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

[Win Tom]

Well, in Virginia, we can take many deer a season. The base license is for 3 bucks and 3 does, and you can buy as many bonus doe tags as you want, 3 at a time.
That said, over the last 35 years, I would guess I have shot probably 150 or more deer, some big, some not so big. Probably every conceivable placement (on purpose and accident!). Over this time, I have learned several things.
1. Shooting a deer in the head will sometimes "lock" joints and stiffen meat. Not my choice of shot.
2. The best shot placement can and will result in different results for different deer. One might drop in place, while another may run 1500 yards. You cant predict which one you are shooting at.
3. Just as you wouldnt shot a large caliber man with a small caliber bullet, I refuse to hunt with some of the smaller calibers such as .243. Even at close range, most deer will run considerable distances. Chose the largest caliber you can comfortably and accurately shoot. Personally, I have killed more of my deer with a Model 70 in .264 win mag than with any other caliber. Close or far, has the punch to do the job.

 

[Kfritz]

As much as I love to kill a trophy animal, I much more prefer the meat and hate wasting any. I try to avoid the shoulder unless I find myself under gunned for some reason. (which does not happen very often!) Also being a bow hunter, I prefer a double lung shot. They seem to go shorter distances when they can't breathe. Just my impression from many kills over the decades. High neck shots are very effective as well when possible.

That being said, one of the most effective shots on a 300 pound white tail was when a friend of mine pulled his bow shot severely and dead centered the back hind quarter. The deer didn't go 30 yards before expiring...

 

[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 am a meat hunter who enjoys the skill of hunting from the ground. When I got back into hunting, fifteen years after the army, it was as a bow hunter and I hunted extensively from the ground. I might start the day from a static position but most of my hunting was stalking and still hunting. With a bow you learn to shoot where the animal will bleed out and I have taken multiple deer with quartering and rear shots. I have also taken the occasional shot from the front. The most exciting were those requiring snap shots at short range. I have taken at least five deer with a bow within five feet of me and one from so close I had to pull back the bow to lower the arrow enough to clear its back. I have still hunted open fields, corn, and woodlands of all types. A heart shot is a luxury that has rarely presented itself.

That explanation is just a leadup to my current hunting behavior now that I am hunting predominantly with a 30-06 and hoping for long range shots that give me time to pick the best shot. They have come only rarely and at ranges that require a lung shot. Most of my shots have come at short range with short reaction times. Of the last deer taken, two were shot at less than ten feet on the same morning within five seconds of each other as they walked up on me from behind as I was trying to sneak into a nice early morning hide on a crest. One was shot from twenty feet away in the lower chest as it bounded up a hill directly at me after I missed the first moving shot at fifty feet. It dropped five feet in front of me. Two were quartering shots from the front and two were lung shots from 75 and 200 yards.

From the ground, I rarely have good visibility on the lower chest because of grass and brush and quick shots at short range with a three power scope require quick accusation of the chest for the most part.

I guess my answer to you is that I work hard to get the shot and I take what is offered.

 

[nocannons]

I've wondered if shooting the heart can cause the animal to bleed out a little slower. My theory is if the heart isnt destroyed, adrenaline will kick in when shot and the heart will start beating faster.. pumping blood out faster. Does anyone whose shot a lot of deer have an opinion?

My 2c. Lung shot with bullets that expand well and with reasonable penetration. (Berger in my case) Just an opinion on adrenaline taking over. If an animal has significant amount of lung damage if you make the heart kick in and pump the blood harder and faster it will drown animal and increase blood loss. That being said i have had to track more deer that were heart shot than lung shot. Never had a deer make it much more than 50 yds. with double lung shot. This has been over the course of 30-40 deer between three people.

 

[Bobcape]

I like taking out both lungs and aim close to, or a couple of inches behind, the crease. I shoot the small to mid-calibers - .243, .257Bob and .260AI with fast expansion bullets. 70+ antelope and not sure how many deer, I've been lucky to not have any take more than a few steps.

 

[nicholasjohn]

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.

