Deer no mans land refresher and story
 

First of it does not exist, at least not where most think..

you can not shoot a deer high but below the spine and not clip the top of the lungs..

You can however shoot a deer high in the front half and go over the spine and get nothing but backstraps and a little blood..

A buddy of mine in KY did this during archery season, the deer lived and he ended up killing it during the M/L season a month or so later..

Here is a pic showing the curvature of the spine most hunters don't even know it does..

The blue line is the spine the two dots show where he shot the deer..

Wasp Archery actually has a nice article on this in the blog section of their website

http://www.wasparchery.com/blog/deer-shot-placement

I'm not sure where people come up with the void thing, because none of the diagrams of deer anatomy I've ever seen show any space between lungs and spine. Its not totally related, but the other cool diagram I've seen is an interactive anatomy diagram that I think can help new hunters identify their shot and maybe get better at finding their deer

http://www.realtree.com/deer-hunting...cement-on-deer

cool love the additional info.. really like the realtree interactive.

Yeah, I like it because it discusses what to expect from each type of shot. It's great info for new hunters. The diagram they used isn't the best though - it doesn't show how far down the spine dips behind the shoulders. I honestly believe most of those so called void shots are high hits and get nothing but meat above the spine. One has to wonder how many of those hits get blamed on the broadhead not opening, too...lol

we watched my buddies shot over and over on vid it looked like a good hit, we looked for the deer the next day for several hours with no luck.. after that we put several new cams out on another part of his farm, he checked them a few weeks later and had pics of the deer.. He went back in in M/L season and killed the buck on the first sit.. Both vids were put together and aired on "The Hunt" about a month ago..

If you hit under the spine inside of the chest cavity you will hit the main artery suppling the blood to the rear of the deer and will be dead within 50 yards. If you hit above the spine (no mans land) then like you said, nothing but back strap.

No mans land refers to the area in which there are no vitals (above spine).

I agree - most void hits are likely above the spine and hit nothing but meat. However, you'd be surprised to hear how many people claim there is some kind of "void" in the chest cavity that they hit - probably because they aren't willing to admit they made a bad shot.

Help explain this
 

I shot a small 8 point with my 338-06, the shot was through the ribs. I butcher my own animals, as I removed the hide I found a muzzy
Broadhead in the hide of the left shoulder. As I removed meat from the right shoulder the top of the shoulder had a chipped area and a healed crack. As I removed the meat from the left shoulder, the shoulder blade had severe cracks with what appeared to be a pass through of a Broadhead over an inch down the shoulder blade. The shoulder blade was healed but irregular from the fracture.

Had I understood the significance of what I possessed I would of kept the shoulder blades for show and tell, at the time I thought this was one heck of a tough deer but it's luck had run out. As I told this story over the yeas, I have heard a lot of thoughts but I believe the shot had to have penetrated the chest cavity. I should have spent more time examining the chest cavity but I was more interested in finishing the job at hand.

I have shot and butchered a lot of deer in my 40+ years of hunting and I would have expected to see this deer die from what I saw.