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sharpster wrote: Many of us hunt from treestands and it’s a heck of a lot harder to even get an exit hole when shooting through a deer from the top down, and achieving a complete pass through is nearly impossible.
Ron
Hello, Ron. While I agree with much of what you posted, the above quote is the exception. I haven’t been bowhunting as long as some here (only about 25 years), but I’ve never had any problems getting complete pass throughs on Midwestern whitetails shot from treestands. For decades, my paternal grandfather had no problems doing the same out of treestands with a 42# recurve shooting 400-something-grain arrows and 3-blade heads COI heads. To be honest, none of my regular hunting partners have experienced penetration issues either. If we were to compare penetration, we’d have to do so in inches of dirt, not inches of tissue.
Unless someone’s shooting extremely low poundage, if they are having penetration problems with whitetails, I’d be inclined to believe something other than number of bevels on their broadheads is to blame. After all, Ashby states that, with respect to penetration, proper bow tuning on ranks second only to the arrow’s structural integrity—the number of bevels ranks 9th out of 10.
That being said, I switched to 2-blade heads (Ace Standards to be exact) from 3- and 4-blade models back in 2004 in anticipation for an elk hunt. I liked the heads and the gentleman who makes them so much that I’ve shot them ever since. Five hunting seasons and a couple dozen big game animals later (deer, wild boar, elk and moose) I have yet to see any meaningful difference between the amount of blood an animal leaves on the ground and how many blades I shoot through them. Sharp edges and proper shot placement seem to play a bigger role in that regard than does broadhead size. But then again, the same could be said for penetration as well.