I shot a roe buck today nice easy 50yd in open green fields. The bullet hit the bone going in and blew half the heart away hit the lungs and then exited. This was a 100gr pro hunter.
Thing is it ran about 80 yds how on earth do they manage to run. I have had them run before but this almost looked like it wasnt shot.
It’s a perfectly normal flight or fight response. There is plenty of oxygen with your muscle cells and muscles can work anaerobically without the supply of fresh oxygen from oxygenated blood. In man, a sprinter doing 100m in 10 seconds with hardly taking a breath. A Roe deer can run a lot faster than Bolt so in a few seconds can cover a good distance.
By shooting through the heart and the lungs all you are doing is putting a massive hole through the blood system. An animal will continue to run until the blood loss is such that there is no more oxygenated blood flowing to the brain, at which point the command signals stop and the animal collapses unconscious with death occuring a few moments later.
Key here is command signals coming from the brain via the central nervous system (CNS) to all the body organs. Damage the CNS and the animal will collapse. Give it major damage and the animal collapses unconscious. However until there is loss of oxygenated blood its not dead.
With a bullet you have a permanent wound channel of about 1 to 2” in diameter but with a temporary wound channel of 4 to 6” in diameter. Look at some video of ballistic gel tests.
If you place your point of impact so that permanent and / or temporary wound channel impacts large bundles of nerves you will get an immediate incapacitation of the animal.
Fortunately in and around the chest cavity there are three major bundles.
1) along the spine
2) at the front of the chest where all the main arteries from the heart / lungs come together
3) within the armpits.
If you place of impact about half way up the body in line with the frontside of the front leg your bullet and the temporary would channel give the CNS a major impact as well as destroying the major bloods vessels. This renders the animal immediately disabled and unconscious so it collapses on the spot. In the meantime the major bloods vessels will loose blood pressure so that by the time the animal would recovering consciousness it’s dead from loss of blood.
You can achieve the same result with a head or neck shot, but these have much less room for error. A neck shot can paralyse the animal, but unless you take out the main artery to the brain it will regain consciousness in a minute or two. Head shots - again will generally knock an animal down, but unless you have destroyed the brain and its major arteries they can get up and run a long way. I wouldn’t recommend these shots for every day stalking.
The traditional shot placement of 1/3 way up tight in behind the shoulder was used to save meat. With traditional cup and core bullet that fragments it does so.
With a modern monolithic bullet that remains in one piece this is much less of an issue. However I do quite like a quartering away shot on the right hand side of the animal. Put the bullet half way up tight behind the shoulder and it will punch right all the vitals and the CNS and come out in front of the offside shoulder. Animal will drop on the spot.
