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Main Boards => PowWow => Topic started by: deermaster1 on February 08, 2008, 12:37:00 PM
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i'm not talking about minimum to start with at the "muzzle", but absolute minimum you would feel comfortable with downrange. 3:1 3 blade head, thin carbon shafts 450 gr with a perfect tune. what would your minimum amount be for deer, and then caribou? thanks for any info!
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If you've already go the shaft flying well, your minimum would depend on the minimum legal draw weight and the efficiency of your bow.
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If you're shooting a bow of Legal draw weight you have enough for bou. They are not heavy boned and if you stay away from the shoulders you have plenty.
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I don't want to get into the arrow weight issue here, it gets so overdone, so I'll just recommend against the 3 blade coming out of a light set up. You want to penetrate both lungs and a three blade offers a lot more resistance.
Getting in close will have a lot to do with success or failure. An arrow coming from a 40# bow at 12 feet can be a monster, and at 70 feet barely cut through the skin with a 3 blade.
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Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don't know about that
An arrow is just as deadly at 70 feet as it is at 12.
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I am thinking that you should hold off going unless you are shooting 80 - 90 pounds with at least a 1,000 grain arrow, just to be sure.
:bigsmyl:
ChuckC
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said the man, facetiously. Anyone know how to spell that word??
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According to my reading of Dr Ashby's reports, KE is not a predictor of arrow penetration / lethality. Other factors as mentioned above such as 2 blade broadhead, broadhead sharpness, single bevel broadheads, tuned arrow flight, arrow mass, arrow FOC, arrow shaft diameter to broadhead ferrule diameter ratio, etc. are better predictors of arrow penetration / lethality and therefore should be the focus of arrow building and selection for game.
From what I gather Dr. Ashy's reports can spark some heated debates but at least you've got someone trying to empirically quantify arrow lethality whether you agree/disagree with his methods. IMHO worth considering his findings regardless of which side of the fence you're on.
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What you'll really need is enough KE to have an arrow trajectory sufficient to hit the game and not the ground 2 feet in front of them. :bigsmyl:
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I have no idea what the min for deer would really be.I know with as little as 25lbs and an arrow on the heavy side I have shot though them and broken offside legs at 30yds.That same arrow that weighed just over 500gns would have done the same thing on the same hit at 70yds.If you shoot a medium weight arrow it is pretty deadly much farther than I can hit something. :)I don't know squat about caribou except it is some of the best eating critter I have had. :D
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with as little as 25lbs and an arrow on the heavy side I have shot though them and broken offside legs at 30yds.
Thats the most minimum I've heard so far.
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This is gonna get interesting!!!!
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Rico that is a 500gn arrow traveling 150fps.There are many all wood bows killing deer each year with specs like that.Most people just don't worry about it or break it down into numbers.The lowest that I have personaly used was a wood bow shooting a 480gn cedar at 145.That is onlt 22lbs.I hit the buck as he ran under the stand going away at about 16 yards and caught him almost between the hips up high.The intercepter got liver and one lung but did not exit his chest.Many guys that don't have long draws and like primitive bows kill animals with a lot less energy than many think is required. jmo
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KE, IMHO is something that has more relevance when dealing with ballistics, not archery. M.O.I. or momentum is a more appropriate application for the bowhunter. I think a good place to start to look for a minimum poundage would be to check the regulations for the area you are hunting. If I were hunting with the minimum poundage, I might use a two blade head instead of three. Conventional Wisdom is that a two blade head will out penetrate a three blade head, but that doesn't always turn out to be the case in the field. Personally, I like the three blade head for deer. I like to make a big hole in 'em!! Find the poundage you are comfortable with and go from there.
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Trying to quantify a minimum adequate kinetic energy level or a minimum momentum level is futile in my opinion. Likewise minimum drawweights mean little aside from legal requirements for the jurisdiction one is hunting in. There always sems to be a story of some lesser perfomance level that performed just fine.
