When I see a deer walking into my stand, I don't picture a deer...I'm visualizing a walking brainstem.
(providing the angle and timing is right)

One I sniped with my bolt action didn't have any obvious entrance wound.
It had an exit wound but it took me a while to find the little spot of blood deep inside it's ear canal.

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Originally posted by Elk Hunter:

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Originally posted by Gustofer:

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Originally posted by stiab:

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
It would be no different if he shot one in the head with a 308 Win.

Still a bad practice and frowned upon by many deer hunters. Miss by an inch or so, blow the lower jaw off, and deer slowly starves to death.

So...no head shots? Regardless of caliber?

Guess I've been doing it wrong and have been frowned upon all these years.

Yeah, me too!

Have taken several with head shots. It saves meat!

Saves meat, compared to the little bit that is lost by shooting through the ribs? See a deer with its jaw blown off or hanging and you'll think twice about head shots to "save meat."

I've killed a prairie dog with a .223/5.56 without hitting it. Same kind of deal, I came up to it and it was laying dead in its hole, blood out the ears and nose. No wounds.

BTW at 5.23 in the video, you can see that the eyes are still in the head, so the bullet did not go through the eye socket(s).

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Originally posted by BMR:
See a deer with its jaw blown off or hanging and you'll think twice about head shots to "save meat."

See a deer with its guts hanging out, see a deer with one leg/shoulder blown off and trying to run away, etc..., and you'll think twice about a body shot.

The margin for error with the head is a lot smaller than with body shot. I know some very experienced hunters who use head shots when killing meat deer. I know of at least one of them blowing a deer's jaw off, as well. It's not for me, personally, but I don't think its across the board unethical.

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Originally posted by Gustofer:

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Originally posted by BMR:
See a deer with its jaw blown off or hanging and you'll think twice about head shots to "save meat."

See a deer with its guts hanging out, see a deer with one leg/shoulder blown off and trying to run away, etc..., and you'll think twice about a body shot.

I agree. This is the problem in America, we think we need to be in everyone else's business and tell them the best way to do things (which is always our way). He did nothing illegal and the deer died as intended - there is no problem here despite all the bad marksman here that aim for the neck and keep blowing off the jaws.......

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Originally posted by mrvmax:

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Originally posted by Gustofer:

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Originally posted by BMR:
See a deer with its jaw blown off or hanging and you'll think twice about head shots to "save meat."

See a deer with its guts hanging out, see a deer with one leg/shoulder blown off and trying to run away, etc..., and you'll think twice about a body shot.

I agree. This is the problem in America, we think we need to be in everyone else's business and tell them the best way to do things (which is always our way). He did nothing illegal and the deer died as intended - there is no problem here despite all the bad marksman here that aim for the neck and keep blowing off the jaws.......

And that deer with the guts hanging out will die a lot quicker than the one with no jaw that can't drink or eat.

Look, I'm not doubting your ability to place a killing shot on a deer's head, but when you give the impression that this is a good place to shoot an animal, you get the wannabe snipers that try to do the same, and a lot of them are not as good as you are. There is a hell of a lot more room for error with a heart / lung shot.

My then 14 year old daughter shot her first deer in the head with a 243. Probably 125 yard shot. She would practice shooting a 3x5 index card at a 100 yards

I look at it this way...

Now, disregard the hypothetical damage to the antlers please, as that is not the point.

If the biggest trophy buck of your life stepped out in front of you at 100 yards, would you aim for his head? Or would you shoot him in the vitals behind the shoulder? I personally think all deer deserve the same respect and we should oblige them by preferring the highest percentage, cleanest killing shot possible. It's the same reason I don't deer hunt with a .223...

I've seen a lot of deer killed. Neck shot, head shot, and vital shot and in every instance it was violent and destructive. In only a couple of instances have I experienced a deer hit in the vitals that dropped where it stood. A vital shot insures you'll harvest the animal provided you hit your mark and know how to track. It doesn't insure a "clean" kill.
The only way to insure something close to a "clean" kill is to hit the central nervous system. Brain, neck, etc. I once hit a deer in the heart with a 30.06. That particular organ was lost with regard to usable meat. That animal managed to run 50 yards through brush before going down. Every head or neck shot I've witnessed the animal dropped and didn't move.

