When i am hunting whitetails with my compound, I do like shooting mechanicals. This year I switched to 150gr Sevrs for deer. This is out of a 70lbs Prime Black 5 and 535grain arrow. This same arrow with a G5 Stryker has blown through 2 elk with complete pass throughs. I have shot 2 deer with this setup with Rage broadheads, and got simply medieval blood trails. I am not a big fan of how flimsy the blades are on the Rage though. Hoping the Sevrs are going to be a big step up.
I have shot a handful of deer now with my compound, as well as 2 elk with G5 Strykers, and I have never really been happy with the blood trails on the deer. In every case, deer I have shot have been complete pass throughs, double lung or heart/lung, and there's been very little blood outside of the body cavity. In contrast, most of the deer I remember shooting with my longbow, with a big 2 blade CoC head (usually a STOS or big Magnus) always left a good blood trail.
I think some of it has to do with how quickly the animal busts out of there after the shot. I am convinced that with a slow, super quiet longbow, and razor sharp cut on contact 2 blade, that the deer doesn't even know what happened. I have had instances where I shot a buck, he hopped, took a few steps, then stopped looking around to see what that noise was, then amble off 20 yards and fall over. Howver, EVERY deer I have shot so far with a compound has bolted like a bat out of hell when the arrow hit them. I think its the added noise of a compound, plus they feel that multi blade broadhead hitting them a lot more than a razor sharp 2 blade.
I have shot a handful of deer now with my compound, as well as 2 elk with G5 Strykers, and I have never really been happy with the blood trails on the deer. In every case, deer I have shot have been complete pass throughs, double lung or heart/lung, and there's been very little blood outside of the body cavity. In contrast, most of the deer I remember shooting with my longbow, with a big 2 blade CoC head (usually a STOS or big Magnus) always left a good blood trail.
I think some of it has to do with how quickly the animal busts out of there after the shot. I am convinced that with a slow, super quiet longbow, and razor sharp cut on contact 2 blade, that the deer doesn't even know what happened. I have had instances where I shot a buck, he hopped, took a few steps, then stopped looking around to see what that noise was, then amble off 20 yards and fall over. Howver, EVERY deer I have shot so far with a compound has bolted like a bat out of hell when the arrow hit them. I think its the added noise of a compound, plus they feel that multi blade broadhead hitting them a lot more than a razor sharp 2 blade.