Thread: Neckshot placement

Or this bwah hahahahaha man im Hilar!!!

Urban Dictionary: hilar

Originally Posted by 308

Does HILAR stand for something?

Like Heart, Intestines, Lungs or something of that ilk?

just wondering

Oh yeah Scouser, get Lentle and Saxon's "Red Deer in NZ" and read that mutha - usually secondhand copies floating around on TardMe

Cheers mate, will have to bury my head in that book......

Big thanks for posting those pages Gibo, explains a lot.....

Any where in the neck with a 308, instant knock out and game over. And they don't get up
Check my hunt out- 2 neck shots red hind and sika Ecology Spur, Kawekas hunting trip 12-19th April 2010 - YouTube

Going for a neck shot you have to be very confident of bullet placement at different ranges, Spend a lot of time at the range and practice.
Saves a lot of meat damage if you do neck shot and easier to find the downed deer.
Good luck.

Atlas joint or base of the neck - Fallow, can't have any of that beautiful forequarter meat going to waste. Never intentionally aimed for the centre of the neck.

A neck shot on a deer is a dead deer on the spot every time. Never had a problem with it that wasn't caused by a poor shooting, in other words someone just missed what they were aiming at.

A neck shot to the middle of the middle of the neck will kill it outright, collect the spine, and all the major artieries, carotid and jugular will be taken out. Essentially you are decapitating the animal.
The higher up the neck the more it all converges into one vulnerable package.
Headshots should be avoided - neckshots enouraged. The neck is a much bigger target and it doesn't flick around and move quickly like the head. With the spine and arteries so close together in the neck you can consider the neck as one big vulnerable organ. I dont know why some people consider them 'iffy' or 'tricky'. (The only thing is a stags throat swelling in the roar and its hair will mean the spine is higher than you think.)

As a deer hunter you need to learn this shot, its a important part of your reportoire. The other one is the high shoulder shot (which essentially should be thought of as a spine shot that also destroys the shoulders as collateral damage.)
Both of these will drop the animal in its tracks without a death run, unlike lung shots or 'hilar' shots and so forth. A bullet in the lungs will kill a deer every time, but a neck or high shoulder shot will drop it right here.
I can recommend "The New Zealand Hunting Rifle" book which describes this kind of thing.

Originally Posted by Carlsen Highway

A neck shot on a deer is a dead deer on the spot every time. Never had a problem with it that wasn't caused by a poor shooting, in other words someone just missed what they were aiming at.

A neck shot to the middle of the middle of the neck will kill it outright, collect the spine, and all the major artieries, carotid and jugular will be taken out. Essentially you are decapitating the animal.
The higher up the neck the more it all converges into one vulnerable package.
Headshots should be avoided - neckshots enouraged. The neck is a much bigger target and it doesn't flick around and move quickly like the head. With the spine and arteries so close together in the neck you can consider the neck as one big vulnerable organ. I dont know why some people consider them 'iffy' or 'tricky'. (The only thing is a stags throat swelling in the roar and its hair will mean the spine is higher than you think.)

As a deer hunter you need to learn this shot, its a important part of your reportoire. The other one is the high shoulder shot (which essentially should be thought of as a spine shot that also destroys the shoulders as collateral damage.)
Both of these will drop the animal in its tracks without a death run, unlike lung shots or 'hilar' shots and so forth. A bullet in the lungs will kill a deer every time, but a neck or high shoulder shot will drop it right here.
I can recommend "The New Zealand Hunting Rifle" book which describes this kind of thing.

Thats the info I was after right there, thanks Carlsen Highway. Will track down that book.

I read somewhere (but I forget which book) that sometimes a neck shot on a big stag isn't the best approach because of the large amount of muscle around their neck for fighting. I guess it's because the girth is so large that the vertebrae is small in comparison so harder to find? I'd think that even if you miss the vertebrae you'd still bleed it out by smashing all those big blood vessels there - a big like slitting a throat. They wouldn't drop on the spot as their nervous system is still intact but I cant imagine it would take much longer than a hilar shot. Has anyone on here had an animal they neck shotted run and then found the spine was still intact when you found the animal? Only neckshot I've ever taken was a spinebreaker and it dropped on the spot.

