The farthest I have ever had a deer run after being shot is about 75 yards. This was a large doe that I shot through the lungs with a 30-06 165 g jsp. I did not have any problem trailing the deer because it looked like someone was pouring a bucket of blood out on the ground. The deer had a entrance wound behind the left shoulder and a very large exit wound on the right side. Some animals just have an amazing amount of stamina. Nothing has ever walked or ran away from my 444 or 45-70 though.

 

I don't believe it is a caliber thing

 

With my 30-30 i have had one deer run 50 yards, 6-7 DRT and one little doe that went maybe 10 yards.

With my .338 i have a DRT and my dad shot a buck with it low through the heart shoulder and lungs using corelokts 225 grainers and the deer ran 50 yards, significant damage the heart was in half, and the lungs were mush.

Most of the deer i shoot are DRT but once in a while when you hit one in the same exact spot that made the rest DRT and the deer runs 50 yards, you know there is just no way to insure a DRT unless you sever the spinal cord or destroy the brain, regardless of the caliber used, high lung shots seem to take them down pretty quick.

 

I can advance several theories:

#1 -- you may not have shot many deer. I've killed over 200. Most of those went at least 20 yards, some a whole lot farther, all with very fatal wounds, and chamberings have ranged from .38 Special to .338 Win. Mag and just about anything in between.

#2 -- You are an excellent hunter and superb shot who never makes the slightest error in shot placement. I've known such fellows and if you are one of them, good on you.

#3 -- pure, blind luck.

 

I can advance several theories:

#1 -- you may not have shot many deer. I've killed over 200. Most of those went at least 20 yards, some a whole lot farther, all with very fatal wounds, and chamberings have ranged from .38 Special to .338 Win. Mag and just about anything in between

+1 to what Pisgah said.

Personally, I have harvested 28 deer, 6 wild hogs, and an exotic ram. I can't say for every single one of those 35 critters, but I would guess about 60% went between 10 and 50 yards, while a few went more than 100 yards. The key factor seemed to be whether or not the animal was alert to danger when shot. Whenever possible, harvest your game before it even knows you're there and you'll get more "DRT" results. Just don't count on it or brag about it because, if you do, the next 5 you shoot will make you track them!

 

#4-- You are shooting rare and exotic Himalayan miniature deer.

 

Other than shooting them in the head/neck, I don't know of any way to get 100% DRT. I've only ever lost three and one of those was to someone who stole the carcass before I could get to it following the blood trail, another was due to gut-shot, and the last simply stumps me even today even though it happened 30 years ago. Boiler room is a very reliable shot. I guess I'm 98% or something with it but I couldn't tell you before I pulled the trigger on any of them whether or not it was gonna drop in its tracks or run 100yds. So far, my .260 has been fantastic in that the four I got with it this year all fell either in its tracks or didn't make it out if sight from where I shot it.

I've used 20ga buckshot and slugs, .30-30, .35 Remington, .30-06 (180gr SP and PSP), .260 Remington, .45cal muzzleloader, and .50cal muzzleloader on whitetails. So, not a broad range of calibers but at least one skinny bullet and one fat one.

 

I really can't speak to this at all. I have some theories but that is all they are. I seem to be having better luck lately but I think that is all it is. I have had what I think is bullet performance issues but I still can't say for sure. Deer are amazing animals.

 

I was not trying to brag. And no I have not shot that many deer compared to a lot of hunters. I have only shot at one moving deer and was lucky enough to pile it up fast. Not a practice I normally do. I practice a lot and the army spent a ton of cash teaching me as well. My tag count is only 8 or 9. I have seen a lot more shot though and have seen them run before.. It still amazes me that any animal will run with no heart or lungs!

AL

 

Perhaps the most dramatic case of sheer stamina and will to live I have witnessed was a shot on a cow elk inside of 100 yards with a 7 mag. The elk was running away and slightly to the right. The bullet went in around the last rib on the right side and exited through the front left leg. The leg itself blew out sideways like a piece of wet noodle and chunks of elk were apparent against the sunset that the elk was silhouetted against. That creature ran off on three legs and we trailed it until it got dark. The next morning we found it and some guys were tagging it. It had gone nearly a quarter mile.

 

I agree that an observation of surprise at well shot animals running significant distances is an indication that you need to shoot more animals. I have seen nothing that will drop a deer in its tracks every time; I have seen nothing that will not do it at times.

 

I agree that an observation of surprise at well shot animals running significant distances is an indication that you need to shoot more animals. I have seen nothing that will drop a deer in its tracks every time; I have seen nothing that will not do it at times.

