Possible Test for Doctor Ashby??

[robtattoo]

I've read most of the Good Doctor's work, over the past year & I have a question.
I know that penetration is vital, as is shot placement. However, on most Game animals unless a large area of solid bone is hit any well sharpened 2, 3 or 4 bladed head will penetrate well enough to give a passthrough, regardless of grind or profile.

My question is this; Out of all the heads tested, which created the largest wound channel or, to put it another way, which head did the most damage?

The reason I'm interested is to try & ascertain which head would give the best results on either perfectly hit, or marginally hit animals where impact with the scapula/ribs does not occur.

I've got it into my head that an arrow with a very large wound track would allow an animal to bleed out far quicker than a narrow head would. Getting a passthrough isn't that important compared to the trackability of a shot animal & the speed the animal will bleed out. It seems to me that a complete passthrough leaving a narrow wound channel is a waste of prcious KE. Would it not be better directed over a larger surface area? Enough to produce an entrance & exit wound of much larger proportions?

I do not wsh to try and argue with Dr. Ed in anyway, but there are regular posts here reporting of complete passthroughs, using heads that Dr. Ed rates as terrible penetrators. This being the case, what would be the advantage of using a head that penetrates better? Is there a tradeoff, a 'sweetspot' if you will, between penetration & actual tissue damage?

Please disscuss      

Please don't flame me for this, I'm genuinely interested & I respect the work done so far by the Good Doctor.

[mmgrode]

A large wound channel doesn't do you any good if you don't get past the ribs or scapula!  Dr. Ashby's tests were on thick tissue and bone of water buffalo which test penetration to the max. Little  penetration= pissed off fully alive buffalo!  

For thin skinned and ribbed deer sized game, or even elk or moose it is not as critical to have the best performing head out there to get adequate penetration(i.e. passthrough). In this case yes, it would be better to have a larger head to get a bigger wound channel as long as penetration remains adequate even in a suboptimal hit.  But can you really be certain you won't hit the scapula?  
One must not shoot as if everything will go right, but have equipment(broadheads and poundage) adequate enough for when everything goes wrong...especially with the dangerous animals.  Matt

[Sharpster]

Robatoo,
Ed's original African report included animals of all sizes. From very small Impala and Bushbuck up to Wildebeest and Zebras.

The African report doesn't get as much publicity as the more recent Asian Buff tests do but, there is some very important info in it. If you haven't already, check out the report entitled "Broadhead Performance". This is the report in which Ed lists the three most important factors for influencing the blood trail "quality". They are, in order of importance:

1)Shot placement
2)The presence or absence of an exit wound
3)The level of sharpness of the broadhead

(I love that last one!)  :D  
Note that Ed's findings indicate that neither the size of the broadhead nor the number of blades has much impact on the bloodtrail.

I hear lots of stories from the compound guys that the new mechanicals which, may open to over 2" wide, don't always leave great bloodtrails because they rarely get pass throughs.

There is a tendancy among some archers to think that Ed's research doesn't realy apply to us deer and elk hunters but it certainly does.

Matt is right on the money when he states-
"One must not shoot as if everything will go right, but have equipment(broadheads and poundage) adequate enough for when everything goes wrong".

Just one more note- Ed shot a 94# longbow for this study! Better him than me!

-Sharps

[vermontrad]

It would seem to me that a broadhead that continued to rotate while it passed through the vitals would do considerably more damage than one that did not rotate. The L shaped exit hole of the 2 blade beveled head shows that it does indeed tear things up! But people have been killing animals for a long time with great results with a variety of heads...

[Charlie Lamb]

Rob,

Years ago when I was a member of PBS, there was a common sentiment that often made the pages of their publicaton... "heavy bows and big broadheads".

I don't know if that claim still stands with them, but it does with me.

My favorite broadhead is the Magnus I w/bleeder. That's a 1 1/2" main blade and 1 1/4" bleeder. On a 600 +/- arrow from a 65 (ish) recurve of efficient design I'm confident in short liberal blood trails on whatever I shoot, wherever I shoot them.

I've maintained for a long time that there's a lot more ways to shoot an animal badly than hitting heavy bone and in those cases I'll take a large wound channel every time.

Penetration has never been an issue for me even with scapula hits... the ridge on the scapula is a very narrow area that can certainly stop an arrow, but the flats present little problem for my setup.

