Thread: Shot placement on deer with ballistic tips??

Originally Posted by Bagheera

I've used 140gr NBT from a 7mm08 for 8 years and shot about 100 goats, a dozen deer, 1 bull tahr, 2 cham, and half a dozen hares plus wallabies and can count number whiere I've had to shoot twice or they got away on my fingers (I'm a bit forgetful - perhaps could need a couple of toes as well). So, that's experience with small to medium animals. The BT are pretty forgiving of less than ideal shot placement, probably because of their frangibility and large volume of total tissue destruction.

Ineffective shot placement includes:
Specially a bullet tracking between outside the ribcage and inside the front leg. This happens if the animal is quartering towards you but has turned its head and neck facing you and you aim for the center of the brisket. This placement is totally ineffective and I believe it accounts for a lot of cases of "bullet blew up on the shoulder and didn't penetrate".
Too far back in the ribs from broadside. Clips the lungs but truly a gut shot.
The jaw. Fine if you're Muhammad Ali but they tend to get up again after the count.

The hilar region is where large blood vessels come out of the heart and pump blood into the lungs. This is the full volume of blood circulating. It has a second pass through as it returns from the lungs to the heart. Then a third pass at high pressure in the aorta which wraps around the heart going back to the body and branches go to the head too; finally blood also passes through this region as it returns from the body to the heart. Of course, if the bullet hits the heart, blood will come out into the chest cavity and circulation will cease. After about 20 seconds of no blood to the brain the animal will loose consciousness and collapse. It can run some distance in that time but usually less than 50m. If you do break a leg its is slowed down a bit but not bang flop unless you break both which is very uncommon for me. Bang flop seems to also occur with a powerful high velocity bullet on a small animal and I believe would be due to hydrostatic shock waves affecting the spinal cord. However I've never seen this with my 7mm08 and I think the overall power or perhaps velocity is not great enough.
The other effective hit is if you strike bone in the neck or the back top half of the head . About 20% of my shots are like this, specially under 30m and on goats where the situation is well in control and I want to recover the heart and liver. Head shots are common in the bush where the animal's body is obscured but you're usually standing. Tell me punk do you feel like you can hit a 5cm target offhand today ? (balancing on a wobbly log or mud with your heart pounding)

In summary, think 3D when you shoot and carefully analyse whether the animal is angled a little towards you or away. Broadside is fairly common And is good specially when they stretch out to feed and angling up to 45 degrees away from you is good (the crease is available and shots can also penetrate some liver and stomach to reach the hilar region).The 7mm 08 is powerful enough to do this up to at least 200m. Shooting down is usually good but for some reason its often deceptive shooting up into an animal and hard to pick a good angle.


ps - good work sneeze

Just learnt alot from thanks!!!