b-rice

I read an artical i Peterson bowhutning a few months back and i talked about how a one lung shot was not a fatal shot and that the deer would not die. Is this true and has anyone experienced that?[&o]

ArcticBowMan

Not true. There is a possibility that an animal can survive a one lung hit, but that is if you don' t hit any major arteries, or any other organs that would cause the animal to lose the majority of its blood.

jerry606

I forget who it was exactly, but i believe someone on this board made a post about shooting a buck and only hitting one lung.He searched for the buck, and yeilded no result. Then he saw the buck a few days later and made good with his second shot.

dick_cress

It is possible for a one lung hit animal to survive and it has happened.

John Trout Jr. in his book Finding Wounded Deer and also Trailing Whitetails discusses this in depth. Even lung cancer patients having had one lung removed can and do survive and live normally.

BuckAlley

I read the article in Peterson' s. I don' t recall it reading that the deer could survive. In fact it started out: " The single-lung hit may be the most misunderstood of all shots." It continued on about a single lung hit doe that was recovered a day & a half later. An autopsy showed the doe had only recently died, meaning it lived for 36hrs from a 1 lung hit. But it NEVER said that type of hit was non-fatal.

HuntingNut13

I would imagine that one lung knicked by a broadhead hass the possibility of being non fatal, but I don' t want to figure the odds of it. I would suspect greater than 99.9% of single lung hits are fatal.

Stickemup

Even though it' s not likely most of the time, I' m sure it is possible.

I can say with certainty that you don' t want to hit a deer through one lung...EVER. If the deer does die, it will probably be hours later and a long LOOONG way from where you shot it. Those conditions are not great for putting meat in the freezer or horns on the wall. It' s also a bit disturbing to know that it will take hours or days of suffering for it to die.

wimp

I' ve hit several deer thru one lung and have found them all. The longest went about 300 yds. On some of them I hit the liver as well, others I' m sure caught some other added vital artery that allowed me to find them. In all cases, I gave the deer at least 2 usually more hours before tracking.

JOEBEARHUNTER

I' ve recovered 3of 3 deer that I one lunged. All were dead whithin an hour and none had A good blood trail . I' VE been in belief that A bear is totally capable of surviving on one lung.

Lilhunter

there are memebers here that are living proof to that joebear! Bears and one lung can and will survive.

I dont lay a hole lot of claim to peoples blood trials without being on it myself or knowing someone I know fairly well to have been on it.

Things happen immediatly after the shot and shortly there after that can lead to a marginal hit animal to not be recovered. Some of it is impossible to forsee, other things are just lack of experience.

A friend of mine one lunged a caribou bull, he made it appx 150 yards before the bull laid down. We let him lay for a few minutes thinking his head will go down, his head will go down before realizing he might have only nabbed one lung. A carefully laid crawl by my pard and a well excuted 2nd arrow and the bull died almost as fast as it stood. Would he have died there if left alone, I believe so. Pushed, he could have gone for miles.