I also say over the spine and out the other side just above the guts. I didn't read the whole original post but here's one thing I think many people are not considering:

The camera angle of the buck in question is not nearly the same angle of the illustrations/diagrams used to suppost the gutshot claims. When you are looking down at a deer from an elevated position, 1 foot down from where you thinkor visually see asthe top of its back is not really 1 foot down from the horizontal top of its back. This might only make sense to a few but you have to take a 3-d image of the deer and rotate it in your head to see what I'm saying. If you can do that, you'll see that it wasn't gutshot.