Single Bevel Hype and The Missing Blood trails

[jess stuart]

Get you a MA3 and glue razor blades on them just like Jack Howard did and you will see blood on the ground.  Nothing cuts like a razor.

[Zwickey-Fever]

From my own experience, I tried Grizzly single beveled broadheads about 3 years ago. I even practice with them on a daily basis. I will admit that they was truly accurate as well as easy to sharpen. Come opening day, in the evening, I had a mature large doe approached and presented a broadside shot at 15 yards. I put the broadhead directly in the crease of the front shoulder. The doe did the normal, took off like a shot from a gun. So after 30 minutes I got down from my tree, found my blood covered arrow and a few drops of blood at the point of impact but absolutely nothing after that. So, I backed out until the next morning. Me as well as two other people could not find a drop of blood so we started a grid pattern search to where we found the doe about 80 yards from where she was shot. After finding her my friends and I did a investigation to find blood, "nothing", not a drop. There was very little blood under the doe where she expired. We truly looked for about an hour. Then we aimed are investigation towards the doe. The arrow entered the doe 1/3 down and exited through the lower front chest on the opposite side. There was absolutely no "S" channel wound pattern. The broadhead exited the body the very same way it entered the body. Needless to say I went back to Zwickey Deltas. For me, single beveled broadheads are not suited for hunting whitetails. I know, there are countless deer harvested with single beveled broadheads but lack the key element of what I'm looking for in a broadhead which is putting blood on the ground.

[Dave Lay]

Zwickey fever that makes perfect sense I just don’t understand how a s cut can be created in a 14” wide deer meaning I don’t think it would have enough rotation in that short of a span.. and there will be a difference in a 1 3/8 delta hole and a 1” grizzly hole . In 40 plus years and maybe 100 something whitetails and misc other stuff I’ve only shot 2 blade  deltas or larger 2 blades some with bleeders  with the exception of one doe taken with a bear razor head which is basically a zwickey Eskimo . With that said I’m going to try a wider cut 3 blade this year just to see if there is any difference in recovery

[wingnut]

I use 3 blade heads on everything up to moose.  With the deep chest cavity on an Alaska/Yukon moose I feel I need more penetration and switch to a high quality two blade  like the tuffhead.  Bloodtrails with two blade heads are not as good as 3 blade is you have the HP to get an exit wound.

Mike

[monterey]

Looking at the differing experiences of those who have posted above, it seems that selecting a broadhead based on the expected blood trail might be an exercise in futility.  Some have opposite experiences with the same broadhead.  My own scant personal observations are that it depends more on the location of the hit than anything  My two blade experiences range from not a drop of blood on the ground to a path of blood.  It seems to depend a lot on what the alternate avenues of "escape" are for the blood. 

For me, a complete pass through from a level ground shot with a very sharp Ace produced no blood.  It all stayed in the chest cavity where there was plenty of room for it with both lungs completely collapsed.  that deer traveled about 100 yards at an all out run.  OTOH, a magnus two blade that took out a femoral artery resulted in a huge amount of blood and a deer that walked slowly away about 30 yards and layed down and died within three minutes.

I think juxtaposing the concept of two blade single bevel broadheads against the liklihood of a blood trail is a false dichotomy.  The comparison of blood trails created by two, three and four blade heads is probably a more a more productive comparison if blood trail is the most important aspect of your broadhead selection.

But, the positive aspects of the single bevel broadhead as well as the other aspects of the Ashby findings are not necessarily related to blood trails, but rather to penetration and the ability to break bone.

[IndioArcher]

Well said, Monterey. Well said.


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[fujimo]

 

[Trumpkin the Dwarf]

However, i am originally from South Africa, and we would follow the tracks, whether they were a blood trail, or just the spoor, but that was a lot easier in the dry South African winters.

I think you win! I know I'm not very good at tracking without snow or a recent rain.

[monterey]

In Colorado deer and elk country you are hard pressed to track a single animal without fresh rain or snow.  Supposedly there are extraordinary trackers who can track in any conditions but I'm certainly not one!

[fujimo]

 

[GCook]

I know this is blasphemy but I'm not as hung up on Dr. Ashbey's conclusions as many are.  Does some of it have merit?  Sure.  But real world application of arrows, broadheads and dead animals through the decades leave some glaring questions for me on those conclusions.

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[mec lineman]

Dr. Ed Ashby' s work has never been about the amount of blood, unless you consider a exit hole. All of his work is show casing what type of head he has found through thousands of animals ( dead and alive) to penetrate and break heavy bone the best. the majority of his research was based on heavy skinned and boned animals. I think that there is a whole lot of merit to what he is saying, how many people on this planet have killed white Rhinos with traditional bows in resent times.  i personally like wider heads for whitetails, but I believe his point is very valid .

