Originally Posted by
bghunter777
This is not true. The "no kill zone" aka dead zone does not exist below the spine. You should be fine just put in the time and find that deer.
I think you are correct for a deer shot from an elevation - it would be impossible to shoot above the lungs and below the spine. In fact, I would say it would be a very good shot.
But, however, from a ground blind it is a different story. I shot a deer from a ground blind that was about 3/4 up just back from the front leg. And I gave it an hour before pursing. I figured that it was a slam dunk. Pass through shot broadside. Trailed the faint blood trail. No deer. Then the trail became less and less. Found traces of it at 100 yds, then it was gone. Looked and looked. Came back the next day with 3 helpers. This was a small woods and we should have found it. We neither found the deer nor did we even find any trail. In another account from a different forum (I won't post the link), an antelope hunter posted:
i have hit an antelope out of a blind in a "no kill zone". whether it was above or below the spine; I don't know. I do know that it hit a bit higher that i wanted (because i was off on my yardage) and it was a clean pass-through.
I watched the goat run about 150 yards and stop, i figured he was going down..but instead he started feeding. I watched him through a spotting scope feed for about 2 hours before he walked off. There was NO blood but you could see perfect X's on each side of his body. I saw it for 2 hours and so did my wife.
After it walked off i walked around the hill to watch it get scared by a truck and run about a mile. I then followed the buck as he fed to another water hole. Watched for nealy a whole day.
A couple days later, i saw the goat with X shaped scabs on his sides. He did not even act spooky, let alone hurt.
Since the last incident, I figured out how to avoid this. Aim mid-body just a little farther back and mid-body so as to hit mid-lung. And if the arrow is a little high, it will still get lung since the lungs angle up higher. It is a little more risk of a gut shot, but at least a gut shot can be recovered. This is how I shot when I first started bow hunting and it proved to be reliable - I went back to this tactic with no deer lost since. And this is for ground blind hunting or fairly low tree stand hunting. I would again state that a shot behind the shoulder from a higher stand would be not only lethal, but very lethal.