Bowsite.com

Pretty hard to say what didn't kill an animal that didn't die, but failure of a head to open sounds at least plausible.. unless you're using a head that cannot fail to open up because it has no moving parts...

I don't have any fondness for mechs and will never defend them, but when n animal gets away (or is otherwise lost), you can make up whatever kind o' crap you want and nobody can prove you wrong, which (if you think about it) is why murder cases are rarely (if ever??) taken to trial without a body.

On another occasion shot two deer within a minute. On the same trail, facing broadside, lung hit, same distance, almost the exact same spot. One with fixed blade, one with expandable(open on impact). No obstructions, yielded different results.. That however is just a testimonial not a study.

A mechanical not opening does not somehow change the arrows momentum or KE so that it only gets one inch of penetration. Not from a seventy pound bow.

Idyll, On the original Rage, there were no rubber bands that were designed to break on impact. A little tail on the blade was designed to slide under the O ring, they were never designed to break. Therefore, they should all still have intact rubber bands (O rings) after being shot, unless someone added their own rubber bands to hold the blades closed.

Sometimes equipment won't overcome poor shot placement.

I could see a guy finding his arrow with the blades closed, and then (due to poor shot placement) not recover the animal, and blame it in the blades not opening.

What’s troubling to me is that I’m getting the sense that the TV “Pros” are advocating stupid shot placement (“center mass”, AKA Gut Shots) specifically to overcome a design limitation of the products they’re getting paid to push.

Which would fall equally under Unethical, Immoral and Unprofessional.

Couple O-pinnions....

If I can tune a fixed-blade head to impact right on top of FPs out to 45 yards, then it can’t possibly be that hard. (I started out 3” off at 20 yards, and a half hour later I was dead nuts at 45 and out of room to back up any further)

If the closest a guy can get to a deer or Elk is 40 yards, he needs to either learn how to hunt closer or switch to a firearm.

If you are counting on a ridiculously wide cutting edge to bail you out on a poor shot placement, you need to develop the discipline to wait for a shot that you’re sure of.

If you can’t track a wounded animal without blood on the ground, you are WAY better off with two holes ahead of the diaphragm than one (or even two) behind it.

Q: What part of this does not add up to a decided advantage for a properly tuned fixed blade of moderate width (and great sharpness) placed square in the middle of the lungs?

Reminds me of the spectacular results from highly frangible bullets: highlight footage when it works and a boatload of unanswerable questions when anything goes wrong.

What’s NOT to like about a couple of drops of bright red blood every few yards leading promptly to a completely dead animal which expired within less than half a minute?

Timbow nailed it I think. Point blank, I've eaten my medicine on this and it sucks, but is a good lesson if you learn.

That was the thing, it did open and therefore was stopped pretty much immediately upon impact. Guess I didn't mention that. Lack of penetration due to the expandable opening upon impacting the tough shoulder blade..not the same as Huntmans story. Regardless I choose not to use them in case I do hit the shoulder.

When I cut him up this broad head was in a pocket of puss in the arm pit.. never entered the rib cage. There was 6” of arrow shaft attached also.

That’s exactly how the head was, unopened. I never really looked at the entrance hole in the hide but I can’t imagine that the head completely closed while in the deer.

I have seen what Rage can do when there is a bad choice of shot selection, buck running around a metro hunt in a neighborhood with his intestines hanging out for a few days.

Also one ripped open on the side from end to end due to a frontal shot gone bad. Long slow , painful death.

I had been watching that buck and two others that were hanging together and that I would consider shooters. He was a huge 150” class 10 point. First day I hunted him was opening day which was a Wednesday and I only saw a couple of does and a spike. My next opportunity came two days later. I was in my stand for about 30 minutes and the smallest of the the 3 bucks (130 ish 10 point) walked right under my stand and was eating acorns in front of me. As I was waiting for a broadside shot on him, I looked up to my left and here comes the huge 10 point. He too walked right directly under my stand and greeted the “smaller” buck about 10 yards in front of me. They began to spar lightly and soon they were broadside. I took the shot on the big boy and I knew instantly by the sound of impact that I had hit the scapula. Then my eyes confirmed it as he ran off with my arrow sticking out, looking like he had an AM antenna protruding from his shoulder.

Point of my story is that shot placement is everything no matter what type BH you use. I got no penetration on that shot (still crying) and I was using a 100 gr Slick Trick. Every time I look at an old trail cam picture of that buck, I go into a deep depression!!

I have dug muzzy and Rocky Mountain Iron head broadheads out of the shoulder of deer. A shoulder shot on the heavy part of the shoulder will result in little to no penetration regardless of broadhead. I have also shot through part of the shoulder blade on a mature 250 plus pound WI buck with a 2 blade Rage. It wasn't on the heaviest part of the shoulder and I was shooting a 576 grain arrow. Point is you aren't getting through the heavy shoulder with most set ups.