Want to bet?

My 9,3x62 w/ 286 NPTs is a 100% DRT rifle!
High shoulder, It knocks'em over and they don't get up.

 

I harvested my 60th. deer as a hunter about 3 hours ago (I have killed a couple hundred more as a law enforcement officer). It was a nice doe that came out of the cedar swamp into a clearcut full of tangled brush with about 8" of fresh snow. She was acting spooky and I had to wait a few minutes for her to settle down. I wanted her to face towards an open area because when a deer is shot, if it runs, it will usually take off in the direction it is headed, and I really didn't feel like dragging her out of the shintangle in the cedar swamp.

I shot her just behind the shoulder about halfway up the body with a 300 grain .44 caliber Hornady XTP from my Knight Muzzleloader at a range of 79 yards. At the shot, she took off and ran about 100 yards with both lungs shredded into a soupy mush. The blood trail was 4 feet wide on the fresh snow. Fortunately she ran straight the way she was headed and piled up where I could get to her easily and not have too much trouble dragging her out.

The first 10 or 12 deer I shot way back in the 1890's, or whenever it was, dropped as if the earth was yanked out from under them, and I thought that all those hunters who had to track deer they shot must have been doing something wrong or using some caliber that lacked the magic that my rifles obviously had.

The next 10 or 12 deer all ran from 20 to 120 yards after being hit and I wondered if I had lost my mojo or something.

All of these deer were shot squarely in the heart/lung area.

I have shot deer with everything from a .223 to a .458 Magnum (although most with a .270)and it just does not seem to make one bit of difference what you hit them with. Unless you hit the spine, about 2/3 of them in my experience will run some distance after being hit. They can be pretty tough and tenacious of life, and they will prove it to you sooner or later if you shoot enough of them.

 

I do not doubt you a bit, Ray, but it is the high shoulder shot, not the caliber, that puts them down quick.

I have used that shot on several deer and an elk when tracking would be a problem, and they hit the ground fast. I don't use the high shoulder shot all the time for a couple of reasons: first, because it does spoil some meat, and second, because I had a bad experience with one deer about 10 years ago that I lost using the high shot placement (although admittedly the bullet hit just behind the shoulder on the crease).

That deer ran off and I couldn't find it. One of the guys from camp did find it the next morning and bagged it. My shot had struck too high to hit the lungs and too low to hit the spine...there is an inch or two of nonvital tissue between them and that is what I hit. I was using a .270 and you would think that the shock effect would do the trick, but the deer ran off with no blood trail and no evidence of a hit except some hair on the ground.

The key to the high shoulder shot, I think, is to put the bullet on the point of the shoulder about 3/4 of the way up the body, hopefully breaking both shoulders and severing the spinal cord, and accept that there will be some meat loss.

 

I do not doubt you a bit, Ray, but it is the high shoulder shot, not the caliber, that puts them down quick.

.....

The key to the high shoulder shot, I think, is to put the bullet on the point of the shoulder about 3/4 of the way up the body, hopefully breaking both shoulders and severing the spinal cord, and accept that there will be some meat loss.

whh,

Well...So far, I can't prove you wrong as that high should shot from some of my other calibers have all produced a DRT deer. But the 9,3 has also produced many DRT hogs with that shot where the others have not. It may just be me - I can't bring myself to put a 286 NPT through both lungs. I wanta see it go through in the toughest way!

 

I hope I did not jinx myself ! Watch next year Ill be telling of the deer that ran 200 yards into a swamp. I am not new to hunting either. I just do not take shots at deer I am not sure of. I have also passed on a lot of shots not knowing whats behind the animal. If Maine had the kind of hunting like other states I am sure my tag list would be much higher.

AL

 

Your tag list doesn't matter...you are a careful and ethical hunter, and that is what counts. If you hit them in the boiler room, you will have venison in the freezer whether or not you have to follow them a ways.

 

I've never once had to track a deer when they have been shot with my .25/06, my antelope this year went about 20 feet, but that was probably because he was already running, the bullet pulled the opposite side lung out of the chest cavity.

My .280 has been very reliable, I've had to track deer about 20 yards with this caliber, only a few times though.

I have also shot several deer with a .22 LR handgun, most were about 20 feet or closer, I shoot them in the head, they are always DRT.

