RE: Deer's Reaction to Being Shot and Where to Shoot
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.