Yeah, the shot is quite the conversation piece. Some of you may remember this deer from last year.I took himlast seasonbut he waswas shot by my brother in law 10 days earlier and survived.Actuallythe pass thruwas rightbelow and partially nickedthe spine butsuprisingly onlybarely clipped the top of one lung. He had initally dropped to the ground, but after a few seconds regained his senses and jumped up and ran off.In normal circumstances the lungs extend up high enough on both sides of the spine where it should have been a double lung, but perhaps due to his ducking the shot and exhaling while doing so, only one lung was clipped. Maybe he was a smoker! In any case, there was a visible wound channel in the chest cavity just below the spineupon field dressing and one lung was pale with a bit of clot at the top. He was remarkably well healed for only 10 days.
I hadencountered him just +7 days after the first shot chasing does. At +10 days he came into a grunt call all bristled up looking to fight. I'd have tospeculatethat 99.9% of the time the first shot would have been lethal. We were both quite happy he didn't run off and die and I was able to get another crack at him. We were also in disbelief that he survived.

The hole on the opposite side is a bit higher than the exit wound pictured, buta deers spine is low in his neck but not so much in his body: