No-Man's Land - Fact or Fiction?

[BryceM]

There's a popular idea that gets floated around from time to time here and on other hunting Internet sites. The basic idea is that for deer or antelope, there is a space below the spine and above the vitals where an animal can be shot without causing significant damage. I've wandered around enough animal carcasses to know that no such space exists! I'm not a thoracic trauma surgeon or neurosurgeon, but I am a surgeon and have spent many fine hours working on the spine. I know a thing or two about terminal ballistics and what brings about the demise of an animal.

There are a few problems with the "no man's land" theory. First, much of the time these animals aren't recovered, and the assumption is that the bullet somehow went into this zone without killing the animal. If the animal isn't recovered you don't actually know where the bullet went. In reality, many of these injuries are too high - above the critical part of the spine. The vertebral bodies and spinal cord are much lower down in the animal than most people appreciate. Shoot just an inch above the spinal cord in the fleshy part between the spinous processes and not much happens. Some running, and a bit of bleeding maybe, but that animal will go a very long way.

The aorta and vena cava (huge blood pipes) run along and just below the spine through the chest region - right through the middle of the described "no man's land." Hit one of those, and it's over very quickly.

Many "shot placement guides" have the anatomy all wrong. In reality, the spine is very low. Look at these random pics I stole from the Internet:

These cartoons are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Sometimes they appear in state-published hunting regulation manuals and in hunters education material. Compare these to an actual carcass. Pay attention to the white stripe that runs above the vertebral bodies. That's the actual spinal cord - neurologic tissue. Hit it or the vertebral bodies, and the animal will be anchored immediately. Hit the spinous processes (bony spikes protruding upwards) and that animal will probably never be recovered. Penetrate the pleura of both lungs, even a little, and it's unlikely that animal will go very far. Such an injury will almost always produce significant bleeding and/or a pneumothorax (collapsed lung). Usually this animal will expire within a few hundred yards.

In the cartoon drawings, the spine is shown running just under the skin. From the split carcass, around the shoulder, you can easily see that the spine dips down 6 or 8 inches from the top, and that's ignoring an inch or two of skin and hair above that. At the shoulder, the half-way point between the top and bottom of the animal is just barely below the vertebral bodies. There are a ton of ways to miss above the spine in this region! In the neck region, the spinal cord is in the bottom half. If you've ever removed the backstrap muscles, you have already witnessed this, possibly without taking note of it.

Now, consider a bison:

I noticed this while butchering a yearling heifer this year. In the region of the "hump" the spinous processes can be over a foot long. It's truly impressive. The actual chest cavity is WAY lower than you might expect. Other humped animals like gemsbok and wildebeest are very similar.

Finally, from a true broadside shot, realize that a bullet that hits the large bones of the front leg was too far forward and wasn't on its way inside the chest anyhow. This changes dramatically if the animal is quartering toward you. In that case, penetrating the front leg bones is the only way to get into the chest. We owe it to our quarry to study the anatomy and place our shots in the area that gives us the most margin of error. For African antelope this is usually straight up the leg, at the intersection of the middle and lower thirds of the body. For North American animals, slightly behind the visible shoulder is OK for a true broadside, but if you must err, shoot a bit lower than higher. Don't forget that a rifle sighted in for 200 or 250 yards will often be 3 or 4 inches high at 50 or 100 yards. If the belly is hidden by brush or grass, or if you're trying to shoot over one animal to hit another one behind it, it's easy, easy, easy to shoot too high and fail to recover the animal.

Many perfectly hit animals can cover 200 or 300 yards before they tip over. In heavy cover, many are lost. Many people give up too quickly.

 

[spike.t]

You shoot slightly high and even only shock the spine the animal drops instantly....when the animal does that make sure you are reloaded instantly and ready to shoot, or you are going go get a surprise when your "dead" animal suddenly jumps up and runs off....seen it a few times....last year we spent I think 2 days looking for a lechwe due to this....and it was not hampered in anyway when it decided to run ....same with an arrow that went under the spine and stunned a sable....dropped them suddenly jumped up and off....only found it after the client left...and it wasn't looking great....

 

[Altitude sickness]

It’s not only whitetails spines that drop dramatically as you go forward. Most ungulates do.

No man’s land is a myth. Unless we are talking about a certain area on Hillary Clinton’s body.

The blue dot is the top or front of the heart.(the heart lays at an angle not straight up and down, it’s more horizontal than vertical). Hit there and the electrical system is shocked into almost instant death. Sinus node

 

[Tusker]

This is 100% accurate. Out of my experience having shoot somewhere around 1,200-1,500 deer this happens every now and then.
Didn’t new it had an actual name. Mainly happens with non expansive proyectiles when you do not hit a bone. While running is common to knock it down (sometime not even that) and them recovering and walking away for ever. If you shoot during the winter they will not die. During warmer months with fly infection they do have bigger odds os dying.

 

[pilar]

I don’t know about a dead spot, I shot a large whitetail buck with my.270win @ about 10yards and he dropped like a box of rocks ( high shoulder shot), so I walked back to camp about 2-3 miles
To fetch some help and a truck , when we return he was laying there but still alive and head moving, and still kicking. a 22 mag finished up the job
Probably shocked the spinal cord enough to keep him down but not kill
Another buck I shot and blew 1/2 his neck completely off yet he ran off and I killed him a week later ( no idea how he survived and was chasing a doe with spinal cord exposed) so their must be one

 

[Joker12]

All of this is why those who advocate neck shots to minimize meat damage are over time going to shoot more animals that are never recovered. Its a pretty small target.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

I don't know about this dead spot, but the advice from @spike.t is spot on. Below is a pic of an east African impala I took in Uganda. There are two small holes here and one big hole. The smaller hole above the much bigger hole is the entrance wound of the first shot. It was high on the back on the animal's left side. The large hole is the exit wound coming out on the right side.

