I believe the most common error is to aim too high. You can clearly see the area that is the chest, and you know that’s where you must hit. So you center it, ignoring the rise of your trajectory as well as the simple fact that the real vital zone is almost always in the bottom third of the chest. The size of the animal greatly compounds this fundamental error.

For darn sure aiming a bit high is my own most common error. I’ve taken quite a few deer and sheep that were dropped cleanly by a shot that was a bit high. You can get away with it on deer-size game, but if you move on up to elk the risks are greatly increased if you hit above the horizontal halfway point.

If you are very precise (or very lucky) you can hit the spine where, on most ungulates, it dips between the top of the shoulders. This will drop an animal in its tracks. But if you hit below the spine the best you can hope for is the very top of the lungs, and you will track for a while. If you hit above the spine you will track but you probably won’t recover the animal.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time in buffalo camps lately, and I’ve heard the stories. It seems as many as one in 10 buffalo are lost, and the culprit is usually reported as a chest hit a bit too high. Black animals seem to confound the eye, making it extra difficult to pick the right place.

The only answer, on any big game animal of any size, to ignore the entire mass of chest area and pick an imaginary spot to shoot at. With a broadside presentation, if you come up the center of the foreleg one-third up into the chest you will break the shoulder and wreck the top of the heart, and you won’t track very far. On any four-footed animal in the world, if you follow the rear line of the on-foreleg one-third to one-half into the chest you will make a fatal lung shot.

Again, on any four-footed animal in the world, if you slip above the horizontal halfway point you are shooting too high. You may get away with it, but the larger the animal the greater the risk.

Knowing this, I simply cannot explain why so many of us, me included, are so prone to shoot a bit too high. I suspect it’s a matter of naturally trying to center the chest, while the best shot is almost always a bit lower than center. Even without field experience there are good references that will show you the correct aiming points for almost any animal in the world.

Doing your homework is good, but in the field you can’t get flustered. You need to visualize where the vitals lie, then establish an imaginary aiming point that will get your bullet to them. If we can ignore the whole animal and pick a spot we’ll do a lot less tracking, whether we’re hunting deer or elephant.