Beendare's Link
I get the feeling many folks think we are trying to bleed them out with a big hole...which of course can work...but the effectiveness of a through and through shot creating a pneumothorax and Hemothorax is a very effective method for a humane quick kill.
A big hat tip to Jim at Third Hand Archery for posting the link on another site... Youtube link; "Respiratory System, 3 pleural membranes..."
Broadheads kill by hemmoraging. We shoot razor sharp heads into an animals lungs because it is a big target and it is vascular (full of blood vessels). I shot a very fine buck last week through one lung. He was quartering sharply away, the arrow entered behind the onside lung and took the opposite lung 2/3 of it's length. He only went 85 yards. Why? because my very sharp head cut the vessels in that lung and he bled to death. That is what a broadhead is supposed to do.
How often do solid, mid center lung shots go down in mere seconds? Collapsed lungs and suffocating do not do that. When the blood supply runs out they go down. That is why broadheads should be very, very sharp. We want them to bleed to death. It is quick and relatively painless.
Fastest IMO is an artery hit that pumps the blood from the organs (brain) in seconds. As WB said, just the oxygen in the blood still in the system is likely a minute worth. If they lose enough or do not get that oxygen replenished they die. But takes a bit longer.
All that said, a through-and-through lung hit gives us the surest chance of recovery. Good chance big vessels will get cut. Bilateral pneumo-hemothorax with inability to 1) respire effectively and 2) move oxygenated blood in the body. I can't aim for arteries but I can aim for lungs and try for the sweet spot. I'll still get my animal either way, arteries or not. Massive blood loss is THE most humane kill in my book. I love seeing an animal go lights-out in mere seconds and knowing they didn't suffer needlessly.
So your odds of severing bigger vessels, both around the heart and in the lungs, go up as you move toward the "V" .
Best of Luck, Jeff
Broadside that's up in the "V", but many angles will get you there. If I'm off a bit and miss them I'm still in a pretty good neighborhood. Big bones, you have to know where they are and avoid them.
Kevin, that must have been tough watching that bull go and go and go..... and relief to ecstasy watching him finally go down......
Hopefully we can discuss our experiences without the thread getting twisted up.
They pass out from lack of blood pressure to the system. Any artery hit will cause that. That lack of blood to the brain brings on death. True, collapsed lungs can attribute to the death, but that is not the primary reason for shooting an animal in the lungs. It is to cut the many blood vessels in the lungs to cause massive bleeding and drop in blood pressure. That is why solid lung hits (normally) go down very quickly. Large vessels have been cut causing the blood pressure drop, not from suffocation.
And by solid I mean centered in the lungs and more forward than back. Periphial lung hits can take much longer.
The animals that drop within 50 yards generally are not dead. They pass out from a sharp drop in blood pressure. Then they bleed to death.
Relying on double pneumothorax, depending on the hit, can actually take quite some time.
And for people that say they can't aim for arteries, I couldn't disagree more. And you're not necessarilly aiming for "arteries," but rather the great vessels: Aorta, vena cava, pulmonary artery, and pulmonary vein. These are the vessels that come directly into and out of the heart. If you hit one, you often times hit 2 or 3 because they're bunched up right on top of the heart.
5 out of my last 11 animals have been heart shots. 3 of those remaining 11 took out great vessels and none of those animals went more than 40 yards. Of the remaining 3, one was lung center punched, and two were in the front of the lungs. Those 3 deer, by far, lived the longest and traveled the farthest. FWIW, even though I aim low and forward, I've never had an arrow stopped by near-side humerus or scapula because I've never hit one. Animals drop down and go forward if they jump the string, which places your arrow higher and further back.
I'm a student of Bill Allard's shot selection and always will be after seeing the results. I aim for the top of the heart, which is static in animals and absolutely something that you can aim for. I take close shots because the margin for error is smaller than when aiming a little higher and farther back in the crease. But I like to put my animals down quickly, see them drop, and not worry/wonder about blood trails or the quality of my meat after I leave them over night.
I killed 4 white tail this year within 30 minutes of sunset and recovered every one of them before dark - because I watched all of them go down. No letting them sit overnight while I stay up all night wondering. No losing meat to coyotes. No unsuccessful blood trails after a night's rain...
I do a post mortem dissection on everyone of my animals and it teaches you a lot about shot placement when you see your entry/exit and what the arrow did in between. Just cut the ribs off of the sternum (breastbone) and open the chest like the hood of a car. If it's filled with blood, tip the animal over and dump it out, then use your knife or your arrow to recreate the path of the arrow. Get your hands in there and separate everything away so you see what it actually hit.
