I think I prefer hams...

[trkykilr]

I have stuck an arrow in every inch of whitetail from their assholes to their adams apples. I have found most of them and lost some. I have found ham shot deer. I'd guess I've lost ham shot deer. I think the most ethical way to kill a whitetail with an arrow is to shoot him in the heart/lungs. I think some of what you are describing is folks being surprised that they found a deer on a "poor" hit, so they remember and tell the story. To the same point, people always remember the ones that they thought were pumphoused, that somehow got away. The perfectly shot ones that die on schedule aren't notable, and are thus forgotten.

I also would argue with the point that the goal with an arrow is "acute blood loss", but thats another thread.

[WhitewaterDuck]

I have stuck an arrow in every inch of whitetail from their assholes to their adams apples. I have found most of them and lost some. I have found ham shot deer. I'd guess I've lost ham shot deer. I think the most ethical way to kill a whitetail with an arrow is to shoot him in the heart/lungs. I think some of what you are describing is folks being surprised that they found a deer on a "poor" hit, so they remember and tell the story. To the same point, people always remember the ones that they thought were pumphoused, that somehow got away. The perfectly shot ones that die on schedule aren't notable, and are thus forgotten.

I also would argue with the point that the goal with an arrow is "acute blood loss", but thats another thread.

Great points, and I was simplifying for the sake of getting the discussion started. You articulate the points that’s would punch huge holes in my argument had I claimed my evidence leads to bona-fide, proven results. There is no ethical way to conduct research on this in a manner that excludes the type of human nature bias you so accurately articulate, but I think the amount of information that’s out there warrants a serious effort to get some results that are as free of such bias as possible.

Your second point...I understand what you are saying, but acute blood loss IS the PRIMARY GOAL. People are going for heart/lung and want a good blood trail to follow; you can lose a deer pretty easily that only runs 200 yards and does not leave a blood trail, and you can just as easily trail and find any deer that runs 3 miles and dies 24 hours later as long as you can find the next drop of blood. I understand that hemo-pneumothorax might actually be the physical factor that stops blood flow to brain and drops the deer, but blood loss is key to killing and finding the deer be it liver, lung, or heart shots.

I’m bringing this up because as archery hunters, our primary goals regarding the actual “killing of an animal” part of why we hunt are to 1. kill the animal quickly and 2. Recover the animal before meat is lost to animals or spoilage. I think it was just assumed by most people getting into archery that heart/lung area was best kill zone to go for...maybe adapted from experience gun hunting, because major organs are there, and it seems to be the largest target with greatest margin for error. Ok, but... when a deer ducks a string by loading to run, the chest drops much more than the hips when it loads to bolt. Not only does it drop, often the deer will turn to blot in a different direction than he’s facing, and the belly forward is what moves the most when the deer twists to bolt. The back end is pretty much planted, as the deer will thrust with one leg or the other more or less to actually get moving in the direction his head neck and chest has moved toward. Simply put...when a deef reacts, which causes a high percentage of marginal hits, your aim point on the chest moves a lot vs how much your aim point on his ass end moves. When you consider the true kill zone of heat and lungs and how much of that can be covered up with shoulder bones...especially when a deer loads to run...it’s smaller than the kill zone on a ham shot. If you put one lung hits into the “non-lethal hit” category...the kill zone hit probability drops. Then throw in the trickiness of hunters misjudging slightly quartering away vs slightly quartering to. Put it all together...there seems to be way more that can go wrong with the traditional kill shot vs a split ham shot.

Again, not scientific by any means, but I’d like to start collecting data and trying to get info as unbiased as possible to shed more light on this.

Surely people do not forget screwing up and shooting a deer in the ham and losing that deer, right? So y’all ask the question when you can wherever you can get some answers. Let’s try to find as many hunters as possible who have arrows a deer in the ham and failed to recover the deer. I’ve asked this question before on a big archery forum, and I did not get one response saying a ham shot deer was lost. Of course, by page 2, the conversation had turned into a nasty bitch session about ethics.