So far I count 4 confirmations by Hunt Man, Ermine, Trysklr, Shug, (not including the very old punch cutter report from Pat). Although its a limited data set, modern day MBHs, in my opinion, appear to be quite reliable.

That still, 95% of the time I'm still shooting rages.

Allen, not trying to discredit your claim, but are you actually saying you "physically" saw the blades deploy mid flight, and that's what made your arrow miss it's mark? I have pretty good eyesight, but about the only thing I can see on my arrows midflight is the lighted nock. The reason I ask, is because I had a brother in law who claimed the same thing, who also shot Rages. We got the targets out, and shot a few arrows...he put 3 field points in the ten ring. He was POSITIVE it was the broadheads. We spun the arrows, inspected the shock collars, and made sure the blades worked properly. Just for grins and giggles, I told him to do a few pushups, run a few short sprints, pick up his bow and put another field point tipped arrow in the kill zone. He did this, picked up his bow, drew, and sank an arrow into the deer forms hind quarter. What we figured out that day, was when the adrenaline was pumping, he was torqueing his bow considerably....causing erratic arrow flight, and not hitting the mark. Once he was able to get this under control, he became a killing machine....and yes, he still shoots Rages. Just some food for thought....if you can see blades deploying in flight, you have much better eyes than me! ;-)

"I shot a buck about 4 years ago that I lost.. shot a Ulmer edge head and the blades didn’t open arrow sunk up to the fletch entered behind last rib mid body"....this mirrors my first experince with expandable heads. I shot a doe at about 12 yards from a treestand....easy shot....pass through......then about 30 minutes later the sky opened up to a torrential downpour. We tracked for over an hour, then called it for the evening to come back the next day. Should have found that deer in 100 yards.....I thought....never recovered and I was done with mechanicals.

A couple years later I ran across a pack of NAP Spitfires on the classifieds of another archery site and bought them to try for turkey hunting the next spring. Well that fall I got curious again and put one in my quiver. Ended up shooting a nice doe that was down in less than 100 yards with a solid blood trail. OK.....that was better results.....so I continued to alternate and have killed close to a dozen deer and two turkeys with Spitfires. I hone the blades before use, so I know they open up and have never had an issue. Still own and hunt with Magnus Stinger 4 blade, NAP Hellrazors, TT Shuttle-T and have a pack of TT A-Tacs to try out. However the Spitfires have proven to be accurate, reliable and deadly.....for ME. Anyone who claims to have hunted for years with fixed only and never lost an animal is highly dubious in my opinion.....stuff happens and it is far easier to blame something else than operator error.

Seems to me the majority of claims that mechs didn't open were due to them closing back up when the arrow popped out....though I've seen one elk that needed 2 more arrows that the head was corroded shut.

I think the worst cases of true mech BH failure I've seen where when the mech head blades deployed on the shot and the bowhunter said the arrow just made big circles to the target.

The worst case of fixed head failure I've seen was with those old plastic ferrule Gold Tip Bh's [80's] that just folded on contact.

Good to hear. But the question remains, what was the basis for the hunter you referenced to claim the blades didn't deploy?

I'm not following.

The mechanical wouldn't penetrate as well as the fixed, but it WOULD most likely result in a very large, easily-infected gash in the shoulder, which would be less survivable.

No, there are no guarantees, but a 1 1/4" fixed blade with favorable edge angles is VASTLY more likely to penetrate well on heavy muscle and lighter bone, which allows the hunter to holder closer to the shoulder and hit larger, higher-pressure blood vessels and through the higher-volume portions of the lungs, which tends to lead to a shorter, heavier blood trail and a quicker expiration on the animal. Plus, the smaller head is more likely to zip right through and leave the animal standing there wondering what the hell that was, rather than hauling butt for the county line.

Speaking of "No Guarantees"...

Longbeard's tale of woe added a useful bit of information...

At close range like that, with a steep shot angle... The head will penetrate into the scap, then "grab on" and slide it across the ribcage, dissipating the energy. On a less-than-perfectly broadside shot, the scap gets moved across the underlying ribcage both vertically and horizontally...

It's not so much that a scapula is thick and tough as that it MOVES when you hit it. Yeah, there are some thick, tough parts to it, but it's nowhere as heavy as a humerus, and those can be shattered by a solid hit with good head.

No one ever addresses this, and I have no reason why

How powerful a bow do you think you need to kill a bear?? (I’m assuming black bears, but that’s a pretty important distinction to have straight before we go any further...)

I'm not following. ................

Its simple, the only place a small head out performs a large head is trough bone and if it cant do that then Ill stick with a 2" cut that out performs the smaller head in several other scenarios.

The only thing I worry about avoiding is the very front joint on a scapula where it meets the leg.

