Man, I'm slackin. The season is slowing down right now for fishing, which is a little disappointing with how good the fishing has actually been. In years past, August has usually been about a 25 trip month for me. It's definitely not that way anymore. It probably has to do with the heat, the smoke, the perception that there are too many weeds and that somehow, the fishing sucks. (The fishing definitely does not suck.) Plus you figure that people are just busier at the end of August, with kids getting back to school and so-forth so it is what it is. September will pick back up and I already have a bunch of bookings in October so things are good. What it does allow me to do, to is get some practice on the range and figure things out with my archery gear.
A few years ago, I really started exploring gear. I upgraded my bow and found that the broad heads I was using for the old system were 1.) not very accurate with the new system and 2.) didn't do as good of a job opening up a wound on an elk. I wrote about the search for a good broad head here: http://themontanadream.blogspot.com/2015/09/testing-broadheads.html
After doing a little research, I settled on the Rage, 100 grain, three-blade chiseled tip because I figured I'd get better penetration and it would open up the wound significantly more than a fixed blade. The first elk I shot with it was pretty telling. The elk didn't go far and it was really easy to track as it looked like a five gallon bucket of blood was being poured out on the ground. But the next elk I shot was a little different story. I didn't get much penetration and to be honest, it didn't feel like the broad head performed like it was supposed to. The elk I shot, only went about 60 yards as it wasn't spooked and I watched it bed down and eventually die but it took a while and most of the blood stayed in the body cavity.
Other things about the Rage tips started frustrating me as well. First of all, they changed the design and when I took them to the range, there seemed to be a significant drop in accuracy out past 50 yards with my set-up. I'm not sure why that would be, given the weight of the tips didn't change but they definitely dropped off quicker as I tried to reach out further. It could have something to do with how they spin or the flight of them and how that changes when the velocity of the arrow slows down. I'm not a physicist so I don't know for sure, I just know I wasn't totally happy. And the biggest knock on them is just how they are constructed and the fact that there's a rubber washer that keeps them from deploying. I can't tell you how many times I had an arrow knocked and I moved through the brush, only to look down and see that one of the blades was deployed. That definitely can have an impact on the flight of the arrow and how it sounds once released.
So last season, I tried a four-blade Grim Reaper. It was decent. The accuracy was better, for sure but at the time, I couldn't find them in a 3-blade option or with a burlier, chiseled tip. They were also better constructed in my opinion; with a spring-loaded system that I was more confident, would either not deploy prematurely or fail. I didn't shoot anything with them so I can't say anything about performance on an animal.
Now, the thing about broad-heads is that they are expensive so you don't want to keep changing from year to year and I just don't like to have a hodge-podge of different tips on my arrows when I'm walking through the woods. I want one tip I'm completely confident in so I'm not leaving anything up to guessing or up to chance. But then Grim Reaper came out with a three-blade version of what I went to last year, with a chiseled tip...damn!
Forty bucks is a lot to spend on tips without being able to test them but I bought them anyway and did a little comparison study. Up top, you'll see a photo representing a grouping I shot with the four-blade Grim Reaper, the three-blade and the field tip at sixty yards. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy with the accuracy. Now I hope to be able to test the reliability of the three-blade version on a bull.
Keep 'em where they live...
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