At the shot, the ram dropped straight down, but his legs were flailing away and I reloaded, nervous that this wasn't over yet. Sure enough he regained his feet and started to from right to left. I was able to put a running shot into his gut, this slowed him down for certain.

I don't know how far the ram would've gone, but he certainly wasn't moving terribly slow at my second shot. As mentioned the second shot slowed him and he stopped giving me an opportunity to hit him in the shoulder broadside. The third, lowest hole in the picture is the exit wound from this final shot.

 

[BryceM]

Yes, sometimes a shot close to the spine will cause a spinal cord concussion. It's basically the same as a regular brain concussion from a blow to the head. Instead of causing the animal to lose consciousness, a spinal concussion will basically paralyze any motor function downstream to the injury. As with human brain concussions, there are differing levels of severity. Sometimes it's only a period of impaired neurological function (disorganized kicking or flailing), and sometimes it's several minutes of complete neurologic shutdown.

I've also seen this personally, both with animals hit in the skull or horns with a glancing blow, and also with animals shot near the spine. With the impala above, the bullet may or may not have impacted a spinous process (the upward projections from the vertebral bodies). High velocity impacts with soft bullets have a more pronounced effect. Solids probably don't do this, unless perhaps if they impact a vertebral body squarely.

I once did it with a nice mule deer buck as a poorly informed teenager. I was shooting 180gr partitions out of a .300 Wby. The deer dropped, flopped over a log, and didn't move. We weren't too far from the vehicle so we started assembling ropes and knives. A full 2 or 3 minutes later, the buck got to his feet, floundered around for another minute or two, and eventually wandered off. I was so incredibly flustered I couldn't hit him again. There was snow on the ground and a few drops of blood. I'm guessing I got close enough to the spine to knock him down. After a hundred yards or so the blood stopped completely, and we lost the track as it mingled into many others.

I've also seen it with a high neck shot in a springbok. They shot it, saw it drop immediately, and on their way to it, it suddenly jumped up and ran off. That poor animal wasn't recovered for several days, despite not being able to raise its head up very well.

A buddy told me of a story that's pretty funny. His friend had shot a monster mulie on the last day of the hunt. My buddy wasn't so sure of the shot placement and told him to shoot it again. Of course, he didn't listen. Instead he set his rifle down, ran up, grabbed its horns, turned it a bit to admire it, and....... right about in there is where it regained full consciousness. He tried to hold on but didn't even come close to staying on for the full 8 seconds. Down the mountain he went, never to be seen again.

Many, many hunters have similar stories. The ability of an animal to seemingly recover, or scamper off when "hit in the chest" is often due to a misunderstanding of where the chest and lungs are. If the great vessels are severed, it's a quickly fatal injury. If the spinal cord is severed, the animal cannot recover the use of its back legs, and moving in for a finishing shot is pretty easy. If it's just a concussive blow to the spine or a flat miss in the high neck or shoulder, there's nothing to prevent the animal from running many, many miles.

 

[BryceM]

One other tidbit that I learned from an African PH. If you want to finish an animal you aren't sure about, it's pretty easy to slide a very skinny blade between the base of the skull and the first vertebrae. It's small enough that it doesn't mess up the cape and upon entry to the spinal cord, breathing and all but reflexive motion ceases immediately.

 

[MS 9x56]

As with all animals not just deer, the lungs are pressed right up against the top of the rib cage along the backbone. Any small game or bird hunter knows this to be true. The stunning shot is always above the backbone. If through the backbone the hind legs are immobilized and the animals try to escape by crawling away.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

One other tidbit that I learned from an African PH. If you want to finish an animal you aren't sure about, it's pretty easy to slide a very skinny blade between the base of the skull and the first vertebrae. It's small enough that it doesn't mess up the cape and upon entry to the spinal cord, breathing and all but reflexive motion ceases immediately.

Eesh, that made me think this was some sort of Sammy the Bull type action, though I'm sure it works.

 

[Hunt anything]

Eesh, that made me think this was some sort of Sammy the Bull type action, though I'm sure it works.

I’ve seen and used this “pithing” method of a coux de gras done on every thing from bull frogs to sable, it takes a little practice but no doubt it works.

As to @spikeT excellent advice, I shot a waterbuck at 287 yards on the opposite mountain and he went down without so much as a quiver. I was uncomfortable about it and so I stayed on the sticks for what seemed to be an hour but probably only a few minutes. After a few minutes he started kicking and about the time he was gaining his coordination back I slipped another bullet through his shoulder anchoring him right there. Of course he was hit just above the spinal cord with the first shot and undoubtedly would have been gone if we had not had him covered.

 

[SRvet]

@BryceM as a veterinary orthopaedic surgeon I totally agree with you regarding the appalling accuracy of many anatomical diagrams used to teach shot placement. They are awful in many respects with the position of the spine and also the location of the rumen which is generally shown too far caudally (too far back). They are awful and the concept of “no man’s land” under the vertebral bodies is a joke. Bilateral pneumothorax + haemorrhage will invariably stop animals within a few hundred yards. I only read about it earlier today and nearly spat my morning cup of tea!! I am British so coffee is for after lunch! I further agree that shots that impact the large dorsal spinous processes of the thoracic spine may temporarily immobilise the animal only to stand and run after a few minutes. Well done for highlighting this important topic!