat. Exactly how much meat is on an average front quarter I don't know. I'll tell you having butchered my own and friends a few times there isn't much meat to be had there anyway.

So in summation, it depends on what gun/bullet combination I'm using. I'm pretty sure I'm going for the shoulder every time from now on……

If you could have seen that deer flip!!!!!!

I used to hunt in northwestern Minnesota, for the pony-sized whitetails that roam the big farming valley along the Red River of the North. In those days, it was slug-gun only - and those don't reliably anchor deer with ribcage shot placement. If we were close to property boundaries, without access to the neighboring property, we didn't want them to run. That meant break one or both shoulders, to put them down on the spot. If we were right in the middle of one of my buddy's farms, no problem - behind the shoulder in the heart/lung area worked fine. We also got a lot of instant knockdowns with that, but nothing like every time. More often, they would run 50 or 60 yards, but if one jump of a fence would make the animal irretrievable, the shoulder shot was by far the better way to go. Also, we didn't fuss about the meat loss, since losing the whole animal would have stung a lot worse. We had bunches of doe tags anyway, so we just shot more deer for the meat pole.