Related Articles How Revolvers WorkHow Shotguns WorkHow Body Armor WorksHow Artificial Hearts Work More Great Links Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and ExplosivesUniversity of Cincinnati Human Anatomy OnlineA Ballistics Bibliography Sources Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Report.” 2020.

“Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2019 on CDC WONDER Online Database.” released in 2020. John H.

774: William Beaumont.” University of Houston. Dave and Gould, Skye.

October 29, 2018. Susanne, Ayturk, D., Ahlawat, A., Izzy, S., Scalea, T.

M., Emhoff, T., & Sheth, K. N.

87, 21. November 22, 2016.

“Global Firearms Holdings.” Small Arms Survey. 2017.

How Revolvers WorkHow Shotguns WorkHow Body Armor WorksHow Artificial Hearts Work. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and ExplosivesUniversity of Cincinnati Human Anatomy OnlineA Ballistics Bibliography.

“Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Report.” 2020. for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.

John H. “No.

Dave and Gould, Skye. “The odds that a gun will kill the average American may surprise you.” Business Insider.

Susanne, Ayturk, D., Ahlawat, A., Izzy, S., Scalea, T. M., Stein, D.

“Predicting survival after acute civilian penetrating brain injuries: The SPIN score.” Neurology vol. 87, 21.

Arms Survey. “Global Firearms Holdings.” Small Arms Survey.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Report.” 2020.

“Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2019 on CDC WONDER Online Database.” released in 2020. John H.

774: William Beaumont.” University of Houston. Dave and Gould, Skye.

October 29, 2018. Susanne, Ayturk, D., Ahlawat, A., Izzy, S., Scalea, T.

M., Emhoff, T., & Sheth, K. N.

87, 21. November 22, 2016.

“Global Firearms Holdings.” Small Arms Survey. 2017.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Report.” 2020.

“Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2019 on CDC WONDER Online Database.” released in 2020. John H.

774: William Beaumont.” University of Houston. Dave and Gould, Skye.

October 29, 2018. Susanne, Ayturk, D., Ahlawat, A., Izzy, S., Scalea, T.

M., Emhoff, T., & Sheth, K. N.

87, 21. November 22, 2016.

“Global Firearms Holdings.” Small Arms Survey. 2017.

Let’s look at the anatomy of a gunfight. Why do we train for defensive encounters.

Being able to accurately shoot a firearm has long been a desired skill, and defensive shooting is no different. Today we are going to talk about something called shot placement and why shot placement is so utterly important for defensive shooting skills.

The name might give it away, but it’s where your shots hit on a threat’s body. Good shot placement means placing shots in an area that quickly stops a threat.

Stopping power is a nebulous term often used regarding handgun calibers, but in reality, stopping power and handguns just don’t go together. Handguns suck…well, at least compared to long guns.

There seems to be a consistent belief that certain rounds will somehow magically stop a threat better than other rounds based purely on their size. The king of this myth often being the 45 ACP.

First, it needs to be capable of penetrating the body deep enough to reach vital portions of the anatomy.

If the round penetrates at least 12 inches through 10% properly calibrated ballistic gel can reach the anatomy’s vital parts. A 9mm round and a 45 ACP round can penetrate this deep without issue.

What you do is called shot placement. Where you place the shot matters and having a big bullet or massive amounts of penetration means nothing if it’s not placed properly.

Those vital parts are the brain, the heart, and the lungs. A shot to any of these body parts will help end the fight fast and are what you should train to hit.

It shuts down everything, and with a single shot, the lights are switched off. It’s the best place to hit but also the most difficult.

This leads us to the heart and lungs, both housed in the upper thoracic cavity. This area is a much bigger target and is much easier to hit.

You are more likely to hit the upper thoracic cavity, and that’s great for two reasons. First, you are more likely to win when you land hits.

This doesn’t mean headshots aren’t a valuable place to land rounds, it’s just a bit more difficult, and you need a good bit of luck and opportunity to do so. Realistic training does wonders to get you ready for a defensive encounter.

I personally like the Sage Dynamics free printable targets. These show just the head and vitals and make shot placement a must.

Kit Badger did a modification of the Sage Dynamics targets to represent the side of the body. The low-priced Birchwood Casey 3D human silhouette targets are another good tool for realistic training.

I also train to hit small targets. Things like clay pigeons on the berm, small steel gongs, and anything else that requires brilliance in the basics of hitting a target.

You need to be able to consistently hit a small area, often less than 10 inches wide. Penetration is choosing the right caliber, and shot placement is knowing how to shoot.

Hitting a man-sized target is easy, but hitting a vital area isn’t always. Train, make it part of your dry fire, and be ready to land accurate rounds where it matters when it matters.

He deployed in 2009 to Afghanistan and again in 2011 with the 22nd MEU(SOC) during a record-setting 11 months at sea. Travis has trained with the Romanian Army, the Spanish Marines, the Emirate Marines, and the Afghan National Army.

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Jimmy Kimmel Slams Aaron Rodgers’ Claim About Jeffrey Epstein Connection: ‘Your Reckless Words Put My Family in Danger’.