I believe in those "sucking chest wounds" like Dave2old mentioned , but have noticed a distinct tendency for the multiblade heads to leave a wound that "gaps" open more than a narrow single blade, hence opening the chest cavity to lung collapse and subsequent copious blood trail.

I'll continue to excersise my opinion and go the wound channel route over sheer penetration... and it's just that! Opinion!!    
 
 

[Littlefeather]

I sure am glad I didn't have to crawl on my hands and knees to find that deer Charlie.    

I hate that white stuff even when you candy stripe it. That was a great trip! CK

[Charlie Lamb]

One of the best buddy!!! Even the hours we spent weathered in in the tent were primo.  

[hormoan]

Rob

    I think you can see, at least I can. Everyones point is sound, but most of all they have faith in. And feels works best for them        And it does most times, thats whats most important.
I also agree with Matts statement above

One must not shoot as if everything will go right, but have equipment(broadheads and poundage) adequate enough for when everything goes wrong...especially with the dangerous animals. Matt

That one pretty will sums it up.

                Brent

The only thing better than an entrance, is a EXIT.

[SteveB]

There is a tendancy among some archers to think that Ed's research doesn't realy apply to us deer and elk hunters  

That would be my opinion - and I am far from being the only one sharing it.

Steve

[Fallguy]

I think the good doctor's advise summed up in a nut shell would be "plan for the best and prepare for the worst". No matter what size game you go after you want the largest wound weather it be in diameter or length. I have always felt that 2 holes are better than 1 when it comes to leaking fluids on the ground.

[tradtusker]

Rob i recon with the poundage your shooting and your long draw, stick something big on the end of that arrow!   :D

[bvalentine002]

This is an interesting science/math question. Let's do some geometry (hopefully no trig) to analyze this:

Let's assume a broadhead damages all the tissue between the blades as it cuts, such that a cylinder is effectively damaged as it passes into/through an animal. This is fairly reasonable considering a "bloodshot" area around a cut often occurs.

A 1" diameter broadhead cuts a circle with an area of .785 sq. inches.

A 1.5" diameter broadhead cuts a circle with an area of 1.776 sq. inches.

If the 1" broadhead does a full pass-through of 14", the cylinder of damage is about 10.99 cubic inches (we'll round to 11").

If the 1.5" broadhead does a full pass-through as well (14"), it would leave a 24.73 cubic inch cylinder of damage.

This is more than 2 times the volume of damaged tissue.

Through some quick math, it appears that the 1.5" broadhead only has to penetrate approx. 6.2" to damage the same volume of tissue.

What does all this mean?

Very little, IMO.

There are other factors at work here, like collpased lungs, breaking bones, and the speed that a typical deer can run.

Most notably for me: two holes is far superior to one when it comes to blood trailing!

-Brett

[vermonster13]

If your hunting from a treestand penetration becomes more important IMO. The entrance wound tends to be high and not as good for leaving a blood trail where the lower exit wound comes into play because of the angles involved.

[laddy]

For those with long draws and heavier bows certainly large broadheads do the job.  I have blown through the shoulder of 220 lb. deer with a large Magnus, filed sharpened and file serrated with a 64lb. longbow @26''.  I do not believe the outcome would not have been so good with my 42lb. Turkey hunting bow with the same head.  For those with short draws and light bows the ideas of Dr. Ashby by relative comparison make a lot of sense.

[Shawn Leonard]

I do not understand mmgrodes point, have ya ever seen a moose rib. It is very important to get by or thru them. They are not like a deer at all. I once saw a 54cal. ball shot at about 1700fps. bounce off a moose as a result of a square hit on a moose rib. I myself still like the 3 to 1 ratio for a broadhead. I want an exit hole every time if possibl and to help insure that I would not shoot an overly wide head but also not a 1"er either. Shawn

[Terry Green]

What Charlie Lamb said....and I'll add.

KE is NEVER waisted when an arrow passes through an animal.  When an arrow passes completely through an animal, it has cut everything it can, done the most damage on the route you gave it, causes less panic that one sticking out, and given you TWO wounds,....one to let air in, and one to let blood out.....OH, ...and I'd rather have 3 inches in the dirt than 1 inch....I don't like any of my set ups to be boarder line for the game I'm chasing.

[numbfinger]

Terry Green

Administrator
Member # 3

 posted November 29, 2007 07:46 AM                    
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"I don't like any of my set ups to be boarder line for the game I'm chasing."

