ORIGINAL: ipscshooter

Things can happen regardless of your point of aim. The buck I shot this year had been shot at last year and I presume the "marksman" was aiming for the heart/lungs area. He had a healed up bullet wound that was just behind the rib cage and passed just under the spine... Obviously, things can and do happen regardless of where you choose to shoot. As I said, you don't want to hit too far forward of the ear when taking a head shot or you'll just hit jaw. I could just as easily have said, you don't want to shoot too far behind the shoulder when taking a lung shot or you'll have a gutshot deer...

I'm in Texas, and, like it or not, the most common method here is hunting from a blind over corn. Being in a blind gives you a very solid shooting platform. The does will put their heads down to eat the corn, and it presents a nice stable target. And, as I said before, with a 9X scope, at 50 yards, you can pretty much pick which hair you want to cut with the bullet...

We've had a gentleman on this thread say that he has shot the back legs of running deer with buckshot and because he hit the femoral artery, the deer bled out. It seems to me that a head shot is a lot less risky than that...