ORIGINAL: cayugad
Also here again, I hate to guess location of a hit by the way the animal reacted. I have shot deer right through the boiler room that never even flinched, took a couple steps and fell over. Others I have shot and they almost did a back flip. Too many variables. I do put some credence in the kind of blood and material I find at the scene. Hair color, bubbles in blood, chunks in blood, color of blood, but I stopped guessing deer a long time ago on how they reacted from the shot in regards to shot placement.
I too don't put a lot of faith in how a deer reacts as to how well it was hit. I've seen deer react in the complete opposite fashion that they should have. One example would be a little 8 I shot one year w/a .280 that took out the top of the heart and both lungs and left a hole the size of a baseball on the opposite side. When I shot that deer it bounded off with its tail up like it winded me or something. Ran 40 yrds and fell over.
Reaction is ONE meathod to determine how well an animal was hit but I don't even feel like it's the BEST meathod. One must remember deer are wild animals and react wildly-rarely do they make sense.