I normally respect Scott Bestul’s articles but this one felt…incomplete? Inaccurate? It seemed like “I have an opinion that I found some graphics and made some calls to support. I’ll now explain in a few words with little substance, how the graphics and calls support my opinion, at the expense of being pretty vague.”
Way more questions were brought up in my mind than answers, and those questions were not so much about the data but how that data was obtained, as many of you have stated.
The green pins have been beaten like a dead horse and I agree, how the hell could they have known? Video? Ok no problem, you’ll be pretty accurate but not accurate enough for “pinpointing” to that level of precision. Visual followed by testimony? Still ok, but getting greasier to handle by the second. What about the white pins, why do we even care? It seems that by the criteria laid out, white pins should have been green or blue, because the deer would have either been “too alive” requiring a follow-up shot, or potentially dying but unclear, necessitating a follow-up shot to guarantee lethality. How about this business of “at least you’ll get one lung”? That has NEVER been a good policy. I have shot two deer in one lung, and let me just tell you I’d MUCH rather miss outright or hit the guts than just one lung. And on that note, aiming for organ failure by targeting just “organs” is a sure fire recipe for either a single lung or gut shot, both of which suck, but only one results in a dead deer almost every time.
And let’s say you do hit further back, kinda in that last rib area as suggested, pop lung and/or liver, but don’t get a pass through? You’re probably now trailing a gut-shot deer anyway and/or a light-bleeder with lots of internal hemorrhaging and nowhere for that hot bacterial blood to go, as that broadhead will be fishing it’s way through “organs” but you’re creating a highly problematic situation of sepsis within your meat, which is a large reason why you shot the deer in the first place, and this is NOT a good way to educate hunters on using the harvest and “ethical” (whatever that means to you and for lack of a better term) shot selection IMO. Something similar happened to me recently (catch up with it in 2022 LFTS thread): made a pretty great shot on a 250+ pound buck, right behind the shoulder, both lungs and nicked heart, but my arrow didn’t pass through and broke off inside the deer. So while it was dying we jumped it, it bounded another 150 yards then piled up and drowned from his own internal bleeding, BUT when he got jumped the arrow must have reoriented because the broadhead had fished its way through the liver and stomach, then the deer sat overnight until we recovered him and he was completely spoiled. Thing is, according to video and autopsy, as well as blood trail, the shot was really good and there was zero stomach matter or liver blood on the ground, all frothy and bubbly but dripping instead of gushing. So we had no idea until we gutted him that the arrow had redirected post-breakage. We found a wound in the far rib/diaphragm from the broadhead but it was shallow enough to dislodge during movement. Long point made briefly, the “advice” given is ill-advised to my understanding of shot lethality (which of course can always be improved).
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