Big.....sure wished you would have just written your post like you did your second reply and this deal would have been much shorter. Atleast your revised story sounds somewhat plausible. Even still before the neck shot, I think the bull would have piled at the bottom of the hill atleast enough to be shot again...I don't believe he would have run and run for miles. One thing is for sure, and you've already stated it is that the bullet was "new", and a poor performer. With that I would agree. With the very small entrance and exit holes it appears it did very little expanding, and certainly broke very little bone, which means it couldn't have imparted very little energy to any part of the animal as it poked a neat hole through the shoulders. As a meat cutter you won't need mythbusters to show you that if you poke a fillet knife through an elk roast it will go right through with very little effort, and very little meat damage, while a larger frontal area knife will require more energy to pound through the meat (also imparting more force), and subsequently creating more damage. Mythbusters also cannot perfectly replicate the fluid hydrodynamic changes vs shock of a creature with real blood pumping through its system. You're not going to see the coagulation, clotting, and bruising in a dead animal from a bullet strike that you will with a live one. It doesn't take but the flick of a human finger on a spine to create an involuntary muscle movement, so what do you think a bullet would do?
I shot a bull this year at 787 yards, and hit it within 1/2 inch (higher) of what your picture shows, and it was DRT. The barnes ttsx bullet at 160 grains out of the 8 mag was bullet diameter going in, and left a dime size hole in the entrance shoulder with a bruise circle about the size of a baseball on the meat, leaving about a ping-pong size hole in the blade, breaking a single vertebrae (never broke the spine), and exited the off blade with about another ping pong sized bone hole, bruised meat about the same , and left the hide with a neat little hole, and also went completely through a small aspen tree on the back side. Last year's bull was shot a little lower at 618 yards, and while the bullet did not sever the spine, it dislocated the vertebrae killing the animal instantly. Hitting the spine is only one component of the shot.
The muscles you're shooting with a high shoulder shot control backward pull and forward control of the front legs. If you choose a bullet that adequately incapacitates muscle ON BOTH SIDES (which means complete penetration), then in the very worst case scenario you have an animal that only has its back legs, which means it can go forward by use of its back legs, but cannot turn, and certainly cannot run.
When we examine what happens with the shoulder shot, with a proper bullet, we get the following: On entrance of the hide the bullet upsets with controlled expansion, losing little if any of its weight. The bullet has nearly doubled in diameter from expansion, on the exit of the hide on the facing shoulder the bullet tears through the meat with bullet contact imparting massive hydraulic shock to the muscle tissue on the facing side. It contacts the bone and breaks a hole roughly 5X the diameter of the bullet sending bone fragments inward. The bullet then goes through Loin material imparting the same massive hydraulic shock, and LIKELY breaks a vertebrae or two on the way through, sending small amounts of bone through the opposite shoulder bone, and back side of the muscle tissue.
If you've ever suffered major dibilitating back pain due to a muscle pull in the tissue surrounding your spine, then you can imagine how shocking it is for an animal to have this tissue essentially destroyed (regardless of if the spine is hit or not).
Now I believe it is completely plausible for an animal to survive this type of wound, but circumstances need to be nearly perfect. The caliber is small, which means the frontal area is small. The bullet for some reason does not upset correctly, the bullet does not completely penetrate (which means it only immobilizes the facing leg). Or the distance is tremendous and the bullet did not impart its force properly (regardless of bullet or caliber selection).
The shoulder shot is still my preference, and always will be. And I think in your illustration seeing what that bullet did to the bones, that the elk would have made atleast a country mile if it had been double lunged with the same bullet, because it did not upset properly. I have no doubt if the bullet and caliber were correct for the shot in the shoulder, that you'd have never had the story to tell. IMO, a .30 caliber would be my minimal caliber choice (.32 and higher preferred), though both of us by the sounds of it have killed truckloads with smaller calibers. Being fair, you've likely had plenty of carcasses in your place that definitely survived internal wounds similar to a double lung or boiler room shot, or an antler impaling to a liver or lung, but never got to draw a fair conclusion about "how poor" those wounds were because the guts were already removed. Just something to think about.