_______________________________

would you mind telling what arrow weight and arrow speed you use for whitetail deer please?[ and what draw weight you use ]?

thank you

[mmgrode]

Shawn- I was using the moose example as a point of comparison to buff skeletal and tissue structure that was done in the tests, not as a stand alone.

[Dr. Ed Ashby]

Though the database information does have a 'theoretical' cut-volumn calculated field for each shot, cut volumn becomes difficult to accurately calculate, or even estimate, especially with the single-bevel broadheads. If you read through the 'Why Single-Bevel Broadheads' article you will see why. The wound channel they cut is often much wider than the blade width, because of the tissue 'wind-up' effect. In highly mobile tissues, such as intestines, there are often the 'star burst' cuts, with multiple minute areas of laceration located as far as 2 1/2" to the side of the arrow's epicenter of passage. How does one calculate that, to factor it into the 'cut volumn'?

Even on a straight-course penetration, the rotating single-bevel BH (at approximately one complete revolution in just under 16 inches of penetration through 'pure meat'), the BH's rear edge subscribes a tissue-cut path that is much longer than the  straight-line length of the wound channel. That means the 'cut volumn' is not simply the total cut-width multiplied by the total tissue-penetration depth.

There are also other 'lethality factors' that are difficult, if not impossible, to calculate. Single-bevel bone breaks often creat secondary bone-fragment missiles. Then there is the 'mushing effect' they often show in soft lung tissues; "scrambled lungs", as Ray Hammond so aptly described the effect in one of his post.

Yes, it stands to reason that, on any given hit, the BH which reaches the most vital areas, and does the most damage to them, will be the most lethal. It's easy to ascertain which penetrates the most deeply, but how does one measure the degree of damage done? As noted in the above examples, the differences in the nature of the wound created by the single-bevel BH's (as opposed to that caused by a non-rotating BH wound channel) makes it very difficult to accurately quantify the amount of 'tissue damage' that that have done.

With a wound-loss rate of less than 1% across the last 600 plus big game bowkills I've made since starting to keep records, it's hard for me to see how use of a wider cut BH would offer much improvement in my animal recovery rate, and none I've tested offer the heavy bone hit lethality potential of the long-narrow single-bevel BH's.

There's an old saying amoung gun hunters, "An animal lives between the shoulders". On the lighter big game, the increased bone penetration potential offers a great advantage in that it allows me to crowd the shoulder on my shots, with a high degree of certainty that I'll penetrate ANY of the shoulder bones I might inadvertently hit; be the cause a poor shot, deflected shot or animal movement. Aiming on the shoulder also reduces, to a large degree, the likelyhood of a gut hit. Additionally, though there have not been many, so far I've lost not a single gut-hit animal with the long-narrow single-bevel BH's. What advantage would increasing BH width give me on a gut hit?

Blood trail difference? I can't give anything conclusive until I've gathered enough data, but the data to date shows no indication that the degree of blood trail correlates with the number of BH blades, or the 'total cut width'. Hopefully, with the help of Ray, and the Urban Deer Management Program of North Georgia, there may someday be definitive data about the correlation of the degree of blood trail and the BH type or cut width used.

Ed

[Bill Carlsen]

I've killed big game with multlple blades (3 and 4) and with 2 blades, wide ones and narrow ones. The blood trails with the 2 blades, regardless of width, were equal....there was little if any blood trail at all. I shot one deer in snow that was a pass thru with a two blade Mag I and if it were not for the snow  I do not believe I would have had a "blood trail" to follow.  Using multiblade  heads blood trails have always been present....not all copious but there, nevertheless. My  latest kill was a 600 # cow moose. Shot her at 20 yards. The arrow took out the "elbow" joint that covers the heart area, took out a chuck of rib, centered the heart, made jello of her lungs and she lived long enough to take 3 strides. The broadhead stopped on the opposite leg... it was a 125 grain Razorcap...about 16" of penetration and the moose was dead in 10 seconds. I think what I am saying is that. for me, a narrow multiblade head like the RC or Muzzy Phantom, has given me much better results than any two blade I have ever used. My hunting bows have been between 60-70# and arrows a minimum of 600 grains.  Shoulder hits, for me, using any broadhead  have been futile in regards to finding or even killing animals. I have a number of them that have been taken latter in the season by gun hunters with the bhs right where they hit. Despite Dr. Ashby's success and reports, they simply have not correlatd positively to my experience. I'm inclined to side with Mr. Lamb on this one.