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Phil, if a bullet from a rifle will pass through both shoulders of a deer, or even one shoulder and exit the other side of the body, then it will certainly not have a problem with those neck muscles of a stag that you mention! (You can commonly recover bullets or peices of them from neck vertibrae though because they are tough bones and hard on bullets.)
As for your other query, the answer is that the localised shocking power of a high velocity bullet is considerable and even if you do not squarely impact the vertibrae, the impact damage will cause the animal to drop immediately. The severed carotid and jugular will mean that he is effectively dead in seconds after that. High speed bullets like the .243,.25/06 and .270 come to mind. Thinking about it the .44 magnum for example might be different as they just bore a calibre sized hole right through; the slowest bullet I have neckshot a stag with is a .30/30 from memory (worked fine, no pass through, bullet impacted vertibrae) but realistically, the neck is an intensely vulnerable target, and with anything like reasonable shooting you are golden.

Originally Posted by Carlsen Highway

Phil, if a bullet from a rifle will pass through both shoulders of a deer, or even one shoulder and exit the other side of the body, then it will certainly not have a problem with those neck muscles of a stag that you mention! (You can commonly recover bullets or peices of them from neck vertibrae though because they are tough bones and hard on bullets.)
As for your other query, the answer is that the localised shocking power of a high velocity bullet is considerable and even if you do not squarely impact the vertibrae, the impact damage will cause the animal to drop immediately. The severed carotid and jugular will mean that he is effectively dead in seconds after that. High speed bullets like the .243,.25/06 and .270 come to mind. Thinking about it the .44 magnum for example might be different as they just bore a calibre sized hole right through; the slowest bullet I have neckshot a stag with is a .30/30 from memory (worked fine, no pass through, bullet impacted vertibrae) but realistically, the neck is an intensely vulnerable target, and with anything like reasonable shooting you are golden.

Hi Carlsen, that's not exactly what I meant but you're right mate a bit of muscle around the next wouldn't be any stop to the bullet!
I haven't had much experience with neckshots like I said but what you say about the shock seems legit. I do recall someones write up awhile back which is what had be wondering what i posted originally. Here it is http://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co.n...t-2013-a-5443/ If you have a look at the third pic it looks like the bullet is below the vertebrae and it is still in tact? The chunk of meat missing from the throat means those vessels would definitely have been smashed and it would have bled out as you said. I'm pretty surprised it went 150m, that deer is champion haha. I reckon this deer would be the exception not the rule but interesting nonetheless aye. The cal was .270.

Phil, the bullet looks like it cut across the windpipe. All of these discussions assume we hit what we are aiming for. For example if we want to talk about killing shots that allow poor shooting, then when you start talking about body shots, you end up with the poorer shooters simply aiming for the 'big' bit, which usually ends up with hitting the animal too far back.
Precise shot placement is the trick and knowing some anatomy, plus having the control to do it under pressure when you have an animal in front of you. This is what your researching here so all will be well.

Phil that would be considered a poor neck shot. Its just clipped the neck, enough to cut an artery but not where you want the bullet to hit.
A good shot would have started with the animal falling down due to shock to the nervous system. Yes you can get that effect and it still gets up and runs away because the bullet has only clipped along the top of the neck or too low, but typically you have still done enough damage to nerves and blood vessels.
I have lost 2 deer with neck shots as they got back up again but have no don't they didn't last long and simply couldn't find them because of poor light and terrain.
Strong neck muscles are really only an issue with say a .22 etc. Vividly remember trying to bring down a very large billy as a kid with a .22. When it finally went down there was 6+ bullets in his neck that had been stopped by the muscle mass and fat.

Neck shots are still my preferred shot.

Thanks Barefoot and Carlsen Highway, both good bits of advice there.