I don't care where you're aiming, be able to hit your mark or don't hunt. All the talk about ethical or non-ethical hunting is 90% bullshit created to sanitize hunting. Hunting is killing and killing isn't pretty. It's unethical to kill and not use the meat, and it's unethical to take shots beyond your abilities.

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Originally posted by thunderson:
I've seen a lot of deer killed. Neck shot, head shot, and vital shot and in every instance it was violent and destructive. In only a couple of instances have I experienced a deer hit in the vitals that dropped where it stood. A vital shot insures you'll harvest the animal provided you hit your mark and know how to track. It doesn't insure a "clean" kill.
The only way to insure something close to a "clean" kill is to hit the central nervous system. Brain, neck, etc. I once hit a deer in the heart with a 30.06. That particular organ was lost with regard to usable meat. That animal managed to run 50 yards through brush before going down. Every head or neck shot I've witnessed the animal dropped and didn't move.

I don't care where you're aiming, be able to hit your mark or don't hunt. All the talk about ethical or non-ethical hunting is 90% bullshit created to sanitize hunting. Hunting is killing and killing isn't pretty. It's unethical to kill and not use the meat, and it's unethical to take shots beyond your abilities.

100% agree.

(shakes head)

what are some of you on about?

neck/head shots are far superior, in almost every conceivable scenario.

and I agree with thunderson. it's a bunch of misguided attempts to sanitize it all, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out those saying so don't even dress and process the animals themselves. because, you know, it's bloody and icky or something, they might get dirty.

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Originally posted by thunderson:
I've seen a lot of deer killed. Neck shot, head shot, and vital shot and in every instance it was violent and destructive. In only a couple of instances have I experienced a deer hit in the vitals that dropped where it stood. A vital shot insures you'll harvest the animal provided you hit your mark and know how to track. It doesn't insure a "clean" kill.
The only way to insure something close to a "clean" kill is to hit the central nervous system. Brain, neck, etc. I once hit a deer in the heart with a 30.06. That particular organ was lost with regard to usable meat. That animal managed to run 50 yards through brush before going down. Every head or neck shot I've witnessed the animal dropped and didn't move.

I don't care where you're aiming, be able to hit your mark or don't hunt. All the talk about ethical or non-ethical hunting is 90% bullshit created to sanitize hunting. Hunting is killing and killing isn't pretty. It's unethical to kill and not use the meat, and it's unethical to take shots beyond your abilities.

I could not agree more and you covered the reason for the neck shot - to avoid tracking and losing them.

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Originally posted by 46and2:

neck/head shots are far superior, in almost every conceivable scenario.

But neck shots were not the original issue. In defense of head shots someone thought it a good idea to expand that to neck shots. The fact that neck shots loose little meat, are easier to hit, and usually quickly fatal does not make "head" shots more favorable.

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Originally posted by 46and2:neck/head shots are far superior, in almost every conceivable scenario.

If it were as predictable to hit a moving target in the head as the torso, we would strive for head shots in a self defense scenario. It's obviously not. A head shot is absolutely more instantaneous, but a lung/heart shot (with a suitable cartridge) is universally fatal.

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Originally posted by thunderson:
I've seen a lot of deer killed. Neck shot, head shot, and vital shot and in every instance it was violent and destructive. In only a couple of instances have I experienced a deer hit in the vitals that dropped where it stood. A vital shot insures you'll harvest the animal provided you hit your mark and know how to track. It doesn't insure a "clean" kill.
The only way to insure something close to a "clean" kill is to hit the central nervous system. Brain, neck, etc. I once hit a deer in the heart with a 30.06. That particular organ was lost with regard to usable meat. That animal managed to run 50 yards through brush before going down. Every head or neck shot I've witnessed the animal dropped and didn't move.

