So a good friend was cleaning out the old gun cabinet and asked if i wanted half dozen broadheads he found Now i have my big game arrows together and i shoot a certain broadhead because theyve worked well for me,but ill shoot a mixed bag on small game and you never know if your gona find something you like or works better Now i was never interested in mechcanical broadheads but for free how can ya not try Sooo,,,the blades are kept up and close to the middle by a rubber Oring,and it slides down to release the blades on impact Well in theory : ) I shot them off my 45# bear at 20yrds on foam,rhinehart ball and even empty milk bottles Every time the Oring slid down the arrow but the blades would never ingauge,even when being pulled out of the target yet they were not bound or stuck they moved freely So i guess my post point is my thoughts on mechcanical broadsheads was right,,nothing im interested in That said i will be using them on small game and other targets(with in real life limits im not deer hinting with them)to see if i can get them to work

Now has anyone had luck with this style of broadhead? Im sure theres better made verions of this style head,(bloodtrakers i think)

I think your going to need more speed to get them to open. Mechanicals are geared toward compounds to get them to work and even then you hear of failures.

Never liked them, don't trust them, that's just my 2 cents.

There were a couple of brothers hunting the same land we hunted. CP shooters but nice kids. They used mechanicals that blade was to open by the dull lobe of the blade that protruded forward and then was suppose push back and roll the blade out on impact. They tried to tell me how inferior my Grizzlies were. They showed me how much force it took to open the blades, quite a lot. With a 70# CP one shot a buck,, the arrow barely penetrated. They found the arrow 300 yards across the field where the buck jumped the fence. There was evidence the right lung was injured, but the blades of the head did not open. They never found the buck. They switched to inferior cut on impact heads, one Muzzy the other Eskimo four blade. They then proceeded to tell all other mechanical head users that their heads were inferior and they had proof. They were getting good short blood trails and finding every deer they hit.

I tried those and they cost me deer. Yet they work fine on smaller game like yotes. I still have a few for the dogs

Not with a stick bow. Not enough kinetic energy to open them. Now on a compound there's plenty of kinetic energy. If the didn't pass through the target you can't tell if they opened. And when you pull them out, they will close back up. And if they did pass through,they can close up when the arrow stops suddenly. If you get a pass through look at the blade cut size on the exist side. Over the top mechanicals don't open fully until just inside on the entrance side. They won't always show a big entrance hole, with over the top mechanicals. JF

If they get wet snow, rain, or what ever and it drop down below freezing they would never open.

X2 dean

My brother still shoots compound but we never trused those darn things. One thing in particular I don't like about them are the blades, I'e felt thicker paper. Plus with all the fixed bladed that "shoot like a field point" now: I really don't see a use for the mechanical anymore. They eat energy that could have been used for penetration. As someone I was talking to at a check station a few years back was saying (and he was the butcher): all the heads do is bruise up more meat and leaves less on the dinner table.

I think I have heard more malfuntion reports on that kind of head, than on the more tradtitional heads,, I am sure they work great when they work,, but I like my head already open and deadly when it gets there,,

I know one guy that would super glue the blades closed and use them for small game heads.

Put them on the trade blanket maybe someone who's a compound-er takes you up on them. In a mechanical bow they are tomahawks which they are intended for.

Fred Bear once produced an all metal bow. Never tried one of those either.

Well im gona use a few as beater heads and domeone asked for the rest And boys and girls i need as much good Karma as i can get : )

Mechanicals use a lot o the arrows energy to open, leaving a lot less for penetration. Coumpound guys like them because they are easy to tune. Most don't need to tune for broadheads. I never shot them, even from the 70#/333 fps/400 grain compound combo I used to shoot.

Every bowhunter should view the 3Rivers video that the did where they measured the pressure required to push various broadheads through a piece of deer hide.

I'm kind of skeptical about them. The ones I've seen just seem filmsy. I would never try them with a recurve or longbow.

Now my opinion is based on NO personal experience, so frankly I might be way off base.

However my oldest son uses them exclusively, mostly NAP brand out of his compound. I think its reasonable to say he has killed more deer with a bow at the age of 30 than most will kill in a lifetime with a bow. I hold his opinion pretty high, not just because he's my son, but because the boy knows bowhunting.

Now he uses one of the faster compounds out there, and around 65# or 70# with a heavy arrow. I seriously doubt penetration would ever be any kind of an issue whatsoever. I think Allen brand broadheads themselves are kinda cheap. But then again no personal experience other than to look at them.

Wheels2.....I agree.

You can claim all you want that other broadheads penetrate as well as a stout razor sharp 2 blade head.....It doesn't really matter how thin you slice that, its still boloney.

Now it's somewhat of a moot point, splitting hairs maybe, considering there are so many broadheads out there that do an excellent job. But apples to apples, same shot, same circumstance...my bet is on the 2 blade, penetrating best.