An ultra-wide mech will NEVER outperform a fixed-blade, COC head for penetration. It OFTEN will not matter, because if you get an exit, it doesn’t matter MUCH how much farther the arrow travels (although there is a case to be made that having it end up sticking out of the animal is substantially less desirable than having it stuck INTO the dirt). But on those occasions when the mech comes up an inch short of poking a second hole, the difference may loom very large indeed.

If you make a solid hit with ANY 2-blade, there should be enough blood on the ground to follow. Maybe not at a jog, but if you’re patient, it is quite rare for it not to be there... and when it isn’t, it’s most likely due to inadequate penetration, in which case the Odds favor the Fixed.

On anything else, you’re relying on the projectile to make up for a bad hit, which has never struck me as a wise choice.

For a long time, Archaeologists spoke of “bird points” - very small stone heads which they assumed were only used to hunt geese and ducks and turkeys and such. ASSUMED, that is, until people started finding them stuck in the ribs and vertebrae of deer, Elk, Bison....

The typical legal requirement for Broadheads for big game is only 7/8” for a reason, which is that 7/8” is ENTIRELY adequate when put through both lungs.

If you think about it, you’ll come across VASTLY more cases in which mechanical heads have provided sub-par penetration (like seemingly every shot ever captured on video ;) ) as opposed to stories about a fixed-blade which cut two holes and didn’t leave enough blood on the ground to follow.

Too, there are dozens of reports of animals which had a fixed-blade COC head whistle through their ribs and the animal reacted to the shot about the same as they’d react to a bug bite. They don’t panic into a death run; they just stand there and die.

Doesn’t matter how fast they bleed if they walk slow enough, and I have yet to hear of an animal hit with a big Mech they did NOT vacate the area in Full Burner.

And I’m gonna disagree with Shawn. I know longbeard well, and he’s only a knucklehead about SOME things. (LOL)

A shoulder blade on a big buck is a large, massive and mobile obstacle to penetration. Not on every shot, but stories of high-powered rigs failing to penetrate a shoulder blade are a dime a dozen, and it only makes sense, if you think through the anatomy.

Anyway... Guess the point is that EVERYBODY needs to steer clear of the beefy part of the scapula, but only mechanical users are so concerned about it that they would deliberately risk a gut-shot animal rather than risk a peripheral hit on the thinnest bone anywhere on the animal....

And FWIW... if you want “wide”, just check out those Ace Super-Express.

#1: 2-blade, fixed COC is one thing; “small” is something else.

#2: If you think you need a 2” mechanical to ensure a quick, clean kill, you’re very clearly NOT ready to make the jump to “Trad” Gear.

The bow I started with almost 30 years ago is more than most men seem to be able to manage any more; my newest bow puts out about 30% more KE than my first; and it puts out about HALF of what a lot of compound guys are using.

Tradbows and mechanicals just DO NOT to seem to mix. JMO, you might want to get comfortable with what a fixed-blade COC can do before you switch to a recurve or LB, because if you combine a sensible Stickbow draw weight with a Mech, you’re going to run an extraordinary risk of Woe & Intrigue.

And that would be Stupid. You don’t seem Stupid. No sense starting now!

I’m just thinking that if you’re thinking about using mechanicals with a recurve, you just might.

As I said, I was shooting around 63# with a fixed blade broadhead. Before you try to tell me my bow is not tuned, I get pass throughs 95% of the time at all different distances

All I can tell you is that when my arrow hit that deer it sounded like someone taking a 2x4 to the side of a barn. Shot placement is everything; don’t learn the hard way like I did!

OK -

I’m fairness to the Broadhead makers, having a blade drop out in flight is NOT the fault of the head, but rather the knucklehead who didn’t check everything out before he hit the field. Yes?

And in fairness to mechanical heads, if an o-ring is tired or worn out or damaged or whatever, that, too, is on the Operator.

Just like hitting one in the shoulder blade is (ultimately) on the shooter. So you can be (or listen to) the guy who insists that a particular bad outcome is simply not possible, or you can listen to the guy who didn’t expect it.... but learned from it and would take that shot back if he could.

I feel like I read this thread 10 years ago on bowsite... And every year since... I reported a Rage bouncing off a big buck, was accused of not having a tuned bow but I know the damn thing opened in flight, I hated those original 2 blades they always opened on me had to constantly pinch them. Anyway - been happy with VPA performance ever since... I learned a long time ago just shoot what you have most confidence in, what you know to be best for you. Broadheads, in many ways - are a lot like women...

I have been shooting mechanicals for almost 20 years and shot all brands up, until about 5 years ago. I tested them to see what difference I liked with what arrow. I have shot rabbits to buffalo with them with complete pass-thrus and have never seen or witnessed a pre-deploy or none-deploy