What's been your experience with neck shots?
I've taken some on occasion and results have been DRT, but I take it that isn't always the case. Remembering GF's tracking job last season... What went wrong? I like having a clean carcass to butcher and that high neck shot on a meat deer sure has saved some blood shot meat from a shot around the shoulder area. What has been your experience with neck shots?
I have taken a few neck shots and your right, it saves a lot of the mess and the meat. But my experience is the shot has to be high on the neck to avoid any collateral damage. Last year I shot a doe at 20-25 yards and shot it lower in the neck. Shrapnel from the bullet travel downward and ruined one front shoulder and the front tip of the backstrap. Now granted these were ballistic tip bullets which tend to be like small grenades, but I've done it before with them and didn't have a problem. But it was a higher shot too.
Fine - its not a problem. For that sort of thing I always shoot for head, and I've always shot front on or back on and never ever side on.
Yes, it works fine. But it is best, from a stand especially, to check the exit line. Easy to smack a rump or somesuch on the way out. You cannot assume that a bullet will break up entirely - nor can you assume that it will not bounce off bone.
Don't worry about hitting them hard, just hit them right.
My concern is that if you don't hit or damage the CNS (spine) you may wound the deer but not be able to recover it. Just a smaller margin of error.
I've taken a few neck shots but only because that was the only shot I had.
They were usually close, sure shots and the results were DRT.
Here we're lucky to get one shot a year, allowed one buck a year, for
rifle season so you don't want to be too picky.
That said I do try to get the heart/lung shot whenever possible and would
let a deer walk before taking a gut shot or a very risky,likely to just wound,
shot.
ST - that is the whole point of going front or back on. Its either down or gone. Worst you can do is put a hole in its ear.
Side on in the "classic" high neck, is a mugs game IMO, but front or back is deadly because you cannot miss hitting bone.
Deranges the skull a bit, and bleeds everywhere, but it does put them down.
Yes - you do need to be neat with your shooting. Standing freehand at 150yards is not the way to go about it........but off the sticks its a runner.
Don't worry about hitting them hard, just hit them right.
Yeah, that one was not much fun, but it was a lot worse than it had to be, just because the buck ran off – not very far at all - and bedded where there was plain and simple no reasonably safe finisher to be had. Well. ‘reasonably’ for my tastes, anyway. It was damn painful to not be able to do what I would have done immediately if not in the suburbs.
To Herne’s point, I made a Mistake by taking that shot on what was basically a broad-side. I picked a 4” target over a 10”-12” target, he raised his head as I was tightening up and I missed bone by, what, an inch or so? No matter. Wouldn’t ever have mattered if I’d chosen the bigger target, and I won’t be doin’ that one again.
If anything, it just proves (IMO) that no weapon is perfectly ‘humane’ when operated by a human. A ‘gimme’ can turn into a ‘gimme a break!’ at any time, so you gotta play the percentages. For me, that’s going to mean H/L shots, and they’re going to be at plenty close range, because they have to be real close around here in order to ensure that the bullet pounds deep into the dirt after exit.
So that’s why I’m bowhunting this year, at least to the greatest extent possible (and assuming I can get access OK’d before Christmas). With sights and a trigger, I shoot the Contraption as well as I do a rifle – and probably better, because I practice with it so much more. At 25 yards and in, it shoots nearly as flat as my 7-08 does out to about 200, and probably much flatter than the rifle does at 300.
And best thing is that an arrow doesn’t mess up anything it doesn’t touch :ccol:
Wise to realize that bullets can do strange things when the encounter bone. Some of you HA guys tell about a BT running amok. They don't go in a straight line all the time. Back in my youth my uncle had to finish off a big ten point buck that field dressed around 210# so he had some mass to his bone structure. The buck had been gut shot and was bedded looking at my uncle with it's head up. The only shot that he had was right between the eyes. I went over to see the buck thinking that I'd see a mess of a head, but I didn't. One neat hole (M740 carbine in .30-06) between the eyes and an exit hole below the white throat patch in the front of the neck! The bullet had been deflected around the inside of the skull and then down through the neck! If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it.
On the neck shots, a softer bullet will expand more and probably put the deer down faster than with a harder bullet if the spine is not broken by the bullet itself.
I've done the neck shot a few times, all had the same results, DRT.
However, I've never shot a deer with a rifle, only sabot slugs. All
shots 50yds or closer. .5 inch hole going in, .5inch hole going out.
Always figured that extra big hole gave some room for error. If the
'hole' didn't get em, the shock to the spinal column would stun em long
enough for the follow up. I once shot a doe between the eyes, neat hole
going in, neat hole going out. No mess what so ever. Kinda surprised me.
I'd have to say that's unusual because I've blown their heads to bits numerous times with shotgun slugs, .243's & 30-30's.Originally Posted by 45seventy
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