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Very interesting topic. My bowhunting has been limited to rabbits, based on my skill not being good enough for anything else. Rabbits tend to be a solid hit or a complete miss. I have hunted pigs and goats in a group, but carried the rifle or shotgun as backup to bowhunters, to stop any injured animals escaping. I very rarely fired, and when I did it was probably unnecessary, as they would have dropped before getting out of sight.
I have in front of me a copy of a WWII training manual that lists the location of main arteries that can be attacked with a knife. Loss of consciousness from the severing of these is indicated as between 30 second and instantaneous, with death resulting between 2 minutes and 2 seconds after loss of consciousness. On people these range from 0.25 to 5 inches under the surface. While I believe these numbers may be a bit ambitious, requiring a perfect cut, it does suggest that unconsciousness due to sudden drop of blood pressure can be very quick. From personal experience, having sliced myself accidentally on too many occasions, I have rarely felt pain as an immediate sensation to a cut by a sharp edge. I once dropped a straight razor, then caught it. My brain knew this was wrong, but my hand kept going. I remember the feel of the razor sliding through my hand, but it was definitely NOT painful, although the memory still makes me uncomfortable. The cut was not serious, but reasonably deep. The blood flow was astounding, and was very difficult to stop, but pain as such did not really begin for probably 10 or more minutes. By the next day it hurt like hell.

Injuries from blunt knives or tools, and injuries from hitting and jamming on the other hand become painful immediately, or within a minute or so, depending how hard the hit. While blood loss may be significant, it is nothing like that from a sharp cut, and tends to be easier to stop.

What has this to do with hunting? I tend to think that the usually razor sharp arrow tends to cut through with very little immediate pain, and if reasonably placed, will result in rapid blood loss, and subsequent loss of consciousness and death. This is supported by those animals that are seen to jump, then settle back into routine before falling over. Having seen goats shot from cover continue to feed until they collapse, I think this is a reasonable assumption.

On the other side, I have seen kangaroos taken with .243’s as clean headshots that maintain a pulse despite repeated attempts to “finish them off” they are down, but show muscle movement when touched, and have a strong pulse in the neck. Personally, I won’t skin something with a pulse, but have fired several .22s into some animals trying to remove the pulse before being happy to call it dead.

Some years ago I was in Canada. I hoped to hunt, but the only game in season was snow shoe hare and skunk. I could not imagine sitting back in a shooting jacket with my pipe and a fine scotch, looking at a mounted skunk and talking about my hunting trip. What I did discover however, was that bear hunting in the area I visited was exclusively by baiting and from tree stands. I asked about a ground level stalk, possibly with a handgun, and received very strange looks. The general consensus was that I was @#$@$@$@$@ mad, and would get eaten. These were the smaller bear, and I was told no-one would hunt them on the ground, even with a rifle. Obviously different strokes for different folks. I loved the lodge and the people, but I would not go there deliberately to shoot from a stand.
I believe we all have different desires in our hunting. As long as no deliberate suffering is being caused, I am happy to accept others preferences. We all need to stay together, because the enemy will be happy to divide and conquer, attacking each aspect of hunting until there are none of us left.

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