Some thoughts on spine shots or DRT

[ladebenken]

I shoot between 25-35 big game animals each year, when the range is shorter than aproximately 400 yards, in good conditions, i always prefer to place the bullet high behind the shoulder blade. The perfect shot touches the bottom of the spine. This will knock the animal straight down. The cause of death is of course blood loss, from both loungs, and the huge arterie who lays straight under the spine.

Many of the game in LRH videos is taken by fragmenting bullets, with heavy fragmenting bullets you will often get great knock down effect, even without direct CNS hit, this is caused by fragments leaving the bullet going upwards into the spine.

 

[Pdvdh]

Where do you aim to hit on the animal when it's greater than 400 yards away?

 

[Hand Skills]

Skip the celebration until you've finished packing it out. There are still stories of game "waking up" during the process of cleaning. I'm prone to using finishers on almost every shot.

https://www.encore-editions.com/meats-not-meat-til-its-in-the-pan-by-charles-marion-russell/

LOL, who celebrates having to pack out an animal? Fun time is over when the shot rings.

Besides, it's not yours until you tag it...

Hunting shows are stupid.

 

[ladebenken]

It`s always a review of the conditions, range and of course the size of the animal.

When i am in doubt of the conditions, or it`s close to my max range i always aim at the center of deadly "area".

 

[Pdvdh]

It's always a review of the conditions, range and of course the size of the animal.

When I am in doubt of the conditions, or it's close to my max range I always aim at the center of deadly "area".

That aim point makes the most sense in order to maximize the odds of lethal bullet placement down range. Provides a little wiggle room for lethal bullet impact in all directions around the aiming point.

 

[Deleted member 48126]

I think those TV shows give a false impression that anyone can shoot like that
with the right gear (theirs) When in fact it takes a lot of practice and then some more!
Knowing your effective range and staying within it is a big deal shooting at a live animal.
Paper or steel..Bang away and have fun!

I hate those shows...I get tense when I cant hit the bullseye at 100 yards. I couldnt imagine making the shots those guys make on live game! Maybe a couple of thousand rounds later, then Ill be ready.

 

[Ckgworks]

Something else to think about......Those of you that have been around farm animal butchering can relate. If you have not been around it, go watch a few, and then ask yourself which actually kills the animal, the gunshot, or the knife sticking/bleeding. There is a technique to bleeding an animal, and contrary to what many think, the butcher is not "Slitting the throat". He is cutting the main artery off of the heart. The heart is still pumping which drains the body of blood.......So even a CNS head shot is not an "Instant Death".......This is where the "deer came back alive" stories come from, the shot is enough to stun the CNS, and the animal drops, "DRT", only to recover from the shock and exit stage right. So in short, any spine shot should be followed up with a vitals shot, not only to speed the animals passing along, but to bleed out the animal as much as possible...... I have only been around two spine shot animals that were not shot again or bleed, and both of them dripped massive blood puddles when hung after skinning......In my opinion, the less blood left in the meat, makes for better meat!

And on the topic of shows: It's amazing to my how much time our society spends watching others do stuff, instead of getting out and doing stuff. Anytime you watch someone do something they are proficient at, they make it look easy......Watch it long enough, and it's pretty easy to start believing that it is easy.

 

[ladebenken]

The "classic" shot where animals go DRT, and then suddenly is on their feets after a while. In my experience these shots have gone high. They have hit the "taps" going up from the spine.

The animal goes straight down, appears to be dead, but after 10 sec - 1 minute suddenly wakes to life again. Therefore it is important to stay behind the rifle, and watch the animal laying a few minutes before you get up.

 

[Bravo 4]

And on the topic of shows: It's amazing to my how much time our society spends watching others do stuff, instead of getting out and doing stuff. Anytime you watch someone do something they are proficient at, they make it look easy......Watch it long enough, and it's pretty easy to start believing that it is easy.

Success always seems easy to those who weren't around when it was being earned.
After 10's of thousands of rounds I think I about have things figured out...then make a stupid rookie mistake and feel like I need to start over.

