L_L
It just doesn't give you much room for error and if you don't hit bone or artery, an animal can go an awfully long ways, sometimes w/o bleeding very much if at all.
I shot a mule deer buck dead center in the middle of his neck about 5 inches in front of his shoulder one year with a 30-06 and 165gr. Nosler. He went down but got back up after a few seconds and ran down across a draw and stopped out at about 250 yards. I was going to shoot him again, but I listened to my buddy who was yelling at me to NOT shot him again because he was dead. Sure didn't look dead standing over there on the hillside! He paused a second or two and then ran over the hill. We went and started tracking him which was difficult with dry ground and no snow. He only had a drop or two of blood hear and there. We started checking draws as we came to them and we were hunting in open sagebrush, grass country with some junipers in the draws. We went about 4 draws and never saw him and at about that time I saw some deer about a mile away going up a hill. As they hit the top, I could see a buck in the group that was just not acting right. He walked over the hill out of sight. I just knew it was the buck I had shot.
We drove around and got over to where we last saw him and eventually found the buck still very much alive laying under a juniper. He got up and started walking away from us and I shot him again killing him. I was very lucky to find this buck and if I would not have seen him cross that hillside I may never ever have gotten him. He would have died eventually, but it would have been slow. He had about a 3/4" hole in his neck, but I had missed bone and artery, and his windpipe. Where he had laid before we got to him and he got up, there was only just a very small bit of blood in his bed. He was bleeding only just a little bit.
I will shoot an animal in the neck to finish them off and have sometimes taken a front on neck shot hitting an animal just above the chest bone if "everything is perfect" and the distance is not too far, but I've seen neck shots go wrong and I think the animals deserve better. They are just too iffy and can go wrong quickly. A lung and heart shot gives a lot more room for error and is simply a lot more effective. Just my thoughts on this. Neck shots can be fatal, but they sure have a high likelyhood of something going wrong also.
David