Mechanicals

[dalton916]

While I’m not going to be aiming for the butt, ya gotta admit it would be pretty cool to slice off some pastrami and be able to point at a defect in the tissue and say, “my broadhead did that, can ya hand me the kraut, please?”

 

[shmelton]

If both lungs are punctured the cavity has to fill with blood before u getting stuff leaking out cause they are low blood pressure.....u hit more forward and low u getting higher pressure blood stuff so in theory if u want good blood tails double lung isn't really what u want right?.....I wasnt trying bringing up the mech vs fixed debate and apologize to everybody if that is what this thread becomes...

I just thought that maybe that too blanket of a statement....to many factors involved. If u could magically shoot 2 critters standing in the exact position in the exact same entrance point I would bet u still gonna get different results... Maybe 1 arrow routes in flight a little more than another causing the broadhead to be rotated slightly differently... Maybe ur release a little more clean on 1 shot vs the other......I don't know... Just my thoughts

I’m no expert, but all the deer I’ve double lunged with mechanicals have left great blood trails. Better than any I double lunged with fixed heads. I was very anti mechanical for yrs, until I saw repeated results from my hunting buddies who shot them. A bad shot is a bad shot, no type of broad head will fix that. You do your job, and it doesn’t matter if you shoot a field point the deer will die.

I’ve got a buddy who for some reason who thought he was supposed to put a mechanical through the clavicle. After about the 3rd deer, I asked him if he knew he was supposed to aim behind the shoulder. He didn’t know that…it surprised the heck out of me. Luckily all 3 of the deer (does) made it to get shot at a later date.


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[Weldabeast]

I'm just repeating what somebody who knows about medical stuff like that said. The extremely limited double lung shots I've experienced the deer fall over 10yds away from point of impact and I didn't even look for blood.

 

[bowhunthard88]

I did put a Sevr Robusto through the top part of a scapula this year and it cut about a 1.25" slice... I'm also of a one-and-done mentality in the broadhead aspect, but I will reuse the arrow if it is fully inspected and spins true afterwards.

 

[Bigfoot522]

Back before the Rage came out I used every kind of mechanical I could find. Never have shot a Rage to this day because I went back to recurves.

The only ones I didn’t like was Vortex because it swiveled. The big 2 inch dog.
I shot a doe broadside and it went up and spined her.
That could translate into gut shots..

The others that I didn’t care for were all straight blade like the old wasp.
I would go to the edge of the work bench and tap down hard and they would just make an impression in the wood. You could force them open but to me, not so bueno.

Anything with a boomerang front end opens right up when you do this.
So while I’m at it, Allen makes the least expensive version and I killed deer dead with em every time.

In those days I purchased Sonoran broad-heads to try and loved them too!
They are some of the most copied out there.
You know them as Schwakers.

I handed them out and we never lost a deer.
I tend to think the use less energy in that they punch in like many others but deploy inside.
I really liked them.
NAP Spitfire and Spitfire max love them too.

Cut on contacts rule once you got good flight.

 

[raisins]

I shoot most of my deer with fixed blade heads but last year I did finish a buck with a Sevr 1.5. I grabbed it because I carry 1 or 2 in my quiver precisely for a longer or high wind shot, and that's what I had when the buck ran to 40 yards and stopped after my first shot. My first shot was back because I didn't take enough time to get the buck to stop and he was cruising hard. These are the only situations where I shoot mechanicals because they do fly better at long range when hunting and not necessarily with perfect form. Mechanicals also wind plane more predictably because the blades and vanes are not working at cross purposes. In usual conditions though, I always have a fixed on my bow and I'm surprised more folks don't carry 2 different types of heads with them.

Sevrs fly extremely well and are impressive in how their design was thought out pretty well. Also, I like titanium for it's own sake.

I don't like how you have to close them and I don't like the bands.

Sevrs do NOT come very sharp from the factory. If I carry any mechanicals this year, I will likely remove the blades and sharpen them.

I think the blades might come somewhat dull because of how you have to close them. You have to monkey around with them too much, which in a large enough population would cause injury. I guess they figure if the consumer takes the blades out and sharpens them then that is an intentional act that removes some liability.

Interestingly, this is the reason that Subway stopped cutting their bread like a canoe....company blew up and too many employees were cutting themselves with the added complexity.

 

[raisins]

A bad shot is a bad shot, no type of broad head will fix that.

I disagree somewhat. I've killed a few where I hit the shoulder and a mechanical would probably have not penetrated enough, because a fixed blade barely did. On the other hand, if you gut shoot one, you'd probably be better off with something like a 2" cut 3 blade GR Whitetail special mechanical.

So, you can recover poorly shot game and the head can help. The best overall head, for me, is a 3 blade fixed head with a chisel tip (QAD Exodus). It splits the middle between the 2 extremes best.

 

[DelaWhere_Arrow]

I disagree somewhat. I've killed a few where I hit the shoulder and a mechanical would probably have not penetrated enough, because a fixed blade barely did. On the other hand, if you gut shoot one, you'd probably be better off with something like a 2" cut 3 blade GR Whitetail special mechanical.

So, you can recover poorly shot game and the head can help. The best overall head, for me, is a 3 blade fixed head with a chisel tip (QAD Exodus). It splits the middle between the 2 extremes best.

I think you’re pretty spot on.
I will say, the mechanicals I shoot can and have broken bone in the front leg. Last year’s buck, i shot a little low and grazed the heart but I exploded his right front leg. I use the GR Pro Series (small diameter) and they have performed quite scarily well for me so far. I think a decent quality mechanical’s ferrule will penetrate bone pretty frequently if the bow is tuned efficiently and the tip is geometrically capable. I am no physicist but it could also be argued (empirically) that it might even “penetrate” bone better than a fixed blade because it’s so low-profile upon entry, more like a sharpened field point than a “broadhead”. That doesn’t say anything about lethality, simply that penetration potential is higher than the credit most mechs are given.

To your point, it’s not even a question to me, a sharp mechanical with a wide cut is going to destroy guts and hams (aka femoral severance). The first deer I ever helped track was shot across his left ham with a poorly tuned rage-tipped bolt and he bled out like a sonuvagun. Even my 1 3/8” cut is so sharp and COC tip will make a murder scene of gut-shot deer. IF I’m ever that unlucky, which I practice hard not to be. And shot placement ALWAYS matters most IMHO.

Just pushing my nerd glasses up for a minute. This is my first year going 100% mechanical on deer (4 kills since January) and I am pretty stoked on the results to this point.