 

[Azrael]

Hunting shows are good if you want to learn how take your safety off with a grand flourish and air of "now we mean business". If you're really lucky, they will cut to a commercial then come back and show it again in slow motion to reassure you that yes, the safety is indeed off and throw in some musical chord that sounds like a synthesizer just had an orgasm. If you were going for a whiz, get someone to call you when they are taking the safety off. You don't want to miss that.

 

[lancetkenyon]

I will be "that guy". I have seen four "spine" shots that have killed within seconds in the last few years.

2 elk, an antelope, and a mule deer. All were shoulder/top of lung/spine shots that dropped the animal instantly and 3 of the 4 never even twitched an ear. One bull kicked front legs 3 times and done. Huge chunks of lung from the mouth/nose, but anchored right were they stood. I mean hit the deck like a sack of hammers. The longest I saw one even breathe was about 5 seconds.

I have seen one high spine and too far back where the buck recovered and got his legs back under him and disappeared. I was trying to get the shooter to put another one in it, but they were not able to make the 2nd shot. That was a real bummer. We looked for that buck for 3 days. No blood, no hair, tracks disappeared into the thick brush. No crows or vultures in the vicinity over the next 7 days leads me to believe he recovered but probably was pretty stiff.

 

[Bravo 4]

If you were going for a whiz, get someone to call you when they are taking the safety off. You don't want to miss that.

Want to talk about a whiz (on yourself), try this. Day before elk season opened my buddy and I were gonna shoot our rifles to double-triple check everything. I heard someone shooting steel about a mile from camp and we drove over. When I got out of the truck one of the half dozen guys came over and said "Hey Sergeant First Class!", it was a Soldier I had trained a couple years back. Kinda cool being 1200 miles away from Post. Fast forward a week and I had the only bull I'd seen in my scope at 794 yards, waiting for him to pop out from behind a bush, and I hear "Hey (insert my last name here)!"...miles from nowhere and on top of a mountain I thought I was alone on! Scared the crap out of me!
Never seen the bull again.
Ok, back to DRT...

 

[Azrael]

I've shot a ton of animals through the spine and killed them right there. I've also had some still alive. Nothing is perfect, but the chances of taking out the aortic artery on a spine hit are excellent. You'd be hard pressed to have something bleed out faster than that. In the meantime, you know where it is.How much pain the down and largely paralized animal that isnt dead goes through is a hard thing to know exactly, and how much does all those DRT animals compensate for that?

Compare that to a rear lung hit. Most are going to run, most are going to die in a reasonable (reasonable is a matter of opinion) amount of time, and since a deer that runs probably got out of sight you may not know exactly how long it took to die. Some require a finisher anyway, but that hinges heavily on how long it took you to find it. Fortunately, its easier on the shooter because he never had to see it. He can write the ending any way he wants. Does most of them being dead when you get there compensate for most of them dieing slower than a properly spined deer?

How about the high heart shot? That's a good one, since there enough nervous plexus up front getting interupted that it may well go straight down and death by blood loss (mainly the lack of oxygen to the brain since there is no blood to carry it) will be swift. Not instant, though it may look like it. On the other hand, a heart-shot deer can also run like a scalded cat. It probably felt something is the meantime.

People jump through a lot of hoops, often talking about humaneness of different shots when in reality they are talking about the best odds of having a deer on the back of the truck. Aiming for center of the largest vital target is the easiest way to not screw up completely. Even if a shot is slightly off it probably landed in someone else's idea of a perfect shot. Does the best odds of success compensate for the for death not being the same instantaneous lights out as a ballistic tip at the base of the ear? Does the increased odds of screwing that up cancel out the perfection when it works? The shooter better decide what he thinks.

A guy has to make his own choices and he also has to live with the results. Make ones you can live with and do the best you can. Just don't think that everything is as simple as we'd like it to be.

 

[Pdvdh]

And don't equate LRH shot placement with a ton of animals killed at close range.