One of the reasons all the hoopla about tracking and blood trailing should be moot. If you did your job right with the shot, you should see or hear them drop without worrying about it.
Now a heart shot is another matter. Heart and no lungs and they can still manage to run 200 to 300 yards.
For example:
I double lunged a buck this past muzzleloader season. That .50 cal blew right through him. It was high double lung, but it was definitely a double lung hit. That buck ran over 300 yards. He was a big bodied 5 1/2 year old buck or better... still I couldn't believe he went that far. During tracking we noticed he even stopped at one point and bled out pretty good. If we didn't have previous blood trailing and tracking skills we may have given up on that buck... even though he was lethally hit and probably died within a minute or two. Even if I had shot him with a bow I wouldn't have seen or hear him drop. When you are another 80-100 yds away with a rifle or muzzleloader it's even harder to pick up a blood trail.
I think it has a lot to do with the heart and will power of a buck. Some just don't want to give up.
While he was watering my buddy put an arrow through the bull. The bull ran into a sagebrush opening and laid down. This happened late afternoon and just before dark he was still laying, head up and alert.
I snuck down to my buddy and we devised a plan in which he would get out in front of the bull on a path we thought he would take into a stand of trees. I then headed for the bull who got up and headed right towards my buddy, who arrowed him again and he went down for good in short order.
His first arrow had passed through both lungs, but it was very low in both lungs, thus let the bull live hours upon hours and I am sure he could have covered a very one ways had we tired what we did right after he was hit.
Double lung hits are great hits in most cases but in hits like this, even though both lungs were hilt, I am sure it would have taken a couple more hours for the bull to die had Clair not got anther arrow in him.
I think a good number of bowhunters don't really understand the physiology of a double lung hit.
In many cases (the ones where the critter goes down for good within 8-10 seconds, is caused not from just bleeding to death, but rather from suffocation. When both lungs collapse death is imminent. But on some high lung and low lung hits ( like on Clair's bull) the main part of the lung did not collapse, therefore the bull could breath and since the hit was in the peripheral part of the lung, it would have taken the bull much longer to bleed to death.
Have a great bow hunt. BB
I say the shots only actually hit one lung. Every deer I have shot through both lungs went 50 yards and collapsed. They also died very quickly.
This fall a friend of mine shot a buck and the exact same thing happened.
I bereave high hits in the longs take just a little longer to kill them.
That is a perfect hit and I think they hit right where they were aiming and that animal will go down within a few seconds/yards if shot with a bow or a big enough bullet. However, they were aiming at the wrong spot. They were aiming at the back 1/4 of the kill zone. You should aim at the center of the kill zone so if you pull your shot a little up/down/left/right you still kill the animal cleanly. When you aim behind the leg, if you pull the shot only an inch or two, you have a gut shot deer/bear/elk. A gutshot animal dies but it dies within 5-7 days...after it's insides poison itself.
A better spot to aim is 1/4-1/2 up the body directly over the center of the front leg. This results in aiming directly at the center of the kill zone.
Like Dennis Miller says, "Of course that is my opinion, I could be wrong."
If you see the deer still running away after a 100 yards or you don't find him dead within 100 yards, then back out and return hours later.
I am really asking the question for 2 reasons. 1) I have been bow hunting for about 6 years now, and I am still learning. I have killed around 20 animals and every time I have hit both lungs the animal died pretty quickly. 2) the fella that always says this stuff is always talking about someone else's hit (he did not shoot the animals in question).....it seemed like BS to me. But who am I to say so I thought I would get other opinions. Thanks to everyone for the feedback.
I had opposite happen the other day with a doe, trail got weaker, it was night and very cold, so I did back out - and even with a hit that sure looked like double lung to me, the coyotes got her before I found her 8am next morning.
Because my shot was a little lower than mid center, 6" behind crease, exit on or in the crease (armpit), I think I nicked the most forward part of stomach and despite hitting enough vitals, the holes were plugged and hence the non-recovery.
My first deer that I ever found, that the coyotes got to first.
It was the sort of hit that made me think "perfect shot" but now I am humbled and need to rethink what went wrong, because I am very focused on making those "drop in sight, double-lung hits" exactly like the muzzy add on bowsite.
I shot 3 deer this year and did't get to experience that. 1) A 33 yard heart shot doe that actually ran like banshee for 60 yards and did somersault at death (was trying for double lung, but I'll take it!) 2) Liver shot big 8pt that took step upon my release (was trying for double lung)and had to watch him get up on me 2 more times but did expire well within sight after 70 grueling minutes 3) Coyote eaten doe as described, and looking at entry/exit would swear double lung but could not have been, and too much carnage to do any further autopsy
And, so I don't appear to contradict BB, it's from suffocation, too. But, if I have to contradict him on something, I'd say the suffocation is from the bleeding, not "collapsed lungs".
