Where do you prefer to aim on deer with Cast Boolits?

[GhostHawk]

Deer heads aere always moving, down to graze, up to scan for danger. Which makes them a hard target. Unless you are jacklighting them, have their eyes locked on your light.
It results in a low consistency shot. If the deer is grazing all 4 fleet are planted. The body is not moving, or at most is moving forward at a slow walk.

The heart is right behind the elbow. 2 inches right of the elbow, that is your aim point. If the adrenaline is up I have seen double lung shot deer run a mile.

And the best thing you can do with any chest shot deer is after that shot sit down and give it a solid 15 minutes. It will be listening for pursuit. If it hears not it will stop at the first place that has cover and it will try to patch/clot that exit hole. A little pile of dried leaves or grass and it will lay down with the injured part on those leaves. 15 minutes is enough time for it to cool down, stiffen up, and bleed out. Walk up on it quiet chances are it will be laying there dead or almost dead. Easy to finish without another run and wild shots.

Bow hunters know. Shoot a deer, hit it in the right spot, give it some time to bleed out and stiffen up. Makes the follow up easy.

[35 Rem]

I prefer the "behind-the-shoulder" shot because it kills fast enough and gives the most margin for error. Also less meat damage. I didn't start hunting with cast bullets until 2017 I think it was but went cast all the way this year and got all 4 deer with them. Total cast bullet deer kill for me now is 8 so getting enough samples to make some general observations at least. I've not had one run more than 75 yards and all the others either dropped straight down or ran more like 30 or 40 yards. A couple of those were spine shot however and of course they are going to drop instantly. One of those was my longest cast bullet deer shot to date (160 yards). I thought it was more like 175 and held too high and clipped the spine rather than getting a double lung shot. Another shot was required to finish it off.

One observation I THINK I have noticed is that meplate size does make a difference. I have killed 3 using a 35 Remington and Accurate bullet 360-200A. You can hear that bullet hit the deer and it seems to drop them faster compared to the bullet I used for 4 deer this past season, which is RCBS 32-170-FN in a 32 Winchester Special. Both are traveling about 2,050 ft/sec and using the same alloy. I shot two does with the 32 Special on Opening Day this year at about 100 yards and audible bullet impact was significantly less that if I were using the 35 caliber Accurate bullet. The deer both ran further than the 3 I've shot with the 35 Remington. Of course there is infinite variation when shooting wild deer so I can't conclusively say that what I've observed will always happen or that I will see the same thing next year. The RCBS bullet in 32 caliber did put meat in the freezer but I will also most likely buy an Accurate 32-170A to use in the 32 Special next year as I'd prefer to dispatch the deer as humanely as possible.

[Hannibal]

With all the expertise displayed in this thread I'm surprised that I've ever found a dead deer in the woods even once. Let alone all the ones that followed.

Even the best laid plans don't always work out. I've seen too much evidence to believe otherwise.

[SoonerEd]

It's depends on cover, time of day, etc. If easy tracking and not late in the woods by myself, then double lung. If there is thick cover or i need to get out of the woods quickly or by myself close to dark then quartering away into the off shoulder. I'll neck shoot if the come under my stand and are close.

[Friends call me Pac]

I tend to shoot behind shoulder but will shoot high shoulder without fear of bloodshot meat in general.

I use a 50:50 pure lead and wheel weight mix in a NOE 311165 in my 30.30 & 30.06. Fastest is around 1900fps out of the ought 6 and a tad slower in the 30.30. This is the only recovered bullet I have ever had. It was from my 30.06 at a distance of about 25 yards. Found it lodged in the offside hide. It mushroomed nicely.



Entry hole from that deer with a high shoulder shot. Bloodshot meat was minimal and easily trimmed away.



Here is a different deer shot with the 30.30 and same bullet at around 50 yards. Placement was behind shoulder my actual preferred shot. Bloodshot meat is about the same or less than with the 30.06 in high shoulder. I believe I am listing entry and exit correctly but it was a few deer ago and I may have it reversed. Either way bloodshot meat was not an issue.

entry



exit



The absolute worse bloodshot meat I have ever had with cast was from a 260gr flat point out of a .44 carbine. It was a mess. Never shot another with it.

