Question for all
 

How many of you believe there is a "dead zone" in a deer's chest cavity? I'm talking about an area above the lungs and below the spine where an arrow an actually penetrate all the way thru and not kill the deer.
In the last 3 years Ihave seen 2 instances where this happened. Both bucks were shot during bow season and not recovered only to be killedwith a muzzleloader later by the same hunter thathad put an arrow thruthem earlier. Both haddistinct broadhead cuts in the hide on each side and one was shot thru one lung and that lung had begun toattach itself to the ribcage on that side. This buck was killed while chasing a doe nonetheless.
Maybe some of our shots aren't as far off as we sometimes believe. These are tuff animals!

xbowbarry

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To me its one of them things that you just don't believe till you see it for yourself, I have not seen it yet! The only thing I can think is maybe there is a chance that a deer could have fully exhaled right at the time of impact and maybe the arrow skirted the vary top of the cage and just nicked the lung. It could happen but I think it has to be a perfect chance thing. I have been cutting up my own deer and there is not any meat below the spine. The ribs hook right on to the spine disk and theback straps sit on top of the ribs on each side of the spine. the spinal cord is alot lower in the back then most think and some times I think some guys put a arrow right through the back straps and never hit the spin and assume they shot below it. Some think the spin is just below the skin like on us and other animals. So there is not much room below the spine IMO and I cant just see this small pocket of fluid or air between the ribs and spine. Deer would have to fully exhale and thearrow would have to skirt the perfect shot just below the spine and then only nick the lung.

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I have to say YES there is. Lost a couple

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the dead zone ...Hmmm...a miss?

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There is a spot there and you'll get blood but no deer. I've seen it happen to others and had it happen a couple of times myself. Shot looks good but you never get the deer. I've followed them for over a half mile and nothing.

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We call it the hollow spot where i'm from! Nothing much in there and 10 times out of 10 that deer will not die from that shot. Unless some infection started up from it but i really dought that! Alot of hunters hit that spot and think they got themselves a dead deer, its a very common wound!

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I justgot this off of the bow hunting forum so I have to eat my words in my previous post. I was really suprised myself of the picture.....

These pics have been floating around for awhile but they really show how low the vertebral column goes.

This hit is a 'spine' shot. Two inches higher and the deer probably would have run off and lived.

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I don't believe there is.

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I didnt believe it until this year. i thought pass thru equals dead deer, no matter what. the 9 pt. I shot as I walked up on him I noticed a puss bubble the size of a large grape on his upper left high shoulder/neck area. i initially thought it wasa fighting poke, made sense to me. after I field dressed I noticed a similair wound on the other side. three of us were looking and all at the same time said the same thing. this deer has been arrowed and lived. there is no other explanation. both sides had fully healed, just a little puss bubble that came off dragging him out and that was it. I told the butcher to watch for an arrow but he said he didnt find one.

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I grabbed this pic off the deer hunting section... this guy shot this buck yesterday
and found this arrow stuck in like this. Buck was chasing a doe when he harvested
it, so it must not have been hurting too bad. So to answer the question, yes, deer
have a hollow spot in them!They are tough animals...

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IMO that pic shows what I mentioned and others talked about. I think that arrow is above the spine and in the back straps of that deer. The anatomy pics and the one butcher cutting pic show how low the spine is, and to me it looks like that deer is shot above the spine. I think I tried to explain it, but I do not think there is a dead zone in a deers lungs, but I think people do not understand how low the lungs and spine is on a deer. One thing I read in here and on other forums is "the deer ran for over a half mile and we lost the trail" or stories of tracking a deer for a long time with poor blood and lost it after six hundred yards. I think they are examples of pushing a deer to fast and to soon. The last buck I shot I sat in stand for about half hour after the shot, and I knew it had crashed, but you never know. I then got out of stand and slipped out as quite as I could and left. By the time I tracked deer it was around an hour and a half later. That pics shows that a pass through does not equal dead deer, but also shows how low the lungs are. A nice size back strap is about four to five inches around. Then you have the hide on top and the ribs below, the lungs are low!

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Here is the link to Happy Pappy's pic with the story to go with it. There is some better explanations in here also. But there is stories of exceptions to the rules to! LOL!!

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=2456538&mpage=1

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I think that's anexcellent picture... if I had shot that deer at that angle, I would have been pretty confident of the placement. I might of thought it wasa little high, but in my mind, that would have been a dead deer walking!
As far as trying to explain to folks the area we're talking about, that pics says it all. It also appears that arrow shot was from a ground blind or something similar. A shot like that from a tree stand would have angled low enough to get one of the lungs anyway.