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Michael Blackson Fires Back After Katt Williams Calls Him “An African With A Fake African Accent”.

Tiffany Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Outing Shows She May Be Serious About Being Known as This Type of Trump.

We’ve all heard or told the joke that the best place to shoot a deer is as close to the truck as possible, but knowing where to shoot a deer is the foundation of ethical hunting and ensuring the recovery of your downed animal. This guide will help you determine the best shot placement on a deer in nearly every situation you might ethically shoot while hunting with a rifle or a bow, including shooting from a treestand and compensating for angles.

Public / Private Landownership Maps, Optimal Wind on Waypoints, GPS Tracking, and More. Most hunters have been taught to shoot a deer just behind its front shoulder, no matter if you’re shooting a bow or a firearm.

What appears to be the front shoulder, that rounded, muscled mass, does not contain as much bone as it might appear to and thus gives us a clear path to its vitals. As a quadruped, a deer’s anatomy is obviously different than a human’s so we must account for and understand the additional bones and joints that make up its legs.

The humerus, which is similar to the forearm of a human, angles back to another joint we’d call the elbow. Coming out of the elbow are the radius and ulna, which are partially fused in most quadrupedal mammals, so what we would think of as the deer’s “knee” is actually its wrist.With these bone and joint angles in play, that leaves a much larger unobstructed target area to aim at in order to hit vital organs, specifically the heart and lungs.

A deer’s four-inch tall heart is directly in line with the middle of its front leg, with the top of the heart sitting at the midpoint between its back and belly.Of all the vital organs to hit, a heart shot will kill the deer the quickest because the animal bleeds out rapidly when either the atria (upper chambers) or the ventricles (lower chambers) are hit.

The bulk of the two lungs is also set slightly behind the heart and behind its front shoulders. Given that the lungs fill most of the chest cavity, they give the hunter a much larger target than just the heart.The liver is further back on a deer, located between its lungs and stomach and right behind the deer’s diaphragm.

A liver shot is fatal but takes longer for the deer to expire (usually about two hours) because blood loss is slower from the liver than from a heart or lung shot.

Having a deer broadside at eye level is as good as it gets for a hunter. It gives you an unobstructed path to the heart and both lungs.

The best broadside shot to take on a deer is to aim directly in line with the front leg and between the halfway and lower one-third mark between the bottom of the chest and the top of the back, keeping in mind a deer’s heart is situated at a 45-degree angle. Dropping your aiming point just below the middle line of the deer puts the shot in the meat of the heart (no pun intended).

If you miss an inch or so high you get the top of the heart and two lungs. If you miss slightly to the left or right, you still hit two lungs.

Taking a shot when the deer is quartering-away from you is the second-best shot you’ll have to broadside. Though some hunters prefer this shot in the field because the deer is less likely to detect you as you draw your bow or shoulder your firearm.

The key to making a quartering-away shot on a deer is aiming further back than its front shoulder. In fact, a good rule of thumb is to actually aim at the opposite-side shoulder, which is where you would want your arrow or bullet to exit.

Without either or both wounds there will be little-to-no blood trail, and if you only hit one lung a deer can run quite a ways before expiring. If you aim too far forward on a quartering-away shot you risk missing the heart and lungs entirely and only damaging its front limb at best.

However, if you aim a little too far back you’ll still likely hit the liver and clip one lung, which is a kill shot but not as quick of one as a heart or double-lung shot.

The two major drawbacks to the quartering-toward shot are 1) for bowhunters you almost certainly need to shoot through the on-side scapula or humerus to avoid a gutshot. With lighter arrows or lower draw-weight bows, this is a considerable risk, and 2) for rifle hunters you are most certainly going to damage the front shoulder meat plus do substantial damage to the guts, risking spoiling additional meat.

The height of the shot on the deer is the same at eye level as the broadside shot, just between the halfway and lower one-third of the body. Taking a frontal shot is ill-advised in most circumstances, and that’s true for bow and rifle hunters.

The most limiting factor is how small the target is from this angle. Viewed from directly overhead, a deer’s ribcage width is only about 12 to 14 inches, and the heart as a target viewed from the front is less than three inches given that a typical deer’s heart has a six- to seven-inch circumference.

The deer’s sternum will only block or deflect the brunt of the impact. Additionally, don’t aim to the left or right side of the chest cavity imagining the heart is more to one side.

There are many other angles and shots you will encounter in the field, but those not yet covered are not recommended. The two most common of these are the head/neck shot and the straight-away (also dubbed the “Texas heart shot”), in which the animal is standing, walking, or running away from you.

That is the straight-down shot when it is directly underneath the hunter. This angle provides the smallest of targets, but some hunters will take it knowing the deer will be unaware of the hunter drawing on it or shouldering a gun.

The best-case scenario at that point is to hit a single lung, which makes for a long day of tracking.

down debate centers on the animal’s ability to react to the sound the bow string makes when an arrow is released. It has been shown time and again that a deer with its head down can both react quicker and drop lower to the ground than a deer that has its head up.

Among its senses, its ability to hear is stronger than its vision. Some claim that if a deer were human it would need glasses to see.