In other words, the bleeding (we talk about animals who "bled out") can kill from lowering the blood pressure. (A shot in the femoral artery, for instance.) But it also kills by suffocation ... imagine just a cup of fresh, warm blood poured in YOUR windpipe. Followed by another cup, as the first starts to coagulate.
To "collapse" lungs, air has to enter the chest but remain outside of lungs. Most arrow wounds -- not all, to be sure, but most -- are slices, rather than holes. Not a lot of air gets sucked in those holes.
Another way air could enter the chest is through a large airway (trachea, or main bronchus) being cut. Lucky shot, but it would collapse a lung.
I'm a physician, and I've seen people with collapsed lungs that have lost 40% of their lung volume, and it's not at all obvious. I've been surprised looking at a chest xray to find that a person has a severely collapsed lung -- heck, they were only complaining about a little shortness of breath!
I think the "BB shot" is so successful because of the vasculature in that neighborhood. I think the marginal lung shots are unsuccessful due to the lack of vessels at the margins of the lungs.
In short, I think we shoot lungs not because they hold AIR, but because they hold BLOOD, and the more anterior, the more perfused they are.
It's the largest concentration of big vessels. If the kidneys were the size of lungs, we'd be aiming for them.
You're right ... the flow in a vessel, or pipe, is proportional to the radius to the 4th power.
That's to say, a small increase in the radius of a vessel equates to a HUGE increase in flow.
And if that flow is out of the artery, well, there you go.
Lee
Nice graphics.
Lee
You shot him too far back. Some hunters would say your shot was perfect but I disagree. Your aim point should be the slightly lower and about 4-6 inches forward. If you hit it there, you would have gotten both lungs and cut off the top of the heart.
I have never been able to prove it, but, I have this theory about shooting an animal with full lungs versus empty lungs. I think if the animal has empty lungs, it is much more apt to expire quickly with a center double lung shot. But if they are full, you get better damage to the lungs....especially on marginal shots like the one circled above.
Jack, well done with the picture again A picture is worth a thousand words. I think it applies here.
Why?
What would make you think that?
There's really no physiologic reason that that would be the case, other than that expanded lungs are, well, "expanded", and take up a larger area by pushing guts back (which is the job of the diaphragm) and therefore make a larger target.
It seems to me, Jack, that your initial thought was right ... to low and back. The photo appears better, but the angle of the photo is different from the diagram.
Did you do a necropsy? Maybe you did hit the lungs, but if you did, you hit the margins of the lungs, where vasculature is the smallest, and left a lot of lung tissue working for continued gas exchange.
Did Reagan die when a .22 bullet went through a lung and lodged in his pericardium?
Did Gifford die in AZ when a bullet entered her brain last year?
Lung tissue is plenty more forgiving that brain.
To disable a lung, the more central the shot, the better.
Why?
Because lungs are like trees. Both the "air tubes" and the "blood tubes" branch like trees.
Cut the trunk, the whole tree is in trouble. Cut the little branches and the tree doesn't mind so much, and has a chance to heal.
Now, trees do better with "pruning" than lungs, because of the possibility for bleeding in lungs is much more than sap loss in trees, but the concept is the same. The only difference is time.
Lungs expanding and relaxing is like a tree, waving in the wind. It really doesn't matter much, although it makes pruning the little branches harder.
Cut the trunk -- it doesn't matter if it's windy outside or not, and the whole tree dies -- fast.
Where is the "trunk" of a lung?
It's right above and slightly anterior to the heart. This is where the large pulmonary artery and major airways are.
I hope this makes sense to folks, and gets us away from viewing lungs like "balloons" or the like. Balloons have equal "vital area" throughout, but lungs are far different.
The idea is not to "pop" the lung -- it is to cut the trunk.
Lung tissue itself is actually incredibly resilient to damage. They are like sponges, not balloons. Local damage to the lungs without severing the larger vessels is not usually immediately fatal - if at all.
Lung hits that sever main blood vessels are so effective because generally the heart is still intact. It pumps at a higher rate due to adrenalin. This causes the blood to exit the vascular system very quickly.
The 8 to 10 second kill is the time that it takes the heart to pump around 50% of the total volume of blood out of the vascular system. Suffocation takes much longer - minutes, not seconds.
As mentioned above, thanks to the 3D target industry for putting the highest scoring rings in less than optimal shot locations. The most effective shots are not on the center of the body - they are lower than that.
The shot that is the quickest kill is the one that puts as many vessels in its path as it can - as John said: aim for the trunk of the tree. Or as BB has spent so much time teaching us - aim up the front leg (right where the trunk comes out of the top of the heart).
