Centerfire bullets have much better designs and BC's than most anything you will shoot out of a shotgun. I have done a lot of research on ballistics and wound channel characteristics and the two key things that cause damage are velocity and bullet design. You need the right bullet for the right job for it to be effective. Centerfire rifles with controled expansion bullets cause much more dissruption to tissue than a shotgun slug or even the newer XTP style bullets do. A varmint type bullet that has a rapid expansion is even more dissruptive, but lacks penitration for most big game. Probably would work ok on medium sized deer though I bet.

And broad head tipped arrows make a deer bleed A LOT, more so than a bullet does because the cuts are cleaner and it takes longer for them to clot. The more trauma to the tissue the faster it will clot. I will agree though, arrows kill in a different way than bullets do. However if you are going for a lung shot the end result is the same. The deer basically chokes to death because the lungs don't work any more. The amount of time to death is pretty much the same from bleeding out or not being able to breath since the end effect is the same, lack of oxygen to the brain. Unless you only take out one lung, then those suckers can run a long ways!

And using a high powered rifle does not insure the deer will drop on the spot either. I can link you to study for that if you want. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. However the percentages go up with a centerfire, especially at longer ranges. It has more to do with shock to the central nervous system they think. No one really knows for sure why some deer drop on the spot, and others run like the wind even when hit in the same place with the same rifle.

Last year I shot a deer at 20 yards with a 600 grn slug from a 3 inch gold magnum. I took out the lungs and the top of the heart. It still ran about 90 yards before dropping. It had a hole about the size of a quarter all the way thru it.

Paul