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

[Rifleman97]

I've never aimed for the heart. Because I like eating the heart. I also think that lung shots are easier to make, have more room for error, and kill just as fast.
It's inevitable that some meat will be lost when you shoot an animal anywhere else than through the skull. So it's not that I'm a trophy hunter (I don't think I have a single pic of me holding up a rack of a deer/elk I've killed) as much as I just accept there's meat loss and go for the lungs. When it's an option for deer season, I usually prefer does anyway. Their meat usually is a little fattier and tastes better.

Any animal I've killed usually goes straight to a butcher or straight to my shop where I can do the cleaning myself. I understand the desire to trophy hunt, but I honestly don't care. I like meat. I like the chase, the "hunt" part of the hunt.

When it comes to meat damage, I'm not picky. I'd have no problems stepping up in caliber if it meant faster kills on game. In the end, I don't want the game to suffer at all, even for a moment if possible. If I shot an elk with a 308 and it ran 200 yards before dropping, with perfect shot placement, my next trip I would probably at least have stepped up to a 30-06 or a 300 win mag. I prefer the instant they get hit to fall. We're all lucky enough to have been born humans. If I was born a wild animal, I'd want my death to be instant. I'll sacrifice a bit of meat to ensure a painless death.

My only regrets in hunting have been when I made a bad shot and caused an animal to suffer. But that's just my $0.02

 

[Savage 12BVSS]

Informative post.........lot of different ways to shoot a deer and we all have our own methods. Now eating the heart.......thats another story

 

[Chas1]

I'll sacrifice a bit of meat to ensure a painless death.

Ditto

 

[Lionel Boyd Johnson]

If the shoulder blade is a "v" tipped its side, I aim a little higher than the forward facing point and as far back as the top and bottom tips. This gives the largest margin of error in my shot. Miss a little high and the spine is broken. Miss a little low and the heart is hit. Miss a little forward and both shoulders are done. Miss a little back and the lungs or maybe diaphragm are hit.

As a kid, I was taught to take heart shots, but this makes more sense to me. It's a lower chance of a clean miss or even worse wounding with a leg shot.

View attachment 246703

For many years, I aimed for the "crease" just behind the foreleg; but have recently come to prefer the PIA shown by ndking, or just a little more forward. I've seen faster kills with this approach. -Ed

 

[Greyfox]

Just on top of the heart for me.

 

[bengineer]

I aim for the autonomic plexus. It is just above the heart and between the lungs. Read Nathan Foster's words on effective game killing at www.ballisticstudies.com as mentioned above.
That shot works with 243 win shooting harder than 105 AMAX, it works with 308 win cup and core, it works with 338 win and partitions, 358JDJ with FN cast, 375 h&h witth Hawk bullets, 45/70 with FN cast... It even works with the 6.5 Creedmoor and 140 AMAX! If your bullet can get there, it just turns the animal off. I doubt you would have luck with FMJ on that shot, but that would cross a line for any sensible hunter anyway.
I also revere deer heart, so i avoid hitting it as much as possible.

 

[Calvin45]

High shoulder/neck-shoulder junction when possible but just in general the chest region, i'll explain more. I've done quite a few different shots over the years, some deliberate (lots of heart, lung), some not having hit where I meant. Got very lucky and learned a lot one time as a teenager, hit a bit high and back and ended up hitting it in the liver, all but blew up the liver (270, 130 soft points, inside
150 yards...you know what that looks like). The thing just froze right there, staggered very drunkenly maybe 10 steps, piled up. Lifted its head twice then it was over. To this day I have never seen a heartshot deer freeze and go down like that. Later learned that in boxing a left hook to the liver (midway down right side of torso) can incapacitate a person more brutally than a punch to the face sometimes. Was actually a good visual lesson to refrain from excessive drinking - the liver is no less essential than the heart or lungs, don't hurt it! I would never intentionally make the liver my target, but it's good to know how effective that is. And when field dressing the way that thing had truly, completely bled out was just crazy to me.

had a very unfortunate unintended poi, also as a learning teenager. Shooting way further than I had any business shooting at that time and skill level in my life, to this day I will never even think about screwing around with headshots after what happened. They are unreliable and needlessly cruel if botched - if you can guarantee you'll never be more than 1 inch off intended impact spot I suppose go for it (but also I don't believe you ). Blew the creature's lower jaw right off. Tracked it over a quarter mile, the blood trail was tremendous at least. Finished the job, it was still standing when I shot it again, in the chest, humanely dropping it. Wasn't pretty. Felt like the biggest ***hole on earth for quite a while. Learned my lesson, only needed to learn that one once. No attempted headshots. To my mind they are foolish, arrogant, and horrific if botched.

