I have been arguing that point for years just had to do it again with a friend who shot a deer high this fall!

Good stuff!!

One correlation that I have not seen mentioned is blood trailing. I agree that, anatomically, there is no dead zone. I think we can ALL agree that a double-lung hit puts an animal down quickly (if we didn't, ethically, we shouldn't be bowhunters).

Deer that are hit high, especially if there is no pass-through (the scapula can be a factor here), have bleeding that is primarily captured internally decreasing blood loss on the ground and complicating blood trailing.

I shot an anterless from the ground this year. The shot was high through the lungs. In the 30 yds he covered before resting for good, there wasn't more than a spec of blood on the ground; but, when I field-dressed him, all that coagulated blood came spilling out of his chest cavity. We've all experienced this before.

My point: is a dead-zone more of an excuse for not recovering deer that were "hit high", because our ability to track these deer was compromised by a lack of blood on the ground?

for some reason I get sound on the commercial but not on the video.

Mike

Shot a deer twice one season. The 1st on opening week on the ground at 10 or so yrds. Hit in the dead zone and never recovered him. A month later, shot the same buck. Go figure!

A couple people mentioned that lungs are not fully inflated in a relaxed animal to the extent done in the video.

But...

The expansion/contraction of the diaphragm and slight flexing of the rib cage are what make breathing possible in mammals.  This enlarges and shrinks the lung cavity to make positive and negative pressure to pull/pull air in and out.  

So...

Even though the lungs are not expanded to maximum capacity, they still fill the entire space in that lung cavity.  There is no "void" of empty space above the lung, even in a standing animal...

I sat in a ladder stand this evening for my last-gasp (unsuccessful) bowhunt of the year, and thought of this thread as I passed the time.  One more thing came to mind that I can't remember ever seeing mentioned in discussions like this:

If there was a "void" below the spine that allows an arrow to pass through without hitting lung tissue, as some believe, what is that void filled with?

If it is air, where does that air go when the lungs fully expand?  If it is "nothing," would not that be a vacuum that would pull the lung tissue up to fill that space?

I would have rather been shooting a deer, but when nothing appeared within range, I "got to thinkin'."   That's never a good thing...

OK, I'll quit!

Party Poopers!....Buzz Killers!  You guys are overly anal, lol.  Everybody should be entitled to a good excuse occasionally...facts be d***ed!

My conclusion to this is, Aim center mass...

Hawkeye is spot on; negative pressure keeps the lungs in contact with the chest wall regardless of the position of the diaphragm in a normal individual.  A space only develops if the vacuum is lost...there's a number of ways that could happen.  Arrows are generally pretty effective at this, btw.  

There's a Whitetail area somewhere in the forum?

There is a no man's land, right ABOVE the spine. I also believe that a deer can survive a 1 lung hit, but most so called no man land hits appear to be top lung hits but actually are even above the spine.

  http://huntingunderground.com/the-void-myth-explained/

This is another education photo I have used for years on points made above.  This deer was hit hunting off the ground.  I usually ask:  "So where is this hit?"  

Follow up to the question:

Dropped the deer with a spine hit.  

NOTE:  The bottom of the sternum is 2.5- 3" thick.  Then the front narrow area of the rib cage.  The spine is down just shy of half-way from top to bottom in this front area of the shoulder.  I am convinced there are many non-recovered deer shot from treestands that are hit in this "void" region.  Its all meat!

 

Good info thanks for sharing.

very informative. Thanks.

Thank you! I can't wait to show this to a buddy that seems to hit deer in the "dead Zone" quite often. He's hunted and cut up his own deer for years, and should know better. He's a taxidermist too, by the way, so maybe I shouldn't tick him off, just in case I need his services this year.            Thanks again.

Bob

       


Thanks Curt

Good stuff.Thanks for sharing.

If you go over to AT and search a couple months back, Joe Paranee has a trail cam pic of a buck with an obvious gash from a broadhead through the area in debate. It had no ill effects and was killed later in the season. Not stirring, just saying, from this demo that arrow would've had to take out the top of both lungs.