Deer's Reaction to Being Shot and Where to Shoot

[147 Grain]

Whenever a bullet strikes your intended target - like deer - if carefully observed, (9 times out of 10) its reaction will tell you if you hit your mark or not.

Heart or Lung Shot
Upon being hit in the heart or lung area, most deer will usually jump or bound forward - kicking out with their hind legs. This shot produces a bright red frothy blood trail with pink or white flecks of lung tissue in it.

Liver Shot
No deer can survive a shot to the liver. Reactions include running a short distance with its head high or well forward before dying within 100 yards. Blood trails tends to be very dark red / thick and glutinous.

Stomach or Gut Shot
Gut-shot deer usually hunch-up and stagger away into nearby cover with their head held low. This poor shot usually produces a lot of green-like splashes of rumen from the stomach - content that sometimes has a lot of pines, acorns, or hair, but with very little blood.

[147 Grain]

Found the following links that hopefully will be helpful to everyone:
Deer / Elk Anatomy Overview: http://www.bowhunting.net/NAspecies/elk2.html

In looking at a deer or elk's circulatory system and bone structure, there appears to be two good spots to shoot for:



1. Heart and Lung area slightly behind the front leg / near the top of the shoulder.



2. Spine / Base of Neck Area. Following the forward portion of the front leg 1/2 to 2/3'rds up to where the neck meets the spine. There are a lot of major support bones in this area that when broken, should anchor the animal very quickly.

[max the dog]

That's a pretty cool animation of a bullet expanding you have there.

Not all animals react the same way when hit. I arrowed a deer through the lungs and heart last year that gave almost no indication of a hit and practically no blood trail. It just kept walking and lightly feeding for 30 yards before it stumbled and fell dead. I also bagged a buck with 00 buckshot that didn't move one inch from where it was hit. Three years ago I had an encounter with the terminator of deer that ran through 300 yards of swamp before dying after a .308 exploded it's heart in pieces. It left a bloodtrail that a blind man could follow. Blood was splattered up the sides of trees 4 feet high when it jumped over a log. That deer had a deep burning desire to live. I still ate him though. Mmmmmm tasty!!!

[bigbulls]

Honestly there is not a single animal that will react the same way as another animal when shot in any given place.

A shot an elk two years ago through the chest, blowing a baseball size hole in its heart and exiting the far shoulder. It simply stood up on its hind legs and fell over backwards dead. I shot a 4X4 bull at 20 yards through both lungs and heart and the bull made a 50 yard sprint and piled up under a tree. I have only shot one animal that exibited the classic "heart shot kick" and that was a mule deer doe. She jumped and kicked at the shot and calmly walked another ten yards before falling over dead.

The one liver shot cow elk I took ran off so fast I couldn't tell what she was doing. But that bullet traveled through the liver before traveling through her left lung and offside shoulder. She left virtually no blood (no exit wound) and was dead inside of 75 yards.

I did shoot one deer in the gut/ liver and he did do exactly as described. He simply hunched up and continued walking. He turned around and began walking back into the bushes but not before he gave me enough time to reload my muzzle loader and put one through his chest droping him.