Earlier this year I got into a rather heated discussion with one of our club members about this issue. We were talking about my next to the last deer kill this past season and I said that I hit guts but got lucky and hit the aorta below the spine. He was quick to correct me and said it was the femoral artery. I've seen example after example of people saying that they hit high and clipped the "femoral artery". I'm no biology major, but I know that the aorta runs all the way to the pelvic region where it splits and then becomes the femoral artery. There is no "femoral artery" running down the back below the spine, but I constantly hear folks use this term. In order to hit the femoral artery you would have to hit the deer in the ham area. So, if I botch a shot like I did on the deer mentioned above and hit the deer above the gut but cut the artery, do you say it's the aorta or the femoral artery? Just curious on what everyone's opinion on this is.
The aorta starts up at the aortic arch and decends in the thoracic cavity, at that point it is surprisingly called the descending thoracic aorta. After it enters the abdominal cavity it is the abdominal aorta. At the pelvic cavity it splits into the iliac artery until it is into the leg and parallel to the femeur, where it becomes the femoral artery. Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk
You are correct, of course. So.... it isn't possible to hit a deer below the spine in the gut area and hit the femoral artery, right?
No, it isnt. The femoral artery is only in the lower extremities. One can make the argument that the entire arterial complex is one artery with names that give a location rather then function, as the function is all the same regardless of the location. Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk
