>>1065870It's acceptably short either way. When we talk about inhumane kills, we're talking scenarios where it takes hours or even days for an animal to die from its wound(s). A good shot to the heart/lungs area kills in minutes, often with them struggling.
With shot placement, you have to consider what happens if your shot isn't as wonderful as you want it to be. We do not live in an ideal world; all sorts of things can and will go wrong-scopes go out of whack, people pull shots one way or another, wind pushes bullets and so on. Being off an inch or so from where you were aiming isn't a rare thing out there.
The brain stem and spinal cord are both VERY small. If you miss, you could blow off a jaw, shoot through a meaty part of the neck or gut shoot it, which are survivable-but crippling-wounds for an animal. Death may still come, but it could take days or weeks of starvation and infection before it succumbs.
With a shot in the heart/lungs area, you have much larger area that produces a mortal wound, thus more margin of error for your shot, and the animal will go down quickly without lingering.
>>1065872Bullets only shatter and fragment if they impact game at velocities well above what the projectile is designed for.
Pick the right bullet for the gun you're using (or even better, pick the right gun shooting the right cartridge for the condtions you'll be hunting in) and you won't have that problem.
