What's been your experience with neck shots?

[Waidmann]

My only experience with neck-shot deer was two years ago. I encountered a road-hit deer that was still alive. Broken hip. While I tried to decide what to do, a copy came along and thought I'd hit it. Even tho I hadn't, he decided to "put it down", pulled out the shotgun and shot it. I didn't realize it until later, but he had shot it in the neck. He asked me if I wanted it, and I said yes, so he wrote me a kill tag and frove off.

After he was gone, I realized it wasn't completely dead, only mostly dead. Still, my wife came by with the deer coffin (a 55 gal rubber-maid tub), and we loaded the mostly dead into the tub and stuck it in the back of my jeep. Big mistake. Even tho we were only about 5 miles from home, the deer didn't like being dumped into a big, plastic tub (legs up) and driven off. As soon as we started driving, he started kicking and thrashing. I was afraid he was going to kick out the back window. Blood all over the carpet and windows. Sheesh.

When I got him home, I shot him again with a .22 in the head, and that finally finished him. When I skinned him, I found that the cop's slug had gone through the meat between the spine and the top of the deer. Blew a big hole, but didn't hit spine, or at least, not badly enough to kill it.

Moral of the story?

Don't do neck shots. Do head shots.
Don't put mostly dead deer in the back of your jeep. Make sure they are completely dead before they go into the coffin.

Waidmann