For the mechanical guys

Mountain goat, SevR 1.5
Whitetail buck, Raptor trick
Whitetail doe, Raptor Trick
Whitetail doe, rocket steelhead 1.25
Mountain Lion, SevR 1.5

 

I think they all would be dead, but it would have been quicker and like Justin said possibly more blood and sign to follow. A deer shot in the guts with a slick trick will die just as he would with a Rage, the difference maybe that I hit the liver as well with a Rage but not the slick trick.

 

how did you like those raptors??

 

it's kind of like guys that shoot heavy arrows know they don't always need a 600 gr arrow but when they need it they got. same as a wide mech. I don't always need one but when i do I got it. that's the way I look at it. some guys prepare for a shoulder hit with a heavy arrow, I prepare with a too far back hit with a mech.

 

Personally I prepare for every hit, I know a gut shot deer with my set up is going to die - I also know I stand up to bone impacts most likely in any scenario as well. As I mentioned first, yes my head through the guts depending on what is impacted may leave less of a blood trail and could take an hour or two longer vs a mechanical which cuts more guts/intestines (not talking liver)....but honestly if gut shot and I don't see the deer go down, the head used is not changing my tracking time by even a minute.

 

There aren’t the most robust head. They do however penetrate excellent. You will see about 1 inch entry holes and full exit holes. I wouldn’t be afraid to use them on thin skinned game. I think they are an excellent whitetail head, and most likely will limit their use for that. That said I also killed a caribou and pronghorn with them and had no issues

 

that's the one that you can change depending on draw weight and draw length correct? just move the O ring

 

Slick tricks new hybrid head is a great head, takes the mech from the raptor trick and has the 1” fixed. Shot a doe with it this year, complete pass through.

 

First, let's all admit that we're playing a big guessing game at best with all of this. "We think" a lot, but we don't definitively "know for a fact" in most cases. Lots of folks like to argue online as if they have a clear-cut, black-and-white answer, but that is rarely the case. Which is part of why these arguments will never end and nobody will ever win.

With that said, I've been around a lot of gut-shot deer in my day, and it's pretty rare that you don't get two holes in them with the exception of hard quartering shots. Punching through the soft tissue behind the ribs isn't very difficult, even for a light arrow with a big mechanical on it.

When we're talking about a bigger hole versus more penetration, we're really talking about the exact same thing. More stuff being cut, causing more damage, and increased likelihood for a quick death and easy recovery. It's six of one, half dozen of the other.

Moderation seems to be the key to most things in life. And we rarely practice it.

 

spot on.. I was just wanting to see what other mech options were from real life hunting experiences, what mech do people shoot and the results they get. I know that I need a mech to make me feel confident.

 

IMO it shouldn't be the broadhead or your arrow that provides confidence. It should be your shooting ability.

On a related note, I carry both a fixed and a mechanical in my quiver and rotate which one I nock from hunt to hunt. I am by no means tied to mechanicals only. I am an equal-opportunity killer of animals.

 

yeh, my shooting ability mostly good, but not always perfect. there have been many that were hit perfectly and then there are a few that were not.

 

I am of the belief that splitting the difference will give me the most bang for the buck when it comes to a combination of good penetration and wide cutting path. Now, there is no perfect solution when it comes to broadheads and arrow weight combination in my opinion. You're going to trade one thing for another, no matter what you do.

I am speaking solely on whitetails here. The recent craze for ultra heavy, ultra high FOC arrows, in my opinion is reaching points of negative returns. Think about this. Even on a mature buck, the width from rib to rib is maybe 15-18" across. From a laymen's stand point, thats all the more penetration you need to quickly and ethically kill that buck. Yes, an exit hole and an arrow stuck in the ground on the opposite side is absolutely preferred for obvious reasons but its not needed to kill that deer. How many shows do we see where the opposite shoulder is hit and the deer expires quickly? Or, how many kids or women, shooting light poundage and a good cut on contact broadhead get pass throughs or ample penetration to kill deer quickly? I have a good friend who shoots traditional and he killed a buck this year, quartering away and got a pass through. This with a 50lb recurve shooting a 450 grain arrow.

