ORIGINAL: BobCo19-65
I have no reason to argue, but your dot in the original picture is just behind the corner of the shoulder blade (as shown in my second picture. It is extremely common for people to believe that the spine sits much higher on the deer then it actually does, especially in this area. Many, many people believe they hit a "void" area when in fact they shot above the spine. The deer would have been dead if hit slightly quartered away as shown in your second picture with 10 inches of penetration. It may not bleed much though.
I agree with this, since there is so much muscle and skin + fat to layer on this image of a skeletal structure of a deer, people ar not taking in the account for this.
So it does look like it is above the spine compared to the image with the dot and this skeletal image.
But i would not give up looking until it would be too late to recover anything of it.