[Buckeye509]

Most of my shots are 50-65 yards have been on stationary deer, broadside, and they will bolt 40-60 yards and expire. A lot of times damage is done to the heart and nearby arteries from bits of rib-bone or nicked by the bullet. I prefer a 44 Mag, 240-50 grain cast moving around 1200fps from a 18” MGM Encore barrel.

[Paul D. Heppner]

40/45 yards, 44 mag 310 grain Lee at about 1200 fps. Through the ribs and broke the off side leg. 50 yard death run and dropped in sight.


20 gauge, first attempt at my own slug. 30 yard shot right behind the elbow, DRT. Not a very glamorous picture.


308 at 90 yards. Hit him 3 times as he traveled about 50 or so yards and dropped. What you see are the exit wounds. The entrance holes are much closer together.


308 at 80 yards. Sharp quartering to me. Hit him between the base of the neck and the onside shoulder, ran in about an 80 yard semi-circle and dropped just out of sight. Won't shoot there again. Clipped some vessels at the top of the heart and took care of his right lung.


357 Max at 64 yards using 180 grain XTP at about 1700fps. She was already wounded by some other hunter so I finished the job. He never showed up to claim his prize. I even gutted her out for him. Oh well, she went home with me at the end of the day.

I like shooting through the lungs,both of them.

Don't know where the last picture came from. It is me and Rigby the wonder Poodle and a cotton tail he ran down and delivered to hand in my back yard. GOOD dog!

[Cap'n Caveman]

I'm not hunting from an elevated platform of any kind, so my shots are neck or high shoulder regardless if it's a cast bullet or not. I have no tracking issues that way.

[Anschutz]

It's all dependent and I've only taken one deer with cast but I'm usually going to aim at the crease of the shoulder about a third of the way up the body on a broadside shot which I've found to be rare. On a quartering-away shot, I'm trying to break down the offside shoulder. This generally ends in two lungs and sometimes the heart along with a messed up shoulder and no or a short tracking job. This year I'll be hunting primarily with a .375 Win in a newly acquired 94 Big Bore using cast and plan on much of the same.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk

[Seeker]

I always like them broadside and I aim just behind the shoulder and low. Yes they run a bit, but they bleed out as nice as a double lung archery hit. Makes for great tasting venison and not near as messy butchering. The last deer I killed was a big doe that only offered me a frontal, slightly quartering shot. I hit her just to the left of the brisket with a 255g rnfp out of my Henry Steel .45 colt and it exited just in front of her left hind quarter. She bolted of course, but went down before she out of my sight.

[Elmer Fudd]

This starts off about jacketed but ends up at cast. Read at your own peril.

I have always tried for double lung shots through my 37 years of hunting big game. Except, a couple years ago my eldest son started hunting. He chose a 243 with a particular jacketed bullet (87 Hornady HP). A good bullet for an impact study, especially since he got to shoot 3 deer and 3 pronghorn with said combo, not including marmots, squirrels, etc. I also shot a deer with that combo with him as a witness. The results of those 7 shots were clearly showing shoulder shots rendered faster incapacitation and death compared to double lung shots. And not too much meat damage, especially not as much as one would think with a normal hollow point bullet, which this is certainly not. I don't shoot hearts because I eat them.

I won't bore you with every bullet I have ever used, but my old standby, going back those 37 years, is the 165 Hornady BTSP in the 308. My farthest kill with that was 4 hits on a spike bull elk at an even 400 yards. He just did what elk do and absorbed each shot until he bled to death. All 4 were broadside rib hits and all 4 exited. Most of the kills have been broadside, double lung hits. I took a muley bounding away in the TX heart shot style, bullet going above the heart and ending up under skin above brisket and below throat. DRT. I attribute that to the autonomic plexus hit, which I love. But most have been double lung, broadside shots with a soft-ish bullet.