My point is, this 600 plus grain arrow craze is quite a bit overkill for whitetails. It certainly can't hurt you with regards to penetration, but we all read people saying its a must and you're not doing it right if you don't.

As for mechanical heads. This is the somewhere in the middle statement I originally made. I switched to a mechanical two seasons ago because I wanted better blood trails. I was unhappy with the various fixed heads I was shooting. Dead deer yes, but I wanted more blood. But, I did not want to sacrifice performance on bone anymore than I had to. After quite a bit of reading and research, I settled on what I feel is the best combination of penetration and durability on bone. The Rage Trypan. I chose this head for a number of reasons. One, if you look at the blade deployment design of the Rage heads, its pretty easy to see that it will deploy with the least amount of energy being sapped. Other heads that use the jack knife approach to deployment have to fold over itself to deploy and has to absorb more energy to do so. The second reason I went with the Trypan was because of the titanium body and chisel tip. Chisel tips historically, see Muzzy, penetrate bone far better and are stronger. Finally, the last reason for the Trypan is because of the 2" cut. On anything but bone, that wider cutting swatch is going to cause more damage and hemorrhaging.

So far I've been very pleased with the results. Pass throughs on every deer but one, and the blood trails have been ridiculous. One doe was hit in the scapula (because I got stupidly impatient and didn't wait long enough for her to turn more). It blew through the scapula and the arrow hung up by the fletchings on the other side and then fell out when she ran.

For me, I think this head is the best of both worlds. Wide cutting swatch without sacrificing a lot of energy to get it, as well as bone splitting capabilities with the chisel tip. Now, would a fixed head with a heavier arrow penetrate better on heavy bone? Absolutely. But more often than not, the fixed heads, if you make that perfect shot, won't yield the blood trails that you find with mechanicals. So, I feel like my setup gives me the best of both worlds without significant sacrifice on either front.

 

Just for the record this is not something new. Not even close.

-----

I won't go into a long discussion on heavy arrows as to keep the topic mostly centered around mechanical broadheads and naturally what grew a bit to include somewhat any broadhead.

 

Nothing will turn someone off to an idea quicker than a person telling them their way is without question the best, and everyone else who isn't doing the same is wrong or an idiot. We see it in all aspects of society today - from our broadheads and tree saddles to our vaccine preference and political beliefs. Quite a few folks on the heavy arrow train behave this way, which is really unfortunate. The end message is a good one, but the way it's being delivered often leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm going to disagree with this one, for the reasons I mentioned earlier in this thread. Both a correct-opening (Rage) and over-the-top opening (Spitfire) require the same basic amount of force to pop the blades open on impact. In my experience, the over-the-top heads tend to penetrate a lot better because they aren't expending so much energy cutting through hair, hide and ribs on the way in. If you remember the early days of Rage heads they were referred to as the "slap cut" (or something like that). When those blades pop open and strike the side of a deer, they are often perpendicular to the arrow shaft, creating a cut much larger than 2 inches. The issue here is that you lose the swept-back cutting angle, and you're pushing "an axe through an animal" rather than slicing through it.

I think it's a popular belief that the over-the-top broadheads take more energy, but, in my personal experience, that's not the case. When we did our own broadhead testing in 2017 the Rage performed almost identically to the Wasp Jak Hammer, Dead Ringer Super Freak and Swhacker.

Is there a photo of the scapula removed from the deer by chance?

 

Shooting heavy arrows certainly isn't new. The militant "do as we do or you're a moron" perspective is.

New hunters obsessing over their arrow setup and worrying about their FOC before they even know how to read a topo map or tell a white oak from a red oak is the "craze" that he's talking about.

 

tests done back in the day showed the Rocket Steelheads/xl's using only a mere 1.5-3 lbs of force to pop open ... Rage was in the 3.2 lb range

 

Maybe it is the company I keep but I just don’t hear the zealot approach as described, no doubt it exists but I just don’t see it much.

I’d love to see folks knowledgeable in both not one or the other to your second part…but the loss of true woodsmanship is astonishing these days for sure

 

and here I am 30 years in and doing it! I am OCD ...I think. Justin always is the voice of reason. He's right, I need to get a 400+ gr arrow and slap on my Rage heads and keep killing.

 

and a lot of that IMO is the food plot stand!! LOL