What's Everyone Hunting.

[myrifle]

The problem with taking "head shots" is that the head, depending on the mammal, is anywhere from 30% to 75% non-vital structures.

I have seen a hog shot in the eye with a 6.5 Grendel that didn't die. So "in the eye" doesn't necessarily work "Every time" unless you have the correct trajectory and penetration to actually do significant damage to the appropriate structures.

The reason a lot of people will not or do not take "head shots" is because the head is often quite mobile on deer, hogs, coyotes, etc. as compared to the rest of the body. The intended target can literally move its head out of the way of a shot while the shot is in flight. A nice brain shot can turn into a jaw shot or nose shot with nothing more than a quick head move and that can happen in less than 1/10" of a second, about the flight time of many typical hunting distance shots, and certainly within a 1/4 second for a shot of about 200 yards. The animal may not be trying to move out of the way of the bullet. They just move unexpectedly, sometimes. Those are more of worst case scenarios for "head shots" and the best case when it comes to them being screwed up, is a clean miss.



If deer were so delicate that a bullet impact to their head "snaps their necks" they would never survive into adulthood. You can shoot deer in the head all day long without ever damaging their necks unless the bullet actually travels through the spine.

Agreed. Two season ago while deer hunting I had a sounder come in on me. All of the hogs were in the 75 too 120 pound range.

I let them set up and at 40ish yards I took my first shot on a black sow frontal brain pain hit angled down through the bottom of the skull between the lower jaw bones and exited.

She dropped "dead" at the shot, emptied the mag killing several other sows in the sounder.

When I went to load her up on the wheeler, I was shocked to find her very much still alive 2 hours after I shot her. She couldnt move her body but she was still conscious about what was going on around her and surprising she could still slightly move her head and even still bite.

While headshots can be very effective. They are also very risky in terms of miss's and are wounding that causes a long slow death.

To the op, I have killed whitetail deer in 9 states, including a huge body Wisconsin buck and a ton of hogs, yotes, bobcats,foxes, nutra.

I would not have a issue hunting mule deer, elk or even moos with a grendel but I would select my bullet and barrel length accordingly and know and stand firm on keeping my shots inside the bullets min expansion speed range.