They can also turn their head just a little bit and completely goof up the angle of entry, and now the deer is badly wounded and not dropping at the shot like we intended. They also move their heads suddenly, without first telegraphing the movement. If the deer is going to take a step, you will see him pick up a foot first. Not so with the head movements, and deer are often so nervous that their heads seem to never stop moving around. The upper neck isn't much different. The big end of the neck - where it attaches to the torso - is a better bet, but the chest cavity has all the important plumbing in it - so that's where I shoot them. Whether the deer runs or goes right down at the shot seems to me to be more a function of how keyed-up the animal was before the shot, not whether I hit the heart or not. I have shot a ton of deer with both slug guns and rifles, and unless I hit the bones they often didn't go down right away. When they are running like crazy, they generally just keep right on running. They don't go far, but often I've seen them go as much as a100 yards with no heart, or a very big hole in their lungs. This is only a few seconds of running for a deer, though. The ones that have gone right down with the forward rib cage shot have been standing or walking along, unaware of my presence. When the shot is a big surprise to a calm deer, it usually results in them dropping right away, and not getting up. Ditto for the shot that scrambles the nervous system, and you don't necessarily have to hit the spine to accomplish that. The spot where the spine dips low between the shoulder blades is a good spot for that, but it's kinda hard on your bambi-burgers when you shoot them there. If you don't want them to jump the fence onto somebody else's property and die where you can't recover them, though, this is a good place to shoot them and knock them right down pretty reliably.

 

[RAGGED EDGE]

I shoot high and forward in the shoulder to hit big bones of the ribs or the bottom of the spine to shock the spine or on occasion the neck near the body: shock the spine. I shoot a 35 Whelen or 358 Winchester at 200yds or less. DRT every time.

^^^ This works for a .223 through a .50 Cal. flintlock. Anymore I only shoot monos at game. High shoulder usually means DRT. At 74 I do not want to chase anything any farther than absolutely necessary. Love the two calibers mentioned.

 

[msmith57]

6? Six? Wow that's something!
Wish we had those regulations but unfortunately we can only harvest, now get ready, 1 deer.
Yup just one , unless u apply for the controlled hunt in an area I have no land.
We used to get an archery tag, gun tag, and black powder tag, but that changed long ago. I just have to be picky now otherwise it's over much too quickly lol

I do believe those ares that have high limit numbers like 4-8 deer per year yes they have high numbers of deer but they are also usually 100# deer once gutted and de boned you have 35# of meat. so you need a lot of deer to fill a small freezer.

 

[rbTanzan]

Right on top of the heart. I'm willing to give up a little shoulder hambuger for a whole animal.
however, animals do run with heart shots. I've seen little 40lb oribi leap and run an explosive 100 yards. I once shot a face-on hartebeest in the lower third of the heart that ran 400 yards. There was no blood until 375 yards. Over the years I've also increased power. The 400-yard hartebeest was with a 270 on an animal standing 300 yards away. I think that a 338 or larger would have made a significant difference with an impact in exactly the same spot. I, too, have noted that there is some space between the spine and shoulder that may occasionally let an animal escape. Again, a larger caliber can only help. Using the picture of a whitetail on page 2 with the crosshairs, I would recommend down a couple of inches and maybe forward one inch. This may not seem like a big difference but it is where I shoot. Up the middle of the leg about 1/3 from the bottom of chest. If a facing shot one needs to come up slightly to account for an illusion of a deep chest.
Here is a picture of an impala (=approx whitetail size), which was walking thru an opening left to right, 416 Rigby. Impact was back about 1-2 inch from intention. (Camera angle and animal position makes this look higher and further back than it actually was.) Second picture is what was left of heart/lung.

.

 

[Calvin45]

Right on top of the heart. I'm willing to give up a little shoulder hambuger for a whole animal.
however, animals do run with heart shots. I've seen little 40lb oribi leap and run an explosive 100 yards. I once shot a face-on hartebeest in the lower third of the heart that ran 400 yards. There was no blood until 375 yards. Over the years I've also increased power. The 400-yard hartebeest was with a 270 on an animal standing 300 yards away. I think that a 338 or larger would have made a significant difference with an impact in exactly the same spot. I, too, have noted that there is some space between the spine and shoulder that may occasionally let an animal escape. Again, a larger caliber can only help. Using the picture on page 2 with the crosshairs, I would recommend down a couple of inches and maybe forward one inch. This may not seem like a big difference but it is where I shoot. Up the middle of the leg about 1/3 from the bottom of chest. If a facing shot one needs to come up slightly to account for an illusion of a deep chest.
Here is a picture of an impala (=approx whitetail size), which was walking thru an opening left to right, 416 Rigby. Impact was back about an inch from intention. (Camera angle and animal position makes this look higher and further back than it actually was.) Second picture is what was left of heart/lung.View attachment 247176View attachment 247177.

