For all of those who remember my post about hitting a 150" 11 pointer w/ my bow and not finding it on October 28th....Yesterday here in central wisconsin (opening day firearms) he shot it at about 1:30. We had asked him the night before opener if he had seen this buck and we had shown him pictures....we figured he may have died because we had 0 sign of him. He said maybe but wasn't sure. Well last night he walked in the shack and said "I got the split G2 11!!"
I walk out and checked him out....sure as sh*t that was him...the neighbor had hit him about a 1.5 inches lower then my shot. The buck had a huge knot/cist on his back and I think some arrow and the head are still in him we will see when it is caped...
I'm glad some1 got to kill him............moral of the story is, Yes, there is a no kill zone!!!

I didnt go back to your original post; but yup, I hit an elk about 3" below the spine and got blood on the arrow, little chunks of meat and a few drops of blood. Followed the tracks/blood drops for over a mile until the ground got too hard to see tracks. never found it. There is a "No Man's land" between the spine and the organs as seen in this skeletal view. Better luck next time

Did you get any pictures of where the knot/cyst is and was the head still in there? I'd like to see where you hit the deer.

I would bet its hit above the spine and not below. I did the same thing once. Had my broadhead and 3 inches of arrow in between the vertebra. I killed the buck a week later.

yeah i got some pics....but i wait til wed. to get more that is when he will be caping it.....idk how to get them on this site tho

Actually the photo shows there is no "no mans land/void".
Animals can occasionally survive a high lung hit, but there is no area below the spine with no vitals from the back of livr/kidneys to the front of the lungs.

My guess is you hit above the spine.

There absolutely IS NOT!

Show me in this diagram below how you can possible hit below the spine and not hit the lungs. (Both of you went over the spinal cord or got one lung and it lived!

Now that right there is hard to argue with! That's what I've said all along.

This year I shot a doe, and from the stand it looked like a perfect hit elevation wise. When I got to the deer I thought, hey, that looks like a high hit. Ended up just under the spine.

I think that what a lot of guys see from the treestand fools them into thinking they hit the deer below the spine, because you see more of the deer's back from an elevated position. Deer hit above the spine with an arrow will normally live to see another day.

Here's a pic of a buck I shot a couple seasons back. You can see a second wound above where my brother in law had a complete pass thru a few days earlier. Buck came into the grunt call when I got him and looked as fit as a fiddle.