I feel that most pictures of deer vitals portray the backbone too high, such as this one:



I really like this one better, really shows how much "meat" is on top of the back bone and why so many "perfect" hits are actually to high and are harmless meat hits:

I always aim at the lower 1/3 of the chest, unfortunatly my arrows don't always go where I want them. Thus I've had hits high or further back than I would have liked . That results in honing my tracking skills.

That second cross-section is very interesting. Neat post!

That is a very interesting cross section.........reminds me of the old debate about the "void" area above the lungs and below the spine.........Clearly no void there, but alot of "void" (meat) ABOVE the spine