[GLP]

Makes me wonder what folks are calling sharp.   This was said in one of the posts. I am constantly refining my sharpening skills. And gradually getting better so that now I can get my ace standards to easily shave hair off my arm with little pressure. With that said I believe that it is the level of sharpness and shot placement that determines how much blood you get on the ground (NOT DESIGN!) Also touch the skin on your forearm and move it around. If you put a hole in your arm, moving the skin can at times block the hole. This happens at times with the animals we shoot.  So many thing determine - blood on the ground -  That are more important than brands. Keep them scary sharp, hit them right, use as big dia. as you can and get 2 holes. And get good at tracking.   P.S. I believe a lot of times the blood on the ground is coming out of the mouth.   Greg

[Zwickey-Fever]

When I found the doe, most of the blood remained in the chest cavity as stated. Every shot taken on a deer is different as well as every recovery, (tracking),. My issue was the fact that there was absolutely no 'S' shaped wound channel as was stated in several single beveled descriptions. I never tracked in south Africa nor in Colorado but have tracked numerous deer in my life but tracking deer though the CRP here in southern Iowa will have you thinking that your blind. I seen deer hit with a Simmons Treeshark that the blood trail looked like a horror show until he hit the CRP.  Finding prints in the CRP is virtually impossible. I have tracked deer on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that just vanish after they reach the phragmites.
 From my experience, every broadhead has its pros and cons, I just have less cons with Zwickey Deltas than I do with others. Zwickeys been around since 1938 for good reason, because they work. I'm not saying that single broadheads don't work because they do. I'm just not a fan of single beveled broadheads due to my experience with them. But to each his own,

[GCook]

Yeah.  Most of us won't shoot a cape buff or moose or white Rhino.  Whitetails, thim skin, light boned exotics and pigs are what I'm tackling and none of them require a .416 Rigby to put them down.
A blood trail is of paramount importance in most hunting venues.  I doubt the average American hunter has a tracking dog or a venerable African native tracker on staff to find his buck of a lifetime.  Or even that doe for the freezer.
Yes, a sharp head is necessary.  If you don't know how there are places that will sharpen heads and knives.  But there are tools and devices to make it easier for most.
Just shooting a heavier arrow and heavier head isn't going to solve everyone's penetration issues. 
Neither are single bevel heads.
I like the bone breaking factor of single bevel heads and should I hunt Nilgai or elk I may lean that way. 
But shoot a big boar through the shield with it and you'd get no better penetration than you'd get with any other tough, sharp head.

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[Trumpkin the Dwarf]

I think a lot of good points have been made from every quarter. The pros and cons of narrow blades have been explained/verified by those with experience. And the same for wider broadheads. I think we all can take away a renewed emphasis and/or commitment to getting those broadheads sharp, and flying straight! An unexpected topic from the discussion has captured my interest now. Tracking! How many of us practice it? If I were confident in my tracking abilities, I might shoot a smaller broadhead just for the exceptional accuracy they tend to bring.

So... I think it's time to go looking through the archives for threads on tracking. Then I need to make time to go practice it. Heck, that almost sounds like scouting!

Oh, and just one more comment on wide broad heads from personal experience... I have shot three animals with the big TreeSharks now. A bull elk, a whitetail buck, and a hog. I've never felt like penetration was an issue, but I shoot heavy bows. In the case of the hog, I hit a little higher than I'd like, and a little back. I never had a drop of blood, other than what was on the arrow. Take from it what you will. I learned that I need to work on shot placement for hogs. The other critters dropped in sight.

[JohnV]

There's no "hype" regarding single bevel broadheads.  Some people have a closed mind and refuse to consider that there may actually be something better than what they currently use.  It's interesting how some people consider themselves experts on equipment that they don't use.

I have killed close to 50 big game animals with single bevel heads and about the same number with double bevel two blades.  The single bevel heads penetrate better.  They leave bigger wound channels.  And in general, the blood trails are better, probably because I almost always get a good exit hole.  I just came back from a hunting trip to Namibia where I shot 5 arrows and had 5 clean kills.  All done with single bevel heads.  Good blood trails.  My Professional Hunter was very impressed with the performance of my arrows and asked a lot of questions regarding my single bevel heads.

Go ahead and pooh pooh single bevel heads all you want.  I have dead animals on the ground that say single bevel heads work just fine.

[Hermon]

"So... I think it's time to go looking through the archives for threads on tracking. Then I need to make time to go practice it."

Trumpkin, How would you propose to practice outside of hunting and shooting animals?  Have a buddy drip red paint through the woods? 

[fujimo]

 

[newhouse114]

I believe that an animal's reaction to the shot has something to do with blood trails also. I shot a dall sheep with a four blade muzzy and I  honestly thought I had missed the sheep. I watched it through binoculars while it slowly walked off..... Until it fell over dead. A white animal with no external bleeding and an "X" dead center through both lungs. I've had deer do the same and one elk. No jump and run, just a slow walk and zero blood trail.