Lots of stuff I agree with you on here based on experience. I too would much rather ruin a shoulder than lose an entire animal. For this reason if the animal is not down yet and I can take another shot, I do. Learned that lesson exactly once as well. You can think you made a perfect shot but until you're right there beside a dead animal you don't know that to a certainty. Lost one animal this way, the voices of many "meathunters" (and I've never been a trophy hunter) in head telling me not to waste meat, it was dead on its feet, etc...I know it did die but not before it got too dark to track at all...by morning the coyotes had eaten the doe. If I had shot it again almost certainly it would have yielded maybe a few pounds less meat...but i bet I would have brought it home.

also agree very much about the benefits of more powerful cartridges. I get so sick of everyone saying "shot placement matters more than caliber". Obviously that's true, obviously we all know that already, obviously that's just preaching to the choir, doesn't need saying. But some say it in a way that implies "shot placement is all that matters". It's not.

I have made all but identical hits on game with my .270 and my .300 win mag and there seems to me a very real difference in speed of incapacitation and how "drunk" things run after getting hit by the more powerful round. It's not hypothetical to me at all.

additionally, to balance what I just said, there are times where frontal area matters more than total energy. At truly close range I've observed that the .30-30 is a far more emphatic killer than the 243, both rounds yielding the same muzzle energy. But that big flat nose bullet just plain smacks harder. The most spectacular kill I've made was with a 220 round nose out of the .300, 2800 FPS. You'd swear it was a spine hit or at least a major bone buster the way the buck piled up and never even twitched. Didn't hit a single bone. Was running, 80 yards quartering away, actually entered through the belly (that was terrible to field dress), NO EXIT! found that Bullet broke in 2 pieces both up against the skin on the front of the chest.

 

[crystalgayleguy]

its makes a difference if the heart is full of blood or not

 

[Scooter 45ACP]

Personally I've always been a neck shooter, not much useable meat in the neck and it's hard for them to run if they can't hold there head up

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.

 

[Possum Cop]

I hunt with a recurve bow, black powder, pistol and rifle. I lung shoot them behind the shoulder with every one of them. Most of the hunters that I know take the same shot. They run for a long ways heart shot and to many are wounded and lost with the high shoulder shot.
We don't see any significant meat loss in a deer shot in the lungs.
I manage a little over 16,000 acres and track every deer by sex, weight, caliber, and shot placement. We take between 225-250 per year off of the property and we encourage our hunters to shoot "soft angles" and broadside shots. Most of the deer not recover are high shoulder shots and hard angle facing shots.

These are the metrics that we collect here and the results.

 

[Possum Cop]

Right on top of the heart. I'm willing to give up a little shoulder hambuger for a whole animal.
however, animals do run with heart shots. I've seen little 40lb oribi leap and run an explosive 100 yards. I once shot a face-on hartebeest in the lower third of the heart that ran 400 yards. There was no blood until 375 yards. Over the years I've also increased power. The 400-yard hartebeest was with a 270 on an animal standing 300 yards away. I think that a 338 or larger would have made a significant difference with an impact in exactly the same spot. I, too, have noted that there is some space between the spine and shoulder that may occasionally let an animal escape. Again, a larger caliber can only help. Using the picture of a whitetail on page 2 with the crosshairs, I would recommend down a couple of inches and maybe forward one inch. This may not seem like a big difference but it is where I shoot. Up the middle of the leg about 1/3 from the bottom of chest. If a facing shot one needs to come up slightly to account for an illusion of a deep chest.
Here is a picture of an impala (=approx whitetail size), which was walking thru an opening left to right, 416 Rigby. Impact was back about 1-2 inch from intention. (Camera angle and animal position makes this look higher and further back than it actually was.) Second picture is what was left of heart/lung.View attachment 247176View attachment 247177.

That's were we shoot most of our whitetail deer where I hunt.