Some might not believe this story and it's not exactly a crossbow topic... but I once shot a small 8 point with a Remington Copper Sabot 2 3/4" (Remington 11-87 fully rifled barrel with a 4x scope) when they first came out (early 90's) This buck had spooked w/ a doe from the next woods over and was standing in the middle of a field so nobody could sneak up on them. I estimated the shot at 150 yards (woodchuck hunting was my absolute favorite thing to do, so I was pretty sure of the yardage) I put the crosshairs 12" above his back and let one fly... drilled him in his armpit, just behind his leg. I let him sit for a while (20 mins - not really long enough, but I was young and excited) When I walked up on him he was just standing there like he just got done sprinting a mile. He couldn't catch his breathe, I finished him off, but upon gutting him, that bullet only went in there less than 8" as it had no power left and the pedals didn't open up, so he was quite "frisky" yet, with one lung still working fine. Like I said earlier.. they are a tough, amazing animal.

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There is no dead zone in the lungs but there is in the rib cage. I have witnessed two deer with holes on each side of the rib cage where arrows passed thru over the lungs and below the spine
I processed deer for 20 years so I knowthe anatomy of a deer.

xbowbarry

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I have believed for a long time that a lot of the people who try neck shots and lose deer are shoting them where they thinl the spine is in the neck and are going over the top of it; this is commen in gun hunters and most of them wont believe you if you tell them where they should shoot for the neck shot. Lee

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Deer have a evolutionary adaptaion that enables them to shut down venus circulation to wounds thereby preventing blood loss. I can envison an arrow passthrough between lungs and spine, which didn't hit an artery, and was then plugged with fat and other tissue to prevent a sucking chest wound, as not being lethal given their ability to control bleeding.
Ironically it's my favorite rifle target on an undisturbed deer. Such a hit from a fast bullet deflates the lungs and disrupts the nervous system causing near instant death by shock with a minimum loss of edible meat.

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Barry, I hope you did not take my comment as people not understanding the deers anatomy to be directly at you, it was a general statement. As I said in my first post I think it can happen, but is rare and IMO the deer has to be on a exhale breath for this to happen. The rib cage serves only one purpose and that is to hold the lungs and heart. When fully inflated the lungs fill the cage entirely and when exhaling they can create a small area that could make a spot for a arrow. But I think this has to be a perfect shot type of thing. If it was easy to do then it would be more of a fact and hunters would be schooled on it and how to avoid it. But since it does not happen that much because of the low chances of it happening the is not a need for the education on it. What I meant by Happy Pappys pic is that to me that pic shows a shot above the spine. The area directly below that arrow is in one of the lowest dips in the spine and that pic looks like it is above the spine to me. I feel that alot of guys hit real high on deer and then think it is this dead zone when in reality they shot the back straps above the spine never even coming close to the lungs. Could a arrow skirt the top of the cage and nick the lungs, as said before by me, yes, but I think it happens alot less then people think.

But this all comes down to knowing your equipment and your game. I can say proudly that I have not wounded deer like that and not found them. I keep my shots close and I know where every arrow is going to go before it is released. I have missed only four times in the past when I first started hunting, once in a freezing rain hunt, CB was covered in ice, to excited to think about cleaning it off before shot. Oncewhen I hunted indown pouring rain, arrows stuck in dirt in front of deer, third was when hunting in hard winds and arrow missed cleanly, and once when I had a experience with the thumb on the rail! These where situations that I was not familiar with and learned from them. I have been lucky to not stick deer and not find. I think if more people took better shots these type of situations would never happen. And again this is a in general statement not aimed at any one ion this thread, but practice is thekey!

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No offense taken Hotburn. The fact that such an occurrance is rare but can happen is why I started this post. Keep the comments coming.

xbowbarry

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I also believe there is... first time I've lost a deer was this year. Shot a buck passthrough shot. Retrieved the bolt and it had good blood on it. But there was hardly any blood trail.... only found a few specks on blades of grass. me and 3 other guys looked for a little over 2 1 /2 days and never found him. Pretty depressing. I did get redemption this morning though. Shot a 7 pt drop tine with my ML for firearms season. Going to load him up on the trailer in a few minutes...I'll post some pics later on the Blackpowder forum....later

chris

chris