What's Everyone Hunting.

[outbreaker]

yeah not always. Even brain shots aren't always fatal. It is possible to take out parts of the brain without disturbing life functions.

https://giffords.org/about/gabbys-story/
On January 8, 2011, at a “Congress On Your Corner” constituent event in Tucson, Gabby was shot in the head by a gunman who killed six people and injured 12 others. Gabby stepped down from Congress in January 2012 to focus on her recovery. As the nation’s eyes were upon her, Gabby embarked on a path to regain her ability to speak and walk, inspiring the country with her resilience and optimistic spirit.


https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phineas-Gage

The bullet path he described goes through the brain stem. This is not a frontal labotomy like the Phineas Gage or Gifford situation.

[Double Naught Spy]

Only b/c I have first hand experience... I can say this has happened.

My 2017 Coues, 500 yard shot, 280ai with 175gr ELDX at 2850fps. I miscalled wind and happened to get lucky that the head was chest height. Deer dropped in it's tracks DRT. When I got to it I realized it was a poorly placed shot (but lucky). I assumed that the bullet destroyed the brain. After getting my euro back I was suprised to see that the bullet pretty much destroyed the jaw and had to have broken the neck, from the impact force I can only imagine (still had 2000ft/lbs according to strelok).

Nothing you showed here shows indicates a snapped neck. The bullet does not have to go through the brain to cause brain damage. This is one of the reasons I often explain that hogs may run after being shot if the bullet fails to do significant direct or INDIRECT brain damage (hydraulic or hydrostatic shock). The skull shows cranial trauma by a bullet that missed directly hitting the brain, but no doubt cause significant damage due to hydraulic shock passing that close to the brain.

For comparison, I offer you the 6th hog I ever shot. It was a similarly poor shot much like yours, maybe worse. This shot at 33 yards went through the nose just forward of the eyes on a broadside shot. The hog went down and flopped for about 30 seconds before stilling. The exit hole is just forward of the left eye in the image, yet without the bullet going through the brain, the hog drained blood from its left ear. Your deer appears to have blood coming from its ear as well. That is a very good indication of intracranial overpressure, meaning brain, which is very delicate by comparison to the musculo-skeletal structures, suffered damage.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18811[/ATTACH]

Your bullet and my bullet both passed completely through. That your bullet had 2000 ft lbs of energy is interesting, but it took a whole lot of that energy with it when it overpenetrated your deer just as my bullet did. What you need to know is how much energy it took to do the damage that was done and that wasn't 2000 lbs. You got about 3-4" of overpenetration on a bullet that was apt to give you 12-18" of penetration.

To snap the neck, you would need to have transferred enough force to the head to quickly twist it around with enough force to overcome the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bone to cause breakage of the bone and/or separation of the the vertebrae from one another to break the spinal cord. That should have resulted in a goodly amount of skeletal and soft tissue trauma evident when you processed the deer Because of how much flexibility there is in the neck, the energy that was transferred to the deer is going to be spread out over a large area of neck as the head moves and so it is really unlikely that a bullet to the head actually resulted in a breaking of the neck.

It is interesting to think that all that energy could produce that amount of distant damage to significantly stronger neck structures without all that energy significantly damaging the much closer and more delicate brain in the process. I believe your first assumption was more correct. Your bullet did do brain damage, just not direct brain damage by the bullet passing through it.

[imaguy3]

Nothing you showed here shows indicates a snapped neck. The bullet does not have to go through the brain to cause brain damage. This is one of the reasons I often explain that hogs may run after being shot if the bullet fails to do significant direct or INDIRECT brain damage (hydraulic or hydrostatic shock). The skull shows cranial trauma by a bullet that missed directly hitting the brain, but no doubt cause significant damage due to hydraulic shock passing that close to the brain.

For comparison, I offer you the 6th hog I ever shot. It was a similarly poor shot much like yours, maybe worse. This shot at 33 yards went through the nose just forward of the eyes on a broadside shot. The hog went down and flopped for about 30 seconds before stilling. The exit hole is just forward of the left eye in the image, yet without the bullet going through the brain, the hog drained blood from its left ear. Your deer appears to have blood coming from its ear as well. That is a very good indication of intracranial overpressure, meaning brain, which is very delicate by comparison to the musculo-skeletal structures, suffered damage.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18811[/ATTACH]

Your bullet and my bullet both passed completely through. That your bullet had 2000 ft lbs of energy is interesting, but it took a whole lot of that energy with it when it overpenetrated your deer just as my bullet did. What you need to know is how much energy it took to do the damage that was done and that wasn't 2000 lbs. You got about 3-4" of overpenetration on a bullet that was apt to give you 12-18" of penetration.

To snap the neck, you would need to have transferred enough force to the head to quickly twist it around with enough force to overcome the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bone to cause breakage of the bone and/or separation of the the vertebrae from one another to break the spinal cord. That should have resulted in a goodly amount of skeletal and soft tissue trauma evident when you processed the deer Because of how much flexibility there is in the neck, the energy that was transferred to the deer is going to be spread out over a large area of neck as the head moves and so it is really unlikely that a bullet to the head actually resulted in a breaking of the neck.

It is interesting to think that all that energy could produce that amount of distant damage to significantly stronger neck structures without all that energy significantly damaging the much closer and more delicate brain in the process. I believe your first assumption was more correct. Your bullet did do brain damage, just not direct brain damage by the bullet passing through it.

yeah... I don't know what happened exactly. However I could not find an exit, that wound you see is entry. I understand that if the bullet exited it wouldn't have deposited all the energy. The bullet was a 175gr Hornady eldx, so I suspect it fragmented pretty hard, especially from what I've seen when it hits bone at similar ranges. I imagine it did deposit a good bit of energy. But I also would think I would have seen some more fracturing around the bottom of the brain cavity etc. The only damage I could see was the broken orbital and jaw.

For example of how this bullet does on bone, this is an entry, same gun/load, from about the same distance, right behind the shoulder into ribs. The exit was just small fragments.






Here's how it was laying when I found it. I've never had an animal die with it's head turned back so hard on the ground when it landed..



cropped to see the deer better.