rileybassman
WKR
I would add adrenaline presence as well as blood pressure... hyped, anxious, or stressed animals seem to just take longer to convince they are dead sometimes. Rutting bulls seem like a good example of this. I shot a little satellite early sept. a few years back (archery) that was grazing with some cows, not a care in the world... wind was perfect, never saw me, tipped over within site, 40 yards of where he stood and was completely expired in the amount of time it took me to walk up to him... and that was with an arrow. I've seen the exact same shot on rutted up or angry bulls and they can go 1/4 mile in 30 seconds it seems like sometimes. Almost every deer, elk, or antelope that I can think of that I shot or have seen shot that either didn't know we were there or was super calm, died within feet of where it was shot (with good shot placement obviously). The flip side is my wife shot a doe antelope a few years back that had others shoot at it that morning, lost her boyfriend (sister shot the doe's boyfriend buck an hour before), and that doe took too long to know she was dead. When we gutted her, still had a bullet hole through 1 lung (her shot was a little high admittedly) but that little doe just didn't want to go down easily that day.I think the Hornady guys talked about this on a podcast, not sure which one. Their theory was that it depends on the animals blood pressure at the time they get shot. Relaxed, feeding critters have a low blood pressure and thus the blood flow to the brain stops faster. Rutting, stressed, or like you said, alert and ready to run, it takes longer for blood flow to the brain to stop.
Their analogy was a garden hose full of water. If you sever a low pressure hose, its leaks for a second and quickly stops. A high pressure hose will spray for longer before the pressure bleeds off.
Of course, that doesn’t take into account variable such as breaking bones i.e. shoulders, hitting spinal cord, etc. And every animal is different at the end of the day. I shot a relaxed, feeding whitetail doe through the chest with a 30-06 and she still ran 80 yards once