I have a friend that insists that the neck is a justifiable shot to take on a whitetail with the bow. I can't find anything on the web to show him different. Please help.

The Neck is not a good shot. (there,.. show him that!)

i would say no...too small of an area to hit and not enough in the neck to make a good kill shot...too much room for error in wounding the animal.....i will say that the two deer i took this year with bow the first shot did not kill them and my second shot was in the neck and that did kill them...but i was only about 15 yards for both shots and was able to make good placement with my arrow....

I would never purposely shoot a deer in the neck. Just a stupid shot choice that any ethical hunter would not attempt.

Your friend is an idiot....

I've got something to tell him. Tell him that in order to take the deer down ETHICALLY, he'd have to hit a spot about 1 inch wide, the spine. To do that, he either had to shoot straight down, or know exactly where the deer's vertebrae runs through the neck. There was a post on here not too long ago about this. If you don't shoot them in the spine when taking this shot, you will end up with a hurt deer who, if he's lucky, will live with an arrow protruding out of it's neck. If he clips the spine, chances are the neck and head won't work real good for long and possibly cause the deer to starve to death. There aren't a whole lot of shots that you can take worse than a neck shot. Go for lungs and heart. Thats it. Not even the head, there's a possibility of blowing it's lower jaw bone off or just damaging the deer severely, again causing a slow, painful death.

I shot a 150-160 class buck right in the center of the neck last season...and not on purpose. He bled like a stuck hog for 300 yards and stopped. I was devastated (understatement). He lived and was seen rubbing trees a week later by another hunter. He survived the season and if I see him this year I will be EXTRA careful to aim PROPERLY.

Neck shots are at best poor shots. Big bucks DIE TOUGH!

We have a similar problem you and I.

Tom

Too many bad possibilties on a neck shot. Wait for the broadside,and
double lung'em.