Midrash for Chullin 55:34
משום דושט סמוך לורידין
If he cut the gullet and the windpipe was found to be torn away, and it is not known whether it was torn away before or after the slaughtering - this was an actual case [which came before the Rabbis] and they ruled: Any doubt whatsoever arising about the slaughtering makes it invalid.
Sifrei Devarim
R. Elazar Hakappar says: Now what did we learn from deer and hart? It came (ostensibly) to teach, but it (in the end) it was found to be taught, viz.: Just as a beast (must be slaughtered) through shechitah, so, an animal (e.g., deer and hart), through shechitah, (but a bird [must be slaughtered through shechitah] only by ordinance of the scribes). Rebbi says: "as He commanded you" (Ibid. 21) apprises us that Moses was commanded as to gullet and windpipe (as being the loci of shechitah) and as to the (cutting of) the major portion of one (of these being the criterion for shechitah) in a bird and of both, in a beast.
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