Lol. No they don't "brake" on impact. They might break though. You certainly have a thing against this product though. I'm just trying to understand why.
I like the Rage 2 blade for turkeys. Had great success on birds with them. Would never use them on an elk and on a deer, only if I was desperate. While guiding elk hunters, I saw to many mechanical broadhead failures. I don't need any more variables then I already have when I'm hunting. A fixed blade always opens!
Watch the video and tell me that you would have total confidence in a 3 blade mechanical. Broadheads that have a very real potential for catastrophic failure are junk. Maybe the ones in the video were Chinese made? Maybe not. But the fact is, they were junk. Rage does not corner the market there. But they definitely set the bar. I used to shoot mechanicals too. To me, not having good results is when the head disintegrates. Nothing ludicrous about that.
The only Rages I ever tried were Hypos and they broke the blades off in a foam target while I was practicing with broad heads and on the first shot. If it can't survive foam, I ain't throwing it at a deer. I just don't like the quality and design of them at all. If someone else likes them and wants to keep shooting them in spite of evidence why they aren't up to someone elses standards then that's their problem to deal with. The only mechanical I have used that I liked okay was NAP Bloodrunners. They expand to make a larger cutting diameter but are basically a fixed blade/mechanical hybrid.
One thing that can not be ignored is the number of people that have harvested game animals using rage. Will they kill? Absolutely. This kinda goes back to using the right tool for the job. Would I shoot a whitetail with a Rage, yes, but for a water buffalo I wouldn't necessarily go that route. I personally dont prefer Rage broadheads but I can't call them junk either because I have seen lots of heads come a part. So I say shoot what you like and have confidence in and pay no mind to others opinions and/or facts.
Lol. Nice catch! Rage is too greedy to worry about educating their customers about the proper setup for their heads. Introducing a product that has a very real potential for misuse and acting like the problem does not exist is unethical at best. How many times do we have to watch someone shoot a deer, pig, elk, etc., with a large mechanical on a light arrow and get horrible penetration? It makes me sick to my stomach that they continue to promote their product with no consideration for how it will be used. Zero. There is also no denying that they are far more fragile than a good fixed head that will fly just as well as a mechanical. So, why chance it? I hate them because they have become a bandaid for tuning. They allow for mediocrity and that breeds lazy and sloppy and that results in unrecovered game. Unless you use them on a really heavy bolt from a crossbow while hunting in an enclosure over a bait pile with your neighbor's wife. Then its all good.
I would like to see the same tests done on other mechanicals - Rage does get blasted because of their name.
Everybody knows the 3 blades have had issues, I have never shot a 3 blade rage. I wonder why the guy chose the 3 blade for his test? Hidden agenda perhaps?
Only if his hidden agenda was to prove that the 3 blade heads are suspect. And if so, I think he proved a valid point. I agree that Rage gets blasted the most in the world of mechanicals. But they are to mechanicals what Kleenex is to facial tissue. They are the low hanging fruit because they have made a spectacle of promotion and their name is synonymous with mechanicals.
Fletch I do agree with the point you brought up and I too have suggested that Rage gets in the arrow business or set up a private label deal to put the heads on the proper weighted arrow.
Agreed 100% about the way Rage Advertises. Agree 100% they are mis-used. Agree 100% people use them as a band aid for tuning. Having said all that, mechanicals can and do recover some animals that smaller fixed blade won't recover. Just from sheer damage. If I'm hitting bone I want a fixed. If I'm not hitting bone I want a mechanical every day of the week and twice on Sundays if using the right set up. The whole "fixed always opens" is a cop out. There are mechanicals such as Kill Zone which will never open in flight and will always open when hitting an object. I really believe if you are missing too far back you want a mechanical. If you are missing too far forward you want a fixed. If you hit the deer in the right spot it isn't going matter either way. Just my 2 cents worth.
Below is cut and pasted from a post that sums up why I think your wrong on mechanical head giving margin for error . The math on Risk is probability times severity: so let's accept (for the sake of argument) that a mechanical design gives you an added 15% cutting width ( though I suspect that in most cases the benefit is smaller than that!). But let's go farther than that and accept the idea that the 15% wider cut on the mech even gives you a straight-up 1:1 benefit with a 15% lower probability of failure to recover an animal. Just to keep it interesting.... OK, so for a guy who typically recovers 85% of the animals he shoots, that's a 15% loss rate. Cutting that by 15% means that you would recover an additional 2.25 animals on 100 hits. I guess the mechanicals are so devastating that sometimes they'll blow a quarter clean off! And that's if you normally recover 85%, which I think of as depressingly low. If you normally recover 90%, you would only benefit 1.5 times out of a hundred. The better you are, the less up-side. So two times out of 100, you'd be thankful that you used a mechanical. Unless, of course, they fail 2% of the time.
If you hit a deer in the correct spot every time then a field point will do the trick and neither of the other options is needed.