Generally I would say that head and neck shots are 100% reliable, but this last season, my cousin shot a pretty nice buck on the run. He used a 300WM with 125 grain factory Federal load. He shot a buck on the run and thought he missed, so he shot again and drilled it through the lungs. It dropped right there. We got it cleaned and went to hang it up in his garage. He does taxidermy and wanted to mount this one, so he proceeded to cape it and low and behold he got to the neck and right in the middle of the neck, there was a bullet hole in and out. When he finished skinning out the skull, I started investigating and found no physical damage from the bullet beyond some bruising.

 

I agree that shot placement is far more important to the effect than caliber. Obviously, anything that hits the brain from a .22LR on up will have an instant effect. The high shoulder shot is often very dramatic, but destroys a lot of edible stuff. A heart shot, in my experience, hardly ever drops them on the spot, and that includes calibers I have shot or seen shot from .243 to .338 Win.

The emotional state of the animal also has profound consequences. An adrenaline filled buck will react very differently than a buck in its bed. There are just way too many variables to say that any specific gun will produce "this result" every time.

I am far more concerned about missing the best eating parts, and preserving the quality of the meat. I have come to believe that it is actually better to shoot the animal above the heart, even if some tracking is needed afterward. A shot above the heart is absolutely fatal in seconds; it destroys almost no edible bits; it almost always leaves a good blood trail; and it does a very good job of "bleeding out" the animal, if the heart is allowed that last few seconds to work properly, to help meat quality. It is also the largest lethal target on the animal. DRT just doesn't matter to me.

 

I couldn't agree more!

 

"All I can guess is the bullets some hunters use in the magnums and higher powered rifles are not built for deer and are not expanding just poking small wholes in them? Just a guess. I would like to hear any theories on this?"

Yeah. It ain't the cartridge, it's not really the bullet. It what's hit and how the deer reacts to the damage. A hit is the azz hurts, that encourages the critter to stop sooner than a less painful hit. A hit that breaks shoulders or spine will drop any four footed critter, right there. A central nervous system hit - brain or spinal cord - will drop anything. A solid lung, liver or heart hit is certainly lethal but rarely will they drop.

I've hit most of my deer with a mid-chest point of aim, verticle wire betwen the front legs. Some DRT, some stand there until they topple over but most run. Usually about 40 yards, but a few will go 75 yards. Ditto with my friends, no matter what we are shooting.

I've seen basically the same effect from arrows, a black powder .54, .243, .30-06, .35 Rem. I have friends who have the same results with cartridges from .30-30, .270, 7 mag, .300 mag. All of us using a wide variety of bullets from conventional to premiums with no average discernable difference on the game at all.

 

For me I have had deer do both. I have dropped most and seen a few run anywhere from 0 to 150 yards. I have had a couple deer shot with a bow not realize that they have been shot and stand there till they get woozy and tip over. Then others take and arrow run off 50 yards and fall over due to blood loss. Sometimes it takes a while for them to realize that they are dead. If they get spooked or are on the run, their adrenaline may be pumping and can take up to a couple hundred yards to ween off and then they drop over dead due to the fact that they are currently running on nothing but adrenaline. Considering if a deer is on a full out sprint going ~35mph, he can make it 200 yards in under 6 seconds given the right terrain. In most cases, bullet placement and bullet performance are going to dictate what it does to a given creature that has not been startled, not the caliber size in my opinion.

 

High shoulder shot is great for hogs. It destroys less meat than you might suspect. As the spine runs low through the shoulders, bullet impact stops them right now! I have hit several hogs where the bullet hardly ruined any meat in the shoulders, but took out the spine leaving the backstraps above it untouched. Sure like finding them where they were shot!

Regarding meat loss.... you will lose a lot less meat overall if you drop hogs right now, as opposed to having to look for them. Heart-shot, lung-shot, it doesn't matter - they don't bleed much and trailing can be a real difficult proposition. I've "lost" a lot of meat on hogs I never found and would have gladly traded both shoulders to recover the animal.

I don't mind following a blood trail on a deer, but not everyone can. Anyone with red/green color blindness better learn to bust everything in the front end.

