What's Everyone Hunting.

[lazyengineer]

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.

I have a tangential technical question for you DNS, that I can't think of anyone better positioned to possibly answer: Have you ever taken a headshot with a 6.5, connected and gone into the brain cavity, and then cut it open to examine? And in particular, have you ever measured the size of the hole in the skull from the entering 6.5mm bullet? There was another Texas instance with a 6.5mm bullet fired into a head, and the hole was later measured to be smaller than 6.5mm in diameter. Yet some say that the skull tissue can expand and contract under such, and so give a bullet entry hole smaller than 6.5mm diameter; so not necessarily that remarkable. I'm curious if you ever did such a shot, and happened to measure it?