I'm going to mention something that I have noticed and wonder how it squares with other hunters' experiences----While penetration can vary from shot to shot on similar game, overall I have noticed that average penetration seems to be about the same when similar traditional 2 blade heads are shot from bows from 40-60 lbs on arrows from 400-600+ grains. While my preference has been toward arrows on the "heavy" side in terms of grains per pound I really haven't noticed a great deal of difference in actual performance between arrow weights or even kinetic energy and momentum levels on light big game.
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Rico that is a 500gn arrow traveling 150fps.There are many all wood bows killing deer each year with specs like that.Most people just don't worry about it or break it down into numbers.
You're right Never thought of it that way. Thanks might give it a try I do have a 25# bow.
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Well if you have a 25lb bow that will move a 500gn arrow 150fps you got a darn good one or some mighty long arms. ;)
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Rico, 25 lbs of ke is typical of a 40-42# bow.
On Peteward.com Shannon Kuzik killed a large Canadian bull moose with only 23 lbs of KE. That was from a 40# recurve. You may have been thinking bow poundage and not foot lbs of ke.
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Yes thats right T-Bone I was thinking bow weight my bad I was thinking it was you James with the hell of a bow. No need testing that old 25lber now I guess.
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James, I don't think everyone picked up on the lbs you were referring to being foot pounds of energy. As you clearly know, a 500grain arrow at 150 fps would be typical performance for a 50 lb selfbow with moderate stringfollow.
Just to mess with everyone's heads.... My Dad got asked to rework a bow for higher performance several years ago. Dad said that he would see what he could do. The owner had what he thought was a 35lb bow which he had used to kill a couple of deer and had used to finish many coyotes and other animals in his years as a professional trapper. When Dad received the bow he checked it over, verified moisture content and cautiously weighed it. It was an old lemonwood youth bow-60 inches long that had withstood years of being drawn to 27 inches, had over 3 inches of stringfollow and weighed a whopping 27 lbs at 27 inches. The owner said that the arrows stayed in the deer but the broadheads exited the off side... he just wanted a little more oomph to flatten trajectory and make it better if he tried to shoot a bigger animal! Dad sinewbacked it and retillered it to 40 lbs @27 with a bit of reflex upping performance substancially.
Ron Pittsley has a story about his little grandson burying a field tip into a 2x4 in the garage playing with Ron's 6 lb draw drawcheck bow. We'll debate what constitutes "enough" forever but think about it...Would you let anyone shoot a sharp broadhead at you from ANY bow? A broadhead flying has the potential to cause dying.
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A heavier draw does not necessarily equate to a higher power or a greater velocity.
Consider this - an average weight recurve bow may have a draw of about 40lbs and a crossbow 100-150lbs. This means that the crossbow is about three times more `powerful', right? Wrong.
It's wrong because, despite the increased draw weight, the crossbow actually stores much less energy, because its prod is much shorter than a bow, and the draw length consequently shorter. Energy is proportional to force multiplied by distance -- and the force required to draw a crossbow only reaches its peak at the last inch or so of draw.
It turns out that a 150lb crossbow at full draw is only storing about one third to one half the energy of a 40lb bow. For both military and hunting purposes, therefore, a bow is therefore much more effective, in terms of hitting the target hard, than a crossbow, when both are at the limits of what can reasonably be manufactured and used. The crossbow will typially shoot its projectile somewhat faster than a bow -- typically 200-220 feet per second, as compared to 180-200 feet per second. But that's because the crossbow bolt only weighs about a third as much as the arrow, not because the crossbow is more `powerful'.
This all means that a modern recurve bow of the type that is used in for target shooting is a much more fearsome weapon than the kind of crossbow you are likely to be able to buy from a mail-order supplier.
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Sorry if I got confusing with the numbers.I was talking about KE not bow weight. :)
There is such a differance in the way things are set up between archers I don't think you can go by numbers on anything really.I was just telling of a min that I know has worked for me.As long as you can get it more never hurts and the min is not something to strive for.jmo