I see a lot of guys aiming farther back and I see a lot of guys blood trailing animals. IMO, the best blood trail is the blood trail you don't even have to follow.
That's not even taking into account those that go 50 yards and bed up, but live for several hours sometimes. Then there are those that go 200+ and dead in less than a minute.
It's a pretty dynamic event that involves a good many factors.
I think we all have runs of hitting good stuff blindly and anecdotally attribute to aim point erroneously.
But to your point ...BB's golden triangle is the best place for an arrow to end up....however STUFF HAPPENS and too far in three directions it can become the Bermuda Triangle.....For Elk /Moose I guy has a bigger strike zone and can go there just for deer size game I like to move back a little.
Not debating just adding a different slant
A guy from that Whitetail Properties (I think his name was Dan Perez) hunting show caused a firestorm last year when he said he had adjusted his point of aim to more mid body because he was using a big expandable. AT went bonkers and of course didn't actually pay attention to what he said. He didn't say I gut shoot all animals now because my big mechanical will work, he said I aim back because if I hit too far forward it is worse than hitting too far back.
When animals are sent to slaughter at a meat packing plant, they are sometimes knocked goofy long enough to get in there and cut the throat. Massive blood loss is what kills them. You want the heart to be pumping as they bleed out.
Hey.....we all know many shots and different setups work. I thought this was a good explanation of the mechanism in the chest and what is going on.
I'm not saying that a rear lung hit isn't a quick death. If you slice the back of both lungs, the animal can go down quickly. But the triangle that is the rear part of the lungs is no bigger than the triangle between in the shoulder between the humerus and the scapula. The difference being, if you miss forward on the former, you hit bone or back and you hit lung. The peripheral (rear) lung hits are too close to the guts for me and that's why I disagree with Mr Ulmer's shot selection. At one of his talks, he noted that if his shot doesn't turn out where he wants it (rear lung hit) he does well when his shots end up back in the guts and recovers all those animals. That may be true, but I still don't want that shot. The meat doesn't end up in as good of shape, the animal suffers more, and the uncertainty of another hunter or animal preditor taking or pushing the animal, plus the uncertainty of it while you wait, add up to something that I'm not looking for when finishing my hunt.
I'm as guilty as anyone of overthinking this stuff, but I don't really care what scientific term denotes how I kill something with an arrow. I just shoot try to shoot them through the front end vitals somewhere, and it usually turns out okay.
I always thought heart shot deer ran farther, but I shot a buck this year through the top of the heart, and he ran 30 yards, paused for about 3 seconds, then fell over. I even skipped the arrow off his front leg bone
I do believe deer hit with bone involvement generally run harder and farther. But not always. I've had scapula hit deer die real close after just bounding away. I've had scapula hit deer run like the dickens too. And the buck above had bone involvement and didn't bolt
I like to stay up close to the V. I haven't had it happen on a big mature buck, and I won't test it on purpose, but 2 years ago I hit a doe at 27 yards on that big front leg bone, and broke it into pieces with a 520 grain arrow and a solid one piece head. Even got an exit hole, even though the arrow didn't exit for about 50 yards into the doe's death run.
I've flirted with those leg bones and the back part of the scapula on multiple animals, and have never had a problem busting through or skipping by. But to be fair, I've never hit the front part of the shoulder blade dead square either. And the doe I mentioned above is the only one I've hit square on that lower leg bone
Frankly, I like being up there so much, that every year I flirt with the idea of an 80 lb bow, and try to shoot a 600-700 grain arrow at a pretty good speed, and just not worry about bone at all :) :)
Pneumothoraces are not "quick", nor do lungs "pop" like many people think.
But lungs are the only organ that gets 100% of the cardiac (right-sided) output. This -- and this alone -- makes lungs an attractive target.
I think those who shoot mech heads have a point about staying a bit back from the bigger bones and using the larger cut to their advantage. I think the bigger cuts are always an asset up until they are a detriment to penetration. On deer size, black bear and smaller penetration is not normally an issue with WELL TUNED modern gear.
One of the thing that could make a difference in how fast a deer drops, I read some years ago and it made sense. If your arrow hits the deer while it is exhaling, the blood in the system is at its lowest oxygen level, the lungs at their highest negative pressure, and again with the two holes allowing positive pressure in, it makes it extremely difficult for the deer to expand its lungs, to oxygenate its blood causing it to expire faster. Also on the exhale the lungs are compressed concentrating the blood vessels in a much smaller area allowing the broadhead to cut more vessels as it passes through. Compare that to lungs that are fully expanded (full of air), and the blood is at its highest oxygen level and the the vessel are spread father apart. In both cases the deer will die, but which do you think would die faster? There is no way to time your arrow impacts, BUT if it hits the deer on its exhale in the center part of the lungs, and making a entrance and exit hole the deer is going to die faster.
