I hesitate to participate in this thread for fear I'll drown in the testosterone.
At 53 years of age, I'm one of the older hunters to frequent these boards. I've been hunting since I was five years old, so I've got nearly a half-a-century of outdoors experiences to draw on. My family has always hunted and shared a wealth of information and personal anecdotes on the sport so, as one might imagine, I've developed some fairly solid opinions about what works and what doesn't.
First of all, please spare me the macho bull-shirt about your marksmanship skills. If you've killed only a half-a-dozen deer or so you are still tyros in every sense of the word. I'm positively thrilled that some of you spend so much time practicing your shooting....but try to develop a little humility and wisdom along with it.
If you haven't muffed a neck shot you've been lucky. That's right...LUCKY. Believe me...YOU WILL. As any long-time and knowledgeable hunter will tell you it's the riskiest shot you can take. Many forego it altogether. The head and neck of a deer are it's most active body parts...and their movements are totally unpredictable. Some day you'll draw a bead on a deer that has it's head down and feeding, in the process of squeezing off your favorite neck shot, when the animal suddenly jerks it's head up and looks straight at you and....disaster...a bullet striking a nose or blowing away a jaw.
I downed two deer on Monday...both shot through the lungs. The first was a small buck that piled up as soon as the bullet hit him. He didn't even quiver. The second was a doe, shot at closer range in the same fashion who ran about seventy-five yards. Had a heck-of-a-drag getting her out of a briar thicket, but that's just part of hunting.
As to the argument as to whether bow or rifle hunting is more noble...gimme a BREAK. You're seriously trying to cover yourselves with a layer of virtue because you kill an animal using a different method than does your neighbor?
Wake up morons. Your sport is under attack by urbanized nitwits who were raised in concrete jungles on Bambi and The Lion King who believe that all hunters are cruel neanderthals. You can't afford any dissension over the ethical superiority of one type of hunting as opposed to another.