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Nathan Foster

Talk about a thread double up.

OK, the spine shot has several problems that you all need to be aware of.

1. When shooting offhand, we tend to shoot high, even in close with the rifle zeroed for close work. It is important to learn to aim low as a habit in order to avoid high misses.

When snap shooting offhand, aim very low.

2. When shooting at extended ranges, newbies have a tendency to want to aim high as they cannot get past the idea of the shot being long and the bullet dropping. If environmental factors cause trajectory changes, the shot will be a miss.

Aim center or aim for specific conditions (advanced).

3. When encountering game species that are unfamiliar to you. Some game animals have very long dorsal vertebrae. Pigs for example, have their spine roughly a third of the way up, then dorsal vertebrae, then razorback bristles. If the rifle does not have suffient power to render a wide wound, the animal will drop from spinal shock, then rise and make good its escape.

Aim center.

4. Angles can cause shots to run too high. Anyone who lives and normally hunts on flat to rolling land and has a habit of spine shooting / high shoulder- will run into problems when shooting up or downhill in steep country.

Aim low.

We can trick shoot for the spine when we know our stuff- and have a bullet that can do the job. I talked about this as a trick shot for the .222 (shallow but normally wide wound). But I do not believe this makes the .222 and excellent deer rifle and I do not believe spine shooting is a good recommendation in general.

Use a decent cartridge.

We form habits when shooting, some are good, some can be highly detrimental if we change game species, ranges or conditions.

As for the heart shot- yes, 300 yard dead runs are not uncommon.

All of this is based on watching clients over the years along with deliberate research.