yeah sabot is dead on......i remember reading some of peter capsticks books on guiding in africa (great books by the way), and he talks of shooting cape buffs and rhinos in the heart and the animal still had enough steam to charge and cause all kinds of mayhem....i think something like a brain shot or something shocking the spinal cord is the only way to truly drop an animal in its tracks.....heart and lung shots the animal can still cover some distance.

i can see where a non expanded or non-fragmented shot piercing the heart and leaving a perfect pencil hole through and through on the heart, and a deer runnin 100 yards....but i am imagining a heart that has been basically exploded by a bullet, and 1/2 of it blew apart.
i have heart shot a bunch of animals, and they drop, right in their tracks...just jelly was left.
i have nicked the heart before, leaving just a lil tear, and the deer ran 40-60 yards.
my buddy shot a deer, not even close to the heart. she dropped in her tracks. when we opened her up, there was a piece of bone that had plunged into the heart, we believe thats what killed her instantly.

I can understand that your personal experience would lead you to believe that halfbaked. But the simple fact experienced by me and many others is that a deer shot so that the heart is basically destroyed can easly run over 40 yards before dropping. The damage report I posted in the link below is accurate.

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/blac...-gold-dot.html

Be sure to see the video of that deer's reaction to the shot contained in that post. In my experience, the way she jumped and kicked is typical of a heart shot.

halfbakedi420

One thing to remember, the heart has nothing to do with movement of the body. The heart/lungs supplies oxygenated blood the brain, organs, and muscles. If you had a way to oygenate the blood and move it through the body you would not need a heart, such as a mechanical heart.

If the blood in the brain and muscles contains oxygen at the time the heart quits, the brain still functions for awhile and it will send meassages to the muscles to flee and the muscles do until the oygenated blood is used, as circulation has been interuppted.

Another example might be when the heart quits - you can still circulate oxygenated blood be doing chest compressions or other forms of heart massage.

Be sure if the animals heart is blown up, the animal is dead - but the brain does not know it for awhile.

couldnt find the video

plus when you think about how fast a deer can cover 50 or 100 yards, youre only talking about a matter of 2 to 5 seconds, so even though the hearts destroyed theres enough blood in the brain and limbs to power the deer those couple seconds.

Just click on the last picture in that post.

Both these were hit with a 300gr and 120gr of BH209. So im sure they also had a good shock factor too at under 80 yards. One deer didnt go far at all the other went 40 yards.

One was hit by a 458SOCOM and the other a 50S&W FTX.


Both pass throughs looked like this. The FTX photo got messed up.

This is the SOCOM that went 40 yards. It also was the heart with more damage.


Both had a good amount of splatter behind them too. When i was gutting it i really couldn't see how it even moved. They can be amazingly tough at times even with a near perfect hit. The buck though dropped instantly with a good neck shot that shattered the spine.

Great photos there gm.

Call it anything you want--I shot a 9pt through the heart at 30 yds with a 12ga slug,split the heart across the middle.Recovered the deer 150 yds away with a blood trail Stevie Wonder could follow.Deer do strange things sometimes.

Charlie