What effects blood trails more, BH selection or shot implementation?

We hear shot location matters.

This season has been a bit discouraging for me. Yesterday morning I pulled down a stand that usually does well for me. This year not so much.

Yesterday afternoon I canoed into a area I always thought should be good, for a number of years now. Though I just never prioritized that location due to the challenge & wind & just quit difficult to access without a watercraft. After setting up the stand I sat for a while & just did not feel well with shooting lanes available from the stand.

So I climbed down & proceeded to trim some shooting lanes & further scout the area. While I was seeing sign the sign was sparse. What the heck, I left the stand & came back this morning. Stand was only 30 ish yards from the place where I departed the canoe. My confidence was low to be honest.

This weekend will be my first rifle hunt for the year in a area I have never hunted b4 so I was starting to get impatient about filling a archery tag. With the wind blowing fairly hard I contemplated hanging it up early with such low confidence. Well I opted to mess around with optimizing the stand by putting the bow hanger In a better spot. I was happy with the change.

Low & behold a small buck was spotted working my way from my left & I decided he would look fine on the plate & in the freezer. With him moving rather quick I drew just before he approached the shooting lane cleared the day prior. As he came into the lane I let out a bleat to stop him. This presented a hard quartering toward me, shot.

Well the arrow is a 650ish grain build with a 200 grain single bevel front. The pin was settled & the arrow was sent. He buckled on impact & then sprinted off the same direction he was headed. At roughly 50 yards he seemed to be getting wobbly legs. So I opted to start tearing down my stand setup.

The bow was let down to the ground the bow hanger was removed & I started to descend with a repel line. The stand was detached from the tree & I decended to remove the top climbing stick. After the stick was removed & thrown down. I see another buck approaching from my right. This is a nicer deer. so I settle in to let him pass, as I am tagged out for this area I am hunting.

Wouldn't you know it. He stops on the trail the deer that was shot. departed on & finds my arrow. He spends a couple minutes sniffing the arrow. Then he proceeds to the freshly cut branches from my trail clearing efforts the day prior. Probably spent 5 minuted investigating / smelling the freshly cut branches.

He is soaked in dirty marsh water from crossing a marshy channeling the area I was hunting. He proceeds to shake of the water like a dog that just finished a bath. Now he is going to leave the scene. No he stops to smell the blood at the point of Impact & this takes another couple minutes b4 he moves on.

No, he is coming back. This time he is bird dogging smelling this way & that. No he is coming to smell my bow. I finally let out a loud obnoxious bleat to scare him off when he was a foot from the bow on the ground.

He runs back the way he came stops & looks back a second then proceeds to cross a marshy channel he crossed to come in to the area from. Loud splashing is heard with each leap made in the water channel. When he gets to the other side he proceeds to snort & blow.

Finally I can get down, & do-so. All the gear is taken back to the canoe, & I proceed to take up the trail of the buck that was just shot. At the point of Impact, displayed a blood trail that looked like a horrific crime scene. Followed the trail to the deer roughly 80 yards away. The blood trail was the strongest blood trail I have seen in my 40ish years of archery hunting.

As it worked out the arrow entered the thoracic cavity opening up front & exited low on the off shoulder. Appears The heart was missed as were the lungs. Though the chest cavity was full of blood. Another fine single bevel experience.

Great story, and to answer your question in the title; shot placement.

A great broad head in the wrong spot is a little less useless than a garbage broad head in the right spot. One is a ****** shot, the other is a deer you can track a long ways and probably, hopefully find. There is no replacement for something pointy through the boiler room whether pointy is an Iron Will or Walmart Special.

In answer to your question, From what over half a century of bowhunting has taught me both are important, however, I have seen perfect hits and no bloodtrail so my personal opinion is broadhead is more important. Hit location is important also,but a good hit without the ability to locate the game is still an empty pot.

Great story. I believe it's a balancing act, but your experience shows that with the right equipment, even a relatively tough quartering to, can be successful. Thanks for sharing.

A razor sharp broadhead goes a long way.It will slice through every artery and blood vessel it touches where a dull one will simply push them to the side. Take a rubber band and stretch it out then push a dull broadhead through it will simply push it away, a razor sharp one will cut it in to as soon as it touches. I used to use this demonstration when teaching hunter education classes. Point being extreme blood loss leads to quick kills which will improve recovery odds on marginal shots.

Frontal shots are devastating. Blood everywhere if hit correctly

I am not a archery hunter, but I would like to compliment you on a good hunt and a great write up.

Allen Lone wolf said:

A razor sharp broadhead goes a long way.It will slice through every artery and blood vessel it touches where a dull one will simply push them to the side. Take a rubber band and stretch it out then push a dull broadhead through it will simply push it away, a razor sharp one will cut it in to as soon as it touches. I used to use this demonstration when teaching hunter education classes. Point being extreme blood loss leads to quick kills which will improve recovery odds on marginal shots.

Click to expand...

Yes, it does. My first archery buck was a perfect quartering away double lung and heart shot. Kicked him up about an hour after I shot him and gave up for the night the second time I kicked him up. Found him the next morning about a mile from impact.

Turns out the new G5 broadheads I was using came from the factory unsharpened. Sorry, Montec, you are automatically disqualified for the rest of my life

So I vote :

#1 BH sharpness
#2 shot placement
#3 BH features and attributes

Should that be "affects" instead of effects".

Shot placement. Then the broadhead.

This advice comes from someone who has killed roughly150+conservatively deer with a bow, Worked in a archery shop and practiced year round plus shot competition 3D. Unless you are a very accomplished archer, not someone who practices three weeks prior to season avoid frontal and hard quartering to shots. To much leeway for bad stuff.
But if you can put a arrow into the pocket between the brisket and shoulder, dead very fast. TV bow hunters have caused to many normal hunters into believing they are Levi Morgan and Lee Lakoski those people practice year round.
Yes, the style and shape of the broad head matters, but not as much as taking out both lungs. A deer hit in one lung and the liver will make you follow it a long way if you bump it out of its bed to soon.
If I killed150 plus, I also lost quite a few figuring out what I was doing wrong.
If you think how can you kill that many with a bow, Alabama has a two deer a day season. At one point you could kill two does and a buck a day all season. Now its a three buck limit, but still a doe per day. kill eight to ten a year for thirty years. It adds up.

I vote shot placement. I think any sharp BH will work as long as you hit both lungs, so it mostly needs to fly well with your setup. Since switching to recurve I've tried Iron Will, Magