I say BS

[oldfarmsblueman]

I have been reading of lots of lost deer this season .But
I have heard a story I have a hard time with.Can a arrow
going 275 fps with a Rage broad head BOUNCE OFF A DEER.
This guy said he (3ed lost deer this year)He hit a doe at
30 yards and he thinks the deer just has a little cut and
should be OK.He found the arrow the next day with just
a little hair on it and a few drops of blood.He mentioned
some one else's story of a Rage bouncing off!!

[snoodslapper]

I'll relate a personal story that is a little embarrassing as to why, while I think unlikely, it could be possible. Also, why it is not altogether the fault of the head (I personally don't care for the Rage for certain reasons), but almost completely the shooter's.

I bowhunted from the time I was 12 to 18 years old, then got out of it when I went to college. I decided to start again when I was about 28 (13 years ago). It amazed me how things had changed in that time. Regardless, I still wanted to do as much bow work on my own after getting new equipment, including carbon arrows, which I had never even heard of, and mechanical heads, which I had never used. I set everything up, was shooting about 260 fps according to my best calculations, practiced for 6 months consistently, and headed out for my first hunt which was for turkey. My head choice was the Rocky Mountain Gator, which is often compared to the 2 blade Rage (although the Gator was/is a far superior head). Long story short, I shot at a nice tom from about 25 yards and watched the arrow strike the bird in the proper place and the arrow seemingly "bounce off" and land on the ground with two feathers. The bird simply shook his ruffled feathers and calmly walked away as I sat there with my mouth open. After trying to call him back without success, I retrieved my arrow finding a small amount of "meat" on the bladed tip, no blood and a couple of wing feathers. I looked for that bird for hours just not believing what had happened, but it did. The only solace I had after looking for so long for that bird was a load of about 8 pounds of morels in my pack. ;D

I took the whole rest of my turkey season OFF, not wanting to risk the possibility of truly injuring an animal (I'm quite sure this turkey easily survived) to try to figure out what went wrong. Basically, I had to completely re-educate myself on how to tune modern bows and, most importantly, how to choose the correct arrow for a mechanical head to work properly.

What I learned after an incredible amount of research and the using of a computer based arrow selection/tuning program at the time, was that my bow was somewhat out of tune in conjunction with my arrow. But most of all, my arrow was not properly spined, nor was my arrow "tuned". It taught me that tuning your arrow is just as important as tuning your bow if you want to maximize the energy transfer from the bow to the tip of that arrow.

Bottom line, my bow and my arrow was so far out of tune that the actual energy transferred to my arrow was incredibly inefficient and lacked the KE to properly operate that mechanical head enough to penetrate the armor like feathers of the turkey.

I took that same bow, tuned properly, with a properly spined and tuned carbon arrow, shooting the same speed and RM Gator, out the next season and blew through two turkey like butter.

Had I initially tuned with a fixed blade during range practice, I would have realized how badly my setup was wasting energy due to the lack of accuracy.

So, could this have happened to this person? I think it could if he/she doesn't know what they are doing and why this is happening, which sounds likely since they continue to hunt and loose deer without having the common sense to stop and find out why THEY are at fault and not really their equipment. Truly, both are at fault, but only one of them has the ability to fix it. Just my two cents.

[omegabuck]

I will mention this as a comical story, my Father using a fixed blade head, shooting a PSE Baby G (4 years ago) shot at a pretty nice buck ... first arrow he said he thought he hit it, but the buck had no reaction other than looking around, the second arrow hit the deer right in the boiler room, and instead of penetrating went straight to the ground. Best I could figure he wasn't shooting a bow fast enough to account for the angle at which he was shooting. I know for a fact that the braodheads were sharp. There's probably more stories like this out there, just something that I know of that happened.


Snoodslapper - something similar happened to me recently, I shot an arrow that according to all the computer programs said was perfect for my bow and poundage, and shot an arrow that was slightly stiff for my bow and poundage ... the slightly stiffer arrow not only flew better, but penetrated so much better than the other arrow that it actually went completely through the target .... the arrows were the same overall weight and length.

[snoodslapper]

Oct 10, 2010 13:05:07 GMT -5 omegabuck said:

I will mention this as a comical story, my Father using a fixed blade head, shooting a PSE Baby G (4 years ago) shot at a pretty nice buck ... first arrow he said he thought he hit it, but the buck had no reaction other than looking around, the second arrow hit the deer right in the boiler room, and instead of penetrating went straight to the ground. Best I could figure he wasn't shooting a bow fast enough to account for the angle at which he was shooting. I know for a fact that the braodheads were sharp. There's probably more stories like this out there, just something that I know of that happened.


Snoodslapper - something similar happened to me recently, I shot an arrow that according to all the computer programs said was perfect for my bow and poundage, and shot an arrow that was slightly stiff for my bow and poundage ... the slightly stiffer arrow not only flew better, but penetrated so much better than the other arrow that it actually went completely through the target .... the arrows were the same overall weight and length.

That's a perfect example of what I am talking about! I think, in general, most people find that a stiffer arrow is easier than a weak one when it comes to finding the sweet spot. I know I find that to be the case with my setups in any case. It could also have something to do with the fact that I prefer shooting solos with a pretty aggressive cam as well. On the programs I've used, I never take the program's "perfect fit" as far as spine. I hedge up to where it is still in the "good" zone, but bordering on too stiff. That way I find I can keep the overall arrow weight I like (I prefer in the 420-450 grains area) and tweak spine with arrow length, weight of the head and/or insert and with different fletch and nocks.