I don't care where you're aiming, be able to hit your mark or don't hunt. All the talk about ethical or non-ethical hunting is 90% bullshit created to sanitize hunting. Hunting is killing and killing isn't pretty. It's unethical to kill and not use the meat, and it's unethical to take shots beyond your abilities.

a deer that is shot in the heart and runs 50 yards before dying is, by almost all accounts, a very clean kill.

I've also seen neck-shot deer that were paralyzed but not killed and had to be finished off (same with spine-shot deer.)

I don't care how anyone kills a deer. There is no doubt that a properly executed head shot is about as quick a way to kill a deer as possible. For me, though, the margin of error is larger and the possibility of an injury that could lead to a prolonged death is higher enough that I choose not to.

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Originally posted by YellowJacket:
a deer that is shot in the heart and runs 50 yards before dying is, by almost all accounts, a very clean kill.

Agreed. A deer can cover 50 yards in a very short time. Less than 10 seconds?? It's a pure adrenaline run.

Back about 25 years ago we were deer hunting on our land in western WI.  It was toward the end of the day and 4 of us, to include my 2 brothers and my dad's buddy Bernie, were walking back to the cabin.  As we crossed a little open field a small button buck jumped up about 40 yards from us and stood and looked at us.  Bernie had not filled a tag, so he decided to shoot it. Well, he shot, and the buck dropped right there in the tall grass. 

As we walked up to it, it stood up when we were about 10 yards away. Its lower jaw was hanging down to its neck like something out of "The Walking Dead" and spraying blood with every breath.  Bernie quickly raised his rifle and dropped it - with a shot to the heart/lung area, aka, boiler room.  Now, Bernie had talked in the past about head shots he had made to "save meat" and I had seen some of them and knew they were dead right there. But after that incident, the impression it left convinced every one of us that the potential negatives of a head shot wasn't worth saving a forkful of meat, and I never saw a deer Bernie shot afterwards that wasn't shot in the boiler room.  

quote:

Originally posted by YellowJacket:

a deer that is shot in the heart and runs 50 yards before dying is, by almost all accounts, a very clean kill.

I've also seen neck-shot deer that were paralyzed but not killed and had to be finished off (same with spine-shot deer.)

I don't care how anyone kills a deer. There is no doubt that a properly executed head shot is about as quick a way to kill a deer as possible. For me, though, the margin of error is larger and the possibility of an injury that could lead to a prolonged death is higher enough that I choose not to.

Semantics. The reason I used quotes around "clean" is because the understanding of clean has become somewhat sanitized to the point of thought that bambi never knew what hit him. This is only possible with a head or neck shot in my opinion. I agree with you, an animal that runs 50 yards and then drops and expires is a clean kill, but it damn sure knows something is wrong. I actually never use the term clean kill myself outside of these types of conversations. A good kill is a well placed shot that causes as little suffering as possible. That's what I aim for. Clean kill is an oxymoron.

The vast majority of hunting that I do is in brush, wooded, or short field areas. For this reason I almost always use iron sights and when using iron I always go for a vitals shot. In the rare instances that I have the chance to hunt large open areas and use a scoped rifle I'm pretty comfortable taking a head or neck shot out to a hundred yards or so. Anything beyond that and I go for the vitals for the reasons we discussed.

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Originally posted by stiab:

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Originally posted by 46and2:

neck/head shots are far superior, in almost every conceivable scenario.

But neck shots were not the original issue. In defense of head shots someone thought it a good idea to expand that to neck shots. The fact that neck shots loose little meat, are easier to hit, and usually quickly fatal does not make "head" shots more favorable.

I brought up neck shots but it was not in defense of head shots. It was brought up as an example of one of two central nervous system shots(head being the other) that much more often end in the animal falling where they stand as opposed to body shots.

As far as saving meat goes yes a perfect 90 degree broadside will cause negligible meat damage. Slightly quartered away and you're talking about possibly losing a front shoulder due to tissue destruction, bone fragmentation, etc. Deer break down to shoulder roasts,neck roasts, rump roasts, backstraps, tenderloin, and organs. Not much else. Ribs can be fun but there isn't much there. Losing a shoulder is not insignificant.