I almost went along with the “in one eye and out the other” theory, until I looked close at the internal scull structure on a euro that I had handy. Now I see that there is no way a .50 could pass thru there without contacting lots of bone. It would surely cause a much larger exit wound. Based on the video, the doe’s left eye would have been the entrance. We get a good look at the right eye at the end of the video. I have had my hair parted by a shotgun slug. Based on how that felt, I have no doubt that the pressure of a round, with more than 10 times the energy, could cause that damage without making contact. Those of you who have not felt the shock wave of a bullet against your head, or don’t have a whitetail skull handy to examine, are not in as good of a position to call this shot, so I can understand your confusion.
So the video does prove that as long as the energy is high enough and the distance is close enough, then a deer can be killed with a miss.
The guy was very wrong to call that “a very ethical kill” however. A head shot is never an ethical kill. I won’t even take one on a squirrel. An ethical kill is one that is taken at a point that provides the largest +/- error, in all directions, of killing the animal cleanly. Anyone who has seen a deer with a missing lower jaw, arrow sticking out below an ear, etc, should be able to understand that. Again, taking a look at a euro, you will see that the deer’s brain is only about an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. That is not much larger than a ping-pong ball. Contrast that to the heart/lung area that is closer to the size of a beach ball. A shot at a beach-ball sized kill-zone, from any range with any weapon, and from any angle, is far more “ethical” than a shot at a ping-pong ball sized kill zone.
Edited by wolc123
