There's a ton of differing vocabulary in hunting which leads to quite the confusion. Case in point, where I work, I can argue till I am red in the face and still nobody will agree with me that walking slowly through the woods, pausing to look and listen for wild game, is called "Still Hunting." To a man, despite Field&Stream and the collective population of the internet on my side, "Still Hunting" to my coworkers means sitting in a tree stand or ground blind.
Perhaps you should point out that the term was immortalized in a book written in 1882 about deer hunting, and that same author was so good at hunting mule deer and whitetail that he favored a Winchester '73 in .44-40 as his deer rifle.
Now I'm not knocking that old cartridge, nor the guys that used it in its heyday, but I prefer something with a bit more smack.
https://www.amazon.com/Still-Hunter-Classics-American-Sport-Theodore/dp/0811730042
A
shoulder shot is generally taken when the deer or bear is facing toward the hunter, but not head-on. It will be facing a bit to the right or the left of the hunter, maybe as much as 45 degrees off center. Some books call this as "quartering toward" the hunter. The idea is to send the projectile into the spot where the spine and the shoulder joint meet...the spine is severely impacted and the animal drops or goes a very short distance and drops. In cases where muzzle loader shooters have experimented with this shot and documented the results, the lead ball or bullet when not hitting the spine at the shoulder joint, was deflected into the spine from the shoulder bone impact.
If the animal is profile to the hunter, shooting behind the shoulder joint is a
spine shot, because that point is too high to hit any other vital organ other than the spine, and with the desired result similar to a neck shot, but with less chance of the animal moving and spoiling the aim as one risks with a neck shot. Shooting a deer in the
vitals, is done when the animal is profile or mostly profile to the hunter, and using the "elbow" of the front leg as a reference point, the hunter places the shot slightly to the rear of the elbow joint, on the torso of the deer, and strikes the lungs. Sometimes folks call this a
lung shot. IF the hunter places the shot slightly toward the rear of the animal from the elbow-reference-point, AND slightly lower on the torso, that's the
heart & lung shot, where the objective is to damage the heart, and the lungs, and if slightly off, the lungs are still damaged and the animal is harvested.
I prefer a strict lung shot, because I enjoy eating the deer heart, but recent tests done over the past few years by a few muzzle loading folks that I know, have convinced me to try the shoulder shot if it's presented to me.
LD