Should you give it to 'em broadsides?

Over at the 24hourcampfire, we were all jawing about whether or not it's important to wait for a broadside shot. Flinch made the following statement that summed up the feelings of many there:


"I take the shot that is offered. Broudside shots are way over rated. From any angle, it is easy to hit vitals. Place the shot and punch tags." Flinch


While I prefer a single broadside or slight quartering-away shot, I'm not a snob.

I've taken a brisket shots with a bow and a rifle. The bucks all travelled only a few yards. I've also done the Texas Heart Shot a couple of times. Some of you may remember my recounting of getting caught in the stampede on my first rifle hunt. While I am not an advocate of taking the Hershey highway to deer hunting success, I can speak from experience that the practice is spectacularly effective at close range.

Years ago, I wrote a article titled "Close in, Anything Goes!" The premise was that as long as you are dealing with short distances, any shot that reaches the vitals will probably kill. I gave examples including a brisket shot on a buck from 5 yards with a bow that went in the front and came out the paunch. With that advice came a bunch of caveats:

1) Know the anatomy of the animal and shoot for the organs, not the hide of the deer.
2) Know the limitations of your weapon and yourself. At 15 yards, it is a lot easier to thread the needle than at 150. It's a much bigger needle.
3) Get it in your head that one-shot kills are great, but they don't always happen. If your first shot does not drop the animal, be ready and willing to take a second well-aimed shot.

It is probably my background that made me this way. I started out my deer hunting experience with bow and slug gun. As a result, I've been a practitioner and proponent of “Get as close as you can and then nail them with as much as you can.” That doesn’t mean I go blazing away and empty my magazine. Quite to the contrary, even when I’m hunting with my trusty Remington 742, I usually load up with no more than a couple of rounds in the magazine. It does, however, mean that I tend towards calibers like the 30-06 that are certainly overkill on deer. It also means that I like to hunt where I have a good chance of taking a deer at under 50 yards. I’m a walking antithesis of my German jagermeister forebears, but so what? This is America, it’s 2005, its legal, and I’m having fun.

Still, I think that broadside shots are a good benchmark for beginning deer hunters. It is the fastest way to the vitals with the least amount of meat, bone, and viscera in the way. It is easy to tell a hunter to try for a clean shot to the vitals via the ribs rather than describing all the complexities of it all. Unlike a lot of those before us, few people nowadays do their own slaughtering. As a result, your first deer is often your first peek inside a body.

If you read a lot from writers of 1950's and before, there was a lot less concentration on the fine points of shot placement, and a lot of talk about concepts like "anchoring shots," etc. I was reading a book by Teddy Roosevelt recently that discussed a deer that took 15 shots to finally put down. He was not exactly proud of the feat, but he did choose to put it in his book.

So why do so many people hold the broadside shot in such high regard? Why is a single shot kill the great stinking holy grail? My belief is that the preeminence of the single broadside shot is largely the product of the following:

1) The snobbery of the have-naughts. Folks that did not have access to a repeating firearm tended to scoff at those who do. Those that could not afford ammo scoffed at those who could. In the Great Depression, shooting once and getting a meal meant something. Shooting once and getting two ducks or two deer meant even more. That generated a belief structure that has been passed down over the generations to the point that today, men parrot the prejudices of their great grandfathers. It’s hunting, after all, and most of what makes hunting tick is rooted in tradition and ancestor worship. I would not expect it to be any other way.

2) Restrictive hunting practices, particularly in places like Europe, where the whole issue of gun ownership and the ability to hunt revolves around complicated vetting processes. It always grates on my American egalitarianism when I have to put up with some “furner” bloviating about how guys like me should not be allowed to hunt, because I downed my first doe with a Texas Heart Shot from my semi-automatic rifle.

3) Overindulgence in nostalgia. Dan'l Boone could bark a squirrel at xx paces with his rifle, so therefore you and I should attempt the same.

4) Righting the wrongs of the past. Folks like B&C have done a lot for the sport to give it legitimacy, and to bring the sport of hunting out of its dark past into the modern world. However, practical knowledge is hard to put into a pamphlet. It is also hard to turn orthodoxy into a plan for the living. Don't get me wrong-- I'm all for getting away from live bird shoots and pen hunts.

5) Television. Folks on the Outdoor Channel make me queasy. I know Thompson Center is a big sponsor, but single shot rifles are not the best choice for everyone. In TV-Land, deer are never lost (yeah, right!) Part of what makes a show interesting is the dynamics of anticipation. Is he going to shoot? Is the deer going to get away? The best kill scenes are the ones which give the maximum footage to a view of the deer. In this way, TV turns deer hunting into something pornographic. Nobody wants to see a guy cap the deer the instant he sees it. We want to see that long slow build-up, the wait, the possibility of ultimate failure, and the final explosive end—all this in a tightly edited 8 minute segment.