Related to knowing when to shoot is whether to compensate for “string jump.” As just discussed, deer are likely to respond in some way to hearing an arrow released from a bowhunter. With the speeds reached by modern bows there is little time for a deer to react to shots taken at 20 yards or less.

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As a guy who likes to shoot at small pieces of steel at very long distances, I’m always looking to up my game. The same goes for my shooting partner, Chris Gittings, with whom I’ve shot any number of sniper-style team matches over the years.

For a long-range competition shooter that’s like being a basketball player who’s tight with Jordan and Pippen. Except in this case, both these guys are like MJ.

Every long-range sniper match worth winning, they’ve won. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that when they’re in the lineup, everyone else is basically vying for second place.

Their track record of success has been noticed in some very elite circles, including our special operations community who regularly call on Sean and Greg, who go by SG Concepts, LLC, to train them in the finer points of long-range shooting and team marksmanship. (Sean’s and Greg’s day jobs are with Nightforce Optics and Proof Research, respectively.).

I’ve had a chance to watch them in action up close, and it is something else to see how smoothly they work together, how efficient their communication is, and how quickly they come up with solutions to complex shooting problems and ring steel. To get a feel for how Sean and Greg work their magic, I arranged to have them train me and Chris over the course of a few days.

While their focus is on team shooting competitions, the skills they teach are equally applicable to shooters who compete on their own and to hunters who like to go afield with a buddy. When you think about what goes into successfully hunting the backcountry with a partner—the gear prep, the communication, the need to stay positive in the face of adversity—it dovetails with the lessons Greg and Sean teach.

Over two or three days of training these build on each other and I’ll touch on each. But I want to cut to the chase and highlight the most critical skill of all for an effective shooting team—communication.

You’re going to have good days, bad days, times when you mesh perfectly, and times when you’re out of sync with each other.

More than marksmanship skills and more than rolling with the best gear, communication is what makes the difference between success and failure in a team shooting match. Communication touches every aspect of the process.

This was, by far, the most important takeaway during training with Sean and Greg. While there are some circumstances where less is more, for the most part you won’t go wrong over communicating with your partner.

Prior to the match you should have a gear checklist that the two of you share. Who’s bringing the spotter.

Is one person in charge of getting snacks and food.

Did you both come away from it with the same understanding of the course of fire. How are you going to approach the stage.

Before you step up to the line make sure you’ve checked each other’s gear to make sure everything is squared away. And so on.

Ammo loaded. Verified dope entered into your electronics and printed on hardcopies for backup.

When it comes to shooting with a partner, however, there’s another layer to this. “You need to know your partner’s gear as well as your own,” Murphy says.

This is a more esoteric, yet still vital, element to succeeding in a team match. Who on the team is better with wind calls.

Is your partner particularly skilled at finding targets. All these details will help you shape your strategy and shoot more effectively.

It begins with the stage brief, which determines your plan of attack. “Listen closely during the stage brief,” Murphy says.

We ask questions and get as much information as we can. To the degree the match format allows, we’ll use the RO’s knowledge to the fullest.”.

Who’s ranging the targets. Is the first shooter responsible for building their position, or will the other person help them get tripods, bags, and other supports in place.

This is also the time to review all the instructions and make certain you understand exactly what the stage requires and allows. Do you have to shoot the targets near to far.

“Gamers” get a bad rap—and some shooters take cutting corners too far—but there is nothing wrong with thinking through the stage and figuring out if there’s a better way to skin that cat. The ability to envision a stage creatively is a skill that separates the top shooters from the middle of the pack.

Like most shooters, we were fixated on finding the targets, getting solid behind the rifles, making sure our wind calls were on point, and ringing the steel in the time allotted. We started with rifles and pistols ready next to a shed and on the command to go, Chris ran ahead to shoot the steel.

We did this with both pistols and long guns. Chris cleaned the stage no problem, sprinted back, and off I went.

Yet after my last shot Sean didn’t stop the timer. I looked up at him and he just smiled.

Did I engage in the wrong order. Was there another target I didn’t find.

Panic started to set in. Not knowing what else to do I whacked the last target a couple more times, but Sean still didn’t stop the timer.

In all the excitement I forgot that detail, as did Chris. What should have been a great stage turned into a wreck.

As important as the whole process is around being an effective shooting team, the most critical element is hitting your targets in the time allotted. Obviously, foundational marksmanship skills are essential.

“Do what you have to do to make the shot,” Greg says. And by “you” he means you and your partner.

“That can be providing a physical support, blocking the sun from the shooter’s eyes, helping spot impacts.”. The point is to figure out what you can do to make your buddy’s time behind the trigger go more smoothly and increase the odds of him or her getting hits.

Even if there’s plenty of room for you to stretch out, you might have a stage designed so that the only line of sight for a shooter and spotter is through a single small window. You’ll be better off draped over each other instead of burning time moving out of each other’s way.

This can be a real sticking point that makes or breaks a shooting team. You’re behind the rifle and just saw a plume of dust kick up next to the steel after your shot.

What do you do.