huntmup,

What I'm trying to get at in that picture is where the head wound up. If I'm seeing that correctly the broadhead slid along the ribs under the shoulder, basically in between the ribs and the shoulder. Were you able to tell where the head stopped?

Now I'm not disputing that you're a good shot and that the shots you took were reasonable. But is there any chance that the deer moved on you?

I just want to share with you, last week I had a buck come into a scrape like in your case real close no more than twelve yards. He's slightly quartering away as he comes in. I've set up the scrape five feet past the tree so that I can draw. His head goes behind the tree and I draw. As his head gets past the tree he looks up at me, just for a second or two and he continues on to put his nose in the scrape. I put the pin on the x and let fly. I knew he jumped the string but I just thought he dropped a little and moved forward.

When I find him the arrow is sticking out with only 10 inches of penetration. I'm shooting a Mathjews FX bottomed out with the minimax 100 grain naildriver 7595 goldtips getting around 263-264. When I field dress him I've only got liver and near lung. I was bummed.

Two days later when I'm processing him I say to my dad what the hell happened to the ham? We find that the broadhead had gone through the ham, and the only reason that it didn't pass through is because one of the blades caught the leg bone. By the time I found him the arrow had backed out a good bit, confusing the issue.

Anyways, the deer was quartering away at twelve yards, by the time the shot got there the deer had dropped and spun quartering towards me. The shot got near lung took out the liver and went through the opposite ham, but not penetrating the far hide.

He dropped and spun and I didn't see it. These animals can move awfully fast and also you're looking at where you are shooting, so you're not going to catch that intial movement.

I think you did a great job of documenting your findings and while your interpretation of what happened certainly seems reasonable, the more I look at it, I'm just not sure about the conclusions.

Definitely interesting though and congratulations on the buck.