Me too! I did that on one Illinois buck, aimed at the hairline on his belly because he was alarmed. He did not move an inch @ 15 yards. I watched the arrow hit the mark and the white hair fall. Those northern deer are not near as skitish as 'Bama deer!

"Excellent example!" Really?! Well, ok. It is, sorta.

But when ducking, unless you grip the ground with your toesnails and yank yourself downward using the inertia of the earth as a base to work from... your muscles only jerk your legs up and you're head down, and the inertia of your main mass (your body) will react only to having nothing to hold it up.

If it ain't gravity doing the ducking for ya, why don't you just "duck up" and away when a snake is suddenly under you? How come you hop around like that first on one leg, then the other as you high-step outa there?

Unless you can come up with a "why" that is based on the laws of physics, please don't let the folks at Mythbusters think that folks down in AL don't know about gravity.

It would make exactly as much sense to ask them to demonstrate why your arrow doesn't shoot you and your bow backwards.

Well you see, the deer relaxes the front legs which immediately transforms the body's fulcrum to the hind legs thereby increasing the force and leverage of the downward spiral while applying neuro-musculars sensors to the stomach muscles. Also the lower front legs inertia appeases the front shoulder muscles to exponentially contract and pull the forward body even further towards the ground. Very clever Watson.

I just know they duck.

And they DO dig their toenails into the ground - with a resultant force vector that accelerates their backbone towards the geo-center faster than the mere gravitational force of the spheroidal planet alone....

My shooting partner and I used to have a target about 20 yards beyond a storage building in my back yard. Once I stood behind the barn as he shot several arrows into the target. I was amazed at how much noise I could hear the arrow making as it passed the end of the barn and then hit the target.. Kinda like SHHHHH Thump! As the arrow splits the air, it is not silent. I think we take for granted that the the thump of the bow is all the deer hear when we relase...I wonder if the thump of the bow plus the deer hearing the arrow coming is what makes them drop to prepair to run?

Muscle contractions being the key, like a flinch.

We have done that before to. I believe its more in the sound of the arrow than the bow myself.

+1

Tape a piece of paper to the target and tie a piece of string to the paper. Have your buddy aim at the center of the paper and when you hear the bow "go off" try and yank the paper off the target before the arrow gets there. You will be amazed at the results and just remember, a deers reaction time is a little better than ours.

how much drop on the 2nd deer?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07zafCLg6Vo&feature=related

I think its a reaction to the sound of the bow string & arrow flight. I have had pretty good luck with just aiming for the low end of the vital area and more often that not hitting the boiler room. Deer are just lightning fast!