I dont care for them. Out of my compound I have had them shear off a blade internally as well as not pass thru making for a difficult trailing job. I would not think of using from a traditional set-up.

Take a look at the ads for mechanicals in any of the mags that cater to CP shooters. I think they are downright scary in the harm they can do to the animal. POS IMHO. Marketing wins this one, experience and logic wins the other. Lance.

Used them many years ago when i shoot wheel bows, they are junk.

When I shot compound 14 years ago,I used the Spitfire mechanical heads. They had a retainer clip to hold the blades in. I shot 2 deer using them without problems. I seen a video in slow motion shooting spitfire through ballistic gel. Blades stayed open while going through the gel. Blades went forward/closed after it came out of gel. I never tried any other mechanical heads. After I went traditional,I shoot cut on impact heads. A guy I know that runs an "island hunt" in PA told me they have a lot better/easier recovery rate with guys using cut on impact heads.

I used the Rage heads with the last three deer I shot with my compound. Excellent results with all three. 2 went down within 40 yards, the other about 60. I agree, trad bows don't have enough energy to make them work.

No way would I use Rage or any other, compound or not. People that guide hunters for a living, hate them. The reason is simple, they see more deer stuck with arrows in a couple of years then most archers kill their entire life, and they know how inferior those heads are. They do have great advertising campaigns however.

My son used them on 2 buck he killed 2 years in a row with his compound and after the 2nd buck said he would never use them again and certainly hasn't. Went back to his 125 grain Thunderheads.

funny how I see totally different results than what my sons experience with them has been.

that tells me something.

As I said I have no personal experience with them. But then I use a stickbow.

I'd say if my son were reading this thread he'd just shake his head and chuckle.

I don't know about the allen heads the OP mentioned. But I know for a fact the NAP mechanicals work just fine out of a modern compound provided the shooter does his part.

As far as these guides?.....maybe they need to look at the shooter rather than the broadhead.

I have no time for mechanicals, but I'm not going to say they don't work....Good grief my son shot like 10 deer in one year with them. I have no idea how many he's gotten since he started using them, but it's a lot.

before anyone has a hissy about the ten deer comment....it was not just in PA.

Junk heads that are unreliable. When I shot a compound this type of head was never on the business end on any of my arrows. Being a mechanic you find anything with moving parts can't be trusted. The less moving parts the better. Stick with a solid coc two blade.

Like I said, Great advertising for those new mechanical heads. Way better fixed blade heads on the market. I have no Dog in this fight, however, just because something "works", that does not mean it is the best or even 10th best broadhead for deer hunting. The broadhead is what kills the game, I personally think we owe it to the animal to use the best we can afford, those mechanical heads are over priced and only marginally effective.

I haven't used that exact head, but I have used some very similar to that in a compound and they worked just fine. With that being said I still prefer the Thunderhead for my compound, and have no desire to try it on the recurves.

-Bones

Sorry, but they look like a pile of junk to me. Shoot them through a sheet of 1" plywood to test penetration then throw out all the pieces of shrapnel you pick up off the lawn. Use a good, solid, time tested broadhead for live critters.

The kinetic energy or momentum of the arrow would have nothing to do with whether or not a mechanical opens. If the arrow penetrates 2" then the head should open IF they work as designed. Most mechanicals use one of two opening methods - either the tips of the blades "catch" and pull the blade around back and open, or the ferrule "drives through" between the blades with a sort of chisel effect. An arrow shot from any bow, compound or trad bow, over about 20 pounds should have enough momentum to drive the arrow in far enough to at least begin to open the blades if the head worked, and that's exactly the problem with mechanicals, they don't always open predictably. I can't think of a time I EVER saw a solid, cut on impact head fail or break on an animal, (many years ago (maybe 1978)I had a blade break off on the old carbon steel blades on a Wasp head) yet out of probably 20 big game animals I've seen shot with mechanicals (friends and clients), I've seen at least 3 fail and on two the animals were never recovered, (two didnt open and were recovered very close to the shot sight with minimal penetration, on one a blade broke off on a rib the way in) that's a 10% loss just because of the broadhead. There's enough that can go wrong in trying to kill an animal with any weapon, it makes me scratch my head in wonder as to why anyone would risk it to a broadhead that fails 10% of the time. I think they would be ok on small animals

The first time I ever saw one of those contraptions I thought, now there is a wounded animal waiting to happen. I've since talked to two compound hunters that said they knew they put good hits on a deer and never found them. I will never know that my thoughts were right, but I'll always figure they were. I'm sure that if they open they do a lot of damage, but I couldn't get past the if part and I would never try one in a stickbow.

My very biased opinion is that a broadhead should not need to be shot from a certain setup or poundage in order to cut and penetrate. It should just work. Swing blades were designed so guys wouldn't have to tune their setup to shoot broadheads. Just get the target points shooting and go hunt.

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