Fast forward to two seasons ago. 14" 358 JDJ contender barrel. 230 NOE FN hp cast of straight ww, air cooled with a gas check and LBT blue lube. Near max load of Rl 7 for I expect around 2200 fps. Front-on pronghorn buck at 99 yds. Dead center impact, exiting out 4" behind rear rib. Straight line penetration. Lungs: mush. Heart: bruised on top, but edible and boy did I eat it. Liver: split badly. Guts: untouched. Exit hole: 1.5" in the skin, bloodshot all around. That was another plexus hit, knocking him off his feet. Not to mention a soft 35 caliber flat nose that readily expands. He didn't bleed like a lung shot, obviously. But it opened my eyes to the killing power of the cast projectile. Yes, I acknowledge this was overpower for a speed goat, and the cast hp isn't the same as a cast expander, or a cast non-expander. But it made clear how lungs can bleed (bloodshot in this case, with DRT). I have shot some marmots with cast, some HP from a Smith 57 (NOE 237 Keith hp) and some with solid FN from various calibers and weights. The HP is a more decisive killer in my experiences. Probably like the stories about the Gould HP for the trapdoor. The solid will penetrate for all it is worth and can break bones in and out with the right mass (SD, but stats lie) and nose profile (I am a believer in what Veral Smith has written because I have seen it myself). But the solid won't blow a marmot apart on the third impact like a hollow point will (at least from the 41 mag).

In summary, I like the autonomic plexus impact, whether through a shoulder or not, from any angle. It isn't too hard to hit (I don't take long shots, mostly), it has a pretty large margin for error and still be lethal, and it drops critters right there. Some may bleed to death at that point before waking up, some don't bleed so must just be dead, I don't really know. But that's what it seems like to me.

[versa-06]

I always try to stay behind the shoulders even on quartering shots. Or Back in the ribs & out front center. It's all about the meat with me, But many times it creates quite a draaaaag.

[Pinger87]

I like to use the vital triangle and aim for that. i feel it gives you room for error.

[Charlie Horse]

We used to have to bring our deer to a check station (Illinois). I remember Amish people bringing in deer they shot in the head with a deer slug.

[schutzen-jager]

it depends ! - broadside, direct frontal, angling toward, or away fom shooter -

[Wolfer]

I tend to take the shot that they offer me. Those broadside shots you see on TV don’t happen to me very often. I don’t take Texas heart shots but try to break a shoulder if the angle allows it.

[Shawlerbrook]

At the end of this interesting article on Col. Townsend Whelen he gives his advice ( which I wholeheartedly agree with) on where to aim at big game.

https://www.rockislandauction.com/ri...qHzt2-pkMRRUo4

[huntinlever]

At the end of this interesting article on Col. Townsend Whelen he gives his advice ( which I wholeheartedly agree with) on where to aim at big game.

https://www.rockislandauction.com/ri...qHzt2-pkMRRUo4

Thanks for that link. Always been meaning to read his/Angier's "Own Your Own in the Wilderness," and just picked it up. I have Angier's "How to Stay in the Woods," though I prefer his "The Master Backwoodsman."

[Good Cheer]

At the end of this interesting article on Col. Townsend Whelen he gives his advice ( which I wholeheartedly agree with) on where to aim at big game.

https://www.rockislandauction.com/ri...qHzt2-pkMRRUo4

Thanks. That's a fun read. Made me think about how wonderful the American Rifleman was in the 1960's versus today.

[Orchard6]

There is a lot of variables that dictate my shot placements. Bullet construction and velocity are the two main ones for me. With a revolver I like to use hollow points at magnum velocities and stay behind the shoulder. So far it’s worked great. The expansion of the hollow point going through the lungs makes for larger holes and quicker hemorrhaging than that of any other cast bullet design I’ve tried.

If I’m using a solid type bullet, whether semi wadcutter or round nose flat point I take shoulder shots to try and slow the animal down. This seems to work with any velocity range I’ve shot, from 1000 fps on up. Since expansion will be minimal hemorrhaging will also be minimal and breaking the animal down is in my experience the best way to ensure a retrieval. If by chance I’m in an area where the deer must be dropped in its tracks due to property lines or heavy cover making retrieval difficult I’ll use the high shoulder or neck shot. I don’t prefer either one of those because the margin for error is quite small but it is very effective if done right.