 

I don’t know how to get a 100% guarantee of DRT. I have experienced more “one-shot-dropped-in-its-tracks-kills” using the 307 Winchester cartridge than any other and yet I have had a number of deer which even though “dead on their feet” ran quite a distance. I once shot an adult full bodied buck at the point of the right shoulder using a 170-grain Speer flat nose bullet traveling at 2,350 fps+ muzzle velocity. The bullet broke the right shoulder and detached the heart from its arteries, crossed the body and exited well aft on the rib cage on the left side. The deer was alert at the shot and whirled to the left. As the deer turned, its right leg, which was broken, flipped up in the air, alarming the deer. The deer trotted with the hair on its tail fully fanned out and quite alarmed until it finally ran out of oxygen and ran into a sapling, stumbled and fell, 110 steps from where it was standing when hit.
Another deer was well hit with the 356 Winchester on the right side aft of the rib cage and the 220-grain Speer bullet punctured the liver and one lung and exited through the edge of the left shoulder. The deer, which was also alert at the shot, gave no indication of having been hit and disappeared at the shot. The brush was thick and the ground hard and dry. There was a good blood splash where the deer had been standing and nothing else. My wife tracked the deer by finding very small flecks of blood on grass stems. The deer covered a little more than 100 yards before it bled out and ran out of oxygen, it lay down under a bush and died. The big Speer bullet is just a bit tough for our little deer and the wound channel looked like the bullet didn’t expand very much until just before it exited.

The facts are that well hit deer and hogs don’t always drop at the shot.

Personally I don’t care for neck or head shots but it is a common method of deer hunting over bait in Texas. There are a number of 22 Hornet deer hunters in my area and they kill a lot of deer – truth is, they loose a few too.

 

I use the high shoulder shot alot myself.I have not had any issue with wasting meat using Barnes X-Bullets in my .264 and recenlty I used Remington Corelock Ultra Bonded bullets with very similar results.I have never been a big fan of heart shots because most usually run too far before they realize they are dead.I prefer taking out the lungs and the shoulders over the heart.In my area there's too much thick brush and steep canyons to allow them to go far.Of the 20 or so deer killed with my .264 only 2 did not drop straight down.Both were the result of bad shot placement.Both were recovered. Of approximately 30 deer killed with other calibers I have lost 2 and both were clipped on the back.went down and quickly got back up and ran off.Neither had fatal wounds.With proper bullets placement all went down very quickly regardless of caliber used.

 

I figure a 20 yard run is about right for a heart shot deer. once I started shooting thru to the far shoulder I hsd more drop at the shot. A small difference but an apparently important one. I figured this out handgun hunting, first one ran 20 yards shot from the front left a blood trail a yard wide the whole way. Second

 

Sorrym accidently posted too soon.

second deer was hit a little above the heart and into the shoulder, I think the shock travels thru the bone and affects the spine. this has become my favorite shot, but not the only one I take.

Regards
Gene

 

I was just counting the deer and antelope taken with my 25-06 in the last three seasons and came up with 21. Going from memory four were head/neck shots that dropped right there, one did a lot of kicking and floundering before it expired. Most of the others were behind the shoulder shots some exiting the off side shoulder. Many dropped on the spot and some (3) ran up to 100 yards. Had three gut shots which I'm not at all proud of. Two was on moving antelope and the other was a wind miscalculation.

I previously hunted with several other 25 calibers, 7mm mag and a lot with 30-06's. Results weren't drastically different the years I used those rifles. In my earlier years I was taught to go for the shoulder shots. The animals went down but i wouldn't say they were dead right there. Many lived a for a few minutes but just couldn't go anywhere.

Since I've been hunting with a muzzleloader, those taken with a .50 bore sized bullet produce impressive kills.

 

Since becoming a serious meat hunter for deer I am beginning to notice the difference in deer when shot in different ways. I have a good processor that does a fine job but the truth be known this is a variable and one that can't be in the equation. I do not process a lot of deer myself but the ones I do have varied in meat quality. From this data I have drawn some personal conclusions about shot placement and activity after the shot that is affecting my shot placement and treatment of the carcass after the deer is found.

In the places we hunt, a perfect shot may not present itself and you may have to take what you get if you want to put some meat in the freezer. Sometimes this can end in shots that end up hitting something before it gets to the deer and then you really have some decisions to make. I know, I was rambling.

 

I once shot a nice buck with a .357 revolver. He leapt up and toppled over backwards, DRT, or so I thought. Instead of walking up and making sure I began getting out of my pack, digging out knives and bags and getting ready to dress him out. After maybe 30 seconds he got up and slowly walked off. I could see that the bullet had just grazed the bottom of the chest, right below the heart but never got inside the rig cage. He had just been stunned by the impact so close to the heart, recovered and escaped while I was in no position to get in another shot. His tracks became farther and farther apart as the blood became less and less. I feel sure he survived with just a nasty flesh wound. Totally my stupid mistake for not making sure he was dead. I had even thought that I had bobbled the shot low as the trigger broke but dismissed the thought when I saw the deer go down. That was one of only two I've ever lost.