For those of you who advocate shooting the heart, a deer can run a long way with just the oxygen in its blood I have read where a deer can run up to 6-8 seconds with a heart shot and a deer can cover a lot of ground in that 6-8 seconds especially if the deer was hit just after the inhale where the blood is highly oxygenated. With the pump out of commission it can be hard to have a blood trail. Shooting the lungs allows the heart to do its job and pushing blood out of the cut vessels. I know many have killed deer with heart shots but this give you something to think about. DANNY
The idea of hitting a deer during inhalation vs exhalation is not only speculation, but also sorta irrelevant because you can't plan for it. Also, when you hit a deer in the heart from a treestand, you usually get at least 1 lung, sometimes two.
I'd rather hit a deer in the lungs closer to the heart where the vessels are larger than hit them center punched where the vessels are smaller. If you look at the vasculature tree, they get smaller and smaller the farther you get from the heart.
FWIW, I think a shot right above the heart is better than a heart shot, but I hit the heart because I account for the deer dropping at the shot and hit the heart when they don't drop. Either way, they die close, which is what this thread is about. Additionally, my most recent 6 heart shots, the animal (elk, WT, and mule deer) have not lived 6 seconds. All were 2-3 seconds before hitting the ground. Perhaps I've been lucky.
Again, good discussion.
Danny, good post. Where do you aim on an animal?
A hit taking out one (50%) or both (100%) pulmonary arteries is catastrophic -- the animal cannot overcome this.
A hit taking out 2% (say, a one-lung hit toward the back or side of the lungs) is quite survivable, as the animal has plenty of clotting factors to "seal" a 2% blood leak.
In-between is, well, in-between.
But the idea of a pneumothorax causing a quick death is exceedingly unlikely. A tension pneumothorax is not something that occurs on a timeline anything like catastrophic hemorrhage.
I would suggest to think of lungs as large bundles of branching blood vessels that resemble "trees" ... your goal is to cut one or both "trees" close to the trunk.
If the hips had the same vascularity as the lungs, we'd be aiming there. If the kidneys were as large as the lungs, we'd be aiming there, as they can take up to 25% of the cardiac output.
Death by pneumothorax can't occur unless death by hemorrhage didn't work, i.e. the animal had adequate clotting factors to seal the blood loss. It takes too long. I think people really have a misunderstanding about just how long that process takes.
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Short of extreme hemorrhage causing quick death, a good lung hit will still cause death by blood loss. The animal may be running, but bilateral pneumothorax is a debilitating injury and will undoubtedly contribute to limiting how far that animal can travel before going down. Death still ultimately occurs from blood loss, shock and multi-organ failure.
And if they do -- they are a long ways from where they were, and have been up for a long time.
Let's put it this way: If you hit an animal, and watch it do the "funky chicken" wobble -- that's not from pneumothorax. The one that dies of a pneumothorax dies slowly, in its bed, with it's head up for a long time. I can't imagine a wound large enough to cause that injury that wouldn't cause catastrophic hemorrhage long before it succumbed from the tension pneumo.
WRT shooting more forward in the "V" I picked that up here many years ago..... all due to BB promoting the shot and it's effects. Once having tried it and seeing the results, over and over.... I'm a disciple of the church of BB..... no one, that I know of anyway, has done more to educate bowhunters on what to hit for a FAST takedown and how it all works. Actually got me thinking more and more about what is hit, how the pump drains the lines so fast when the right lines get cut. It's not the blood on the ground, or loss of blood so much as lack of blood to the brain, which shuts down in seconds. Of course it's hard to have one without the other, cause and effect. But helps to separate which is which and why. The medical folks we a blessed with here of course knew all this and could confirm.
Anyway.... if you're out there BB, thanks much.
A friend some years ago and I killed bull elk the same night. Mine was a classic double lung (not in the V) and the bull traveled a bit over 100 yards. My friend hit his high and slightly in front of the hindquarter. The bull took 2 hops, stood still a few seconds, the fell over and never moved again! He must have hit both femoral arteries of the kidneys. But whatever it was, it resulted in massive pressure loss!
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Probably a direct hit to the abdominal aorta which technically ends at the pelvis.
He spun a 180 at the hit and I was shocked what I saw, his entire opposite side was completely red...... he bolted 20-30 yards in just a few jumps and piled up. Never got the last swear word out, my mouth was hanging open...... Hit the artery right under the spine, I would guess that was the above mentioned aorta. But it was spectacular..... and dog-azzed lucky.....
