Thread: Front on shots at Deer.

There isn't really a magical gap between the important bits in the chest cavity. Its quite full of important squishy bits, and fatal if you actually hit it. For animals that are shot and lost with that as a point of aim, missing entirely or a poor hit are the most likely rational explanations. For animals that actually are hit to take some time to die even when hit well in the lungs/heart isn't particularly unusual at all with any calibre and any shot angle. Nothing except hitting the off switch in the CNS guarantees a drop right there.

I blame the 270 first, pathic Cal lol. Secondly, Hornady can be crap at close range, i hate them under 60m .
I have shot a few deer now front on with the mighty 243 and using softnoses and everyone of them have gone straight down, dead! i aways take that shot if i had a chance as they all drop.

Its possible just hit bad, missing all the vitals, crap ammo for close range or just missed . Its one of the three lol. Use a 243 and its dead and use softnose rounds under 100m as they work
a hell better than many other ropunds up close

On a lost deer you don’t know for certain how good shot placement was. Your guessing. Even good shooters can err.

AB projectiles expand well at close range when driven hard at the chest and shoulders.


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I hate front on shots for the reasons given above and that they dont give the paralyising stun up the ribs to the spinal cord that a side on shot does.
The solution for me now is to aim at the neck then its dead or its a miss

I'm with Micky duck and Stug on this.
I have done the slipped up under a shoulder and missed the vitals entirely before.....got another shot in to anchor it luckily.
The last front on shot I took I worried I had done the same thing again as it ran off seemingly untouched then eventually fell over,Shot was ok had taken out a lung but had hit zero bone so no shock value.
Took me quite a while to even find the entry hole, it had gone in the osophagus.
The projectile had expanded but quite delayed I think. Atip

This is the heart of the red spiker that ran 80m in my earlier post.
Dead but he didn’t know it

Originally Posted by Cigar

This is the heart of the red spiker that ran 80m in my earlier post.
Dead but he didn’t know it
Attachment 214969
Attachment 214970

Likewise with a fallow - it ran off and after 50? Yards ran headfirst into a tree and fell over.

Originally Posted by stug

The other option is that the shot was not actually fully front on and the projectile has gone between the front leg and ribcage and has not actually entered the chest cavity at all.

Happened to me with a little fallow spiker. Thank god the 129gr ABLR had enough speed for hydrostatic shock to the right lung and the thing ran out of air after 150m. No blood and would have never found him in thick bush.

Alert deer are much harder to put down than a deer shot unawares. A sika stag at close range during the roar is most certainly an alert deer, they are often sneaking in on you and are very much ready to bolt should something smell or look not quite right. Additionally their testosterone levels are very high at that time of year and that can sometimes enable them to go quite a ways with some serious damage. In some steeper country they can cover quite a distance before any blood shows up particularly if there is no exit wound. My two longest tracking jobs were on close range sika during the roar. In my experience it doesn't seem to matter too much what cartridge/projectile you shoot them with. If you don't hit the cns or front shoulders an alert deer will usually run. Sometimes a long way.....

Front on shot is harder than it looks. Base of neck, hydraulic shock the spinal cord and get it on the ground - hard - even if it isn't an immediately fatal hit. The best option is taking out the central comms harness, combined with hydraulic shock - next best is tear out the plumbing and bleed the thing out. This will shut down the brain and the processing bits and also bleeding the muscles out and removing the blood is the best option for meat quality.

If you look at the size/layout of the central organs from the front on perspective (very narrow side to side and quite deep), they are really arranged in a very difficult to hit manner and the other possibility is the bullet striking bone and deflecting out away from the vitals (the rib cage is almost purpose built for this if you consider sparring stags and the tine points going somewhere they aren't supposed too...).

It's funny how everyone is agreeing with a post i made a while back. Albeit from very limited experience I suggested the same thing but had a couple say I was a little misguided.
Seems to be a lot that suggest it is a real thing.

ive had 2 memorable front on experiences, both on Fallow.

1st one was probably 5-6 years ago on a Fallow near Rotorua, using a 168gr AMAX out of my 308. was 220y away and I aimed just in front of its left shoulder intending for the bullet to enter there and go though the chest cavity and exit behind the right shoulder. Shot him 1 shot and he did not move or react so i though i missed and shot again and he dropped on the spot. When I went over to get him I found 2 entry wounds exactly where I aimed about 1.5" apart, upon further inspection both bullets passed though the gut and were found under the skin on the right rump, both bullets had passed the length of the deer (it was quite a small spiker) and destroyed a lot of the meat throughout the deer. I have no idea why it just stood there after the 1st shot as it was a vital shot, all the internal organs were pretty much soup.

2nd one, also a fallow but a doe this time a but further south in the Waikato a year or 2 ago. Shot it front on from about 120y with my 22 250Ackley Improved and the bulk 55gr hornady sotfpoints, i should have headshot it really but I wanted to see how the bullet does at this short range at this speed as I've shot several deer with it in the 300y range and it worked well. Was pretty much the same scenario, shoot in front of the one shoulder aiming for the back of the other, on the shot the deer dropped but when I approached it, it bolted. I found it about 50y away sitting behind a fern and finished it off with a headshot, inspection showed that somehow the bullet got the shoulder blade of the shoulder I was aiming for and deflected around the outside of the shoulder blade so only made a surface wound.

EDIT, Just remembered a fallow from down Whanganui a few years ago. Was bedded down looking straight in my direction at 110y. I put a 155gr HBC Optimus from my 308 right between its eyes and it completely removed the top half of the head. the deer did not move at all and the head contents were sprayed all over the grass behind it.

I lost one that i hit at 40m with a 30-30 170gr with a front on center chest shot late last year.....no blood trail but a tuft of hair on ground that i saw come off when the bullet hit......animal turned and trotted off completely unfazed and i didn't find it, i traced the footprints for about 50 meters but saw no blood....the no blood trail bit i don't understand.

First one i've ever pulled trigger on and not found in 25 years.

Originally Posted by csmiffy

It's funny how everyone is agreeing with a post i made a while back. Albeit from very limited experience I suggested the same thing but had a couple say I was a little misguided.
Seems to be a lot that suggest it is a real thing.

The spiker you shot with me just under the hair of his chinny chin chin was text book. It makes a difference too if the are above, below or on the same level as the shooter