 

[volunteer06]

I like some others on here hunt where it depends on where exactly you are. Some places if you do not drop the deer where it stand you're in for a long day. I will go double lung any day over heart. In my experience that leads to a lot faster death than heart. I've had to track some heart shot deer a long ways. Most double lung either drop where they stood or make it less than 50 yards. Now that being said if the stars align and everything is presented perfect it's hard to beat a neck shot to me. Majority of my deer have also been taken with a 243 which is a very debated topic in my area.

 

[30dirty]

head shots drop'em in tracks

 

[Tony Formicola]

I am aiming for lungs regardless of angle. If the deer is straight on or quartering to I'll still angle for the lungs. This drops them in their tracks. Of course I like to use a little more than enough gun and prefer high weight retention bullets. Typically I'm using a 30-06 with Barnes 168's. I would skip the quartering to shots with highly frangible bullets of lighter weight and caliber. With my set-up a broadside double lung has either dropped them in their tracks or I've tracked anywhere them up to 60 yards. Occasionally the blood trail is light but it's always a dead deer.

 

[340Wby-4-everything]

Amazed of all the "meat" hunter quotes combined with the shooting skills of this forum and only one person said head shots. If truly meat hunting and I often am, deer and antelope get head shots or base of the head where the neck and head meet. They go nowhere and you lose no meat. Well I guess if you are a brain eater you might, but with rampant cwd, I haven't heard of anyone eating brains in decades.

 

[Otto6555]

Hey Ndking
Thx for replying.
I've shot roughly 25 in the heart, and surprisingly deer will go a long way.
Shortest distance was 30 yards, and the longest was about 115 yards.
One would think that destroying the heart would kill a deer quickly, but as any avid deer hunter knows, they can cover a lot of ground quickly. I think that even if the heart stops, there's enough oxygen in the blood to drive the body for another 30 seconds and given how fast a deer can run and the length of stride on a dead run equals some decent distance.
There's been hearts that have the right side blown apart, left side blown apart, and there's been hearts that were total mush.

With all that said, I bet my experience would be different if I used a rifle that delivered more energy and therefore more hydrostatic shock, but maybe not. I've always hunted in shotgun only areas and the shotgun and load do a very good job, but we can all discuss that in another thread.

I'd say the main reason I'm a heart shooter, is bc I'm a meat hunter and impacting an animal there saves a lot of meat damage compared to shoulder. Now going back to rifled slug days, I shot a few in the heart where the slug yawed a tonne. One came out the deers neck, basically straight through beside the wind pipe, one went in and turned left imbedding into the hip, and I had a couple do the same but not so extreme.
After a few years I switched to sabot slugs and never looked back. I do have a few things to say about sabot slugs and the diff brands I've used and have witnessed being used but that's gonna be a diff thread bc it'll take awhile lol.

Lastly, I've shot deer on the run and deer in terrible tight snotty terrain and many weren't heart shot. As other have said, sometimes you wanna take it down quick bc tracking and dragging in a bad area is horrible, so when that happens I go shoulder lung... If I don't have a heart shot but am not worried about the terrain then I go lung or neck, but 90 percent of the time I'm going heart, I guess it's something that I started doing, realized it worked every time, so I kept doing it, despite the distance they can go.

Oh, I've also never tried to eat a heart, but reading how a lot of members enjoy it so much, maybe I'll STOP impacting the target there lol.

I have found most "modern" deer rifle calibers to be running way to fast for the task at hand
I've shot everything from a 220 Swift up to a 375 h&h
But oddly enough the 35 caliber family has dropped more deer within 20 feet of where they were standing
Closet one was 8 yards from the bottom step of a ladder stand
Farthest one was 144 yards
Dropped all most in his tracks
So over the years I have sold off all "standard " calibers and settled with a Remington 600 rebarreled to 358 Winchester
And a 98 Mauser chambered in 35 Whelen
I still shoot the super fast calibers but only at coyote and such
The 6.5 Grendel is a absolute death ray
In a 20 inch barreled Ar15 platform

 

[seattleman1969]

That's much higher than I shoot. There is a spot between your crosshairs and the spine called "no man's land", and every year thousands of deer survive gunshot wounds there. Much better to be low. The heart sits very low, but the lungs sit in the bottom 2/3.

Yeah, I hit a nice 5x6 bull elk at 41 yards with a bow this year and shot right through "no mans land". Arrow deflected up by grass about 2 feet from him. We tracked for hours, no blood trail. Only meat and hair on the arrow. Next morning we saw him pushing even more cows up the mountain than the previous day. Several days later a 16 year old girl shot him as her first archery bull. He was still oozing a little from my would but it certainly wasn't slowing him down any.

 

[Savage 12BVSS]

head shots drop'em in tracks

If you hit them right they do. BUT...........the head moves more than any torso part of a deer's body. Other shots drop em' in their tracks and don't risk a jaw or nose hit. If I'm shooting to kill a deer, I want it to die near where I see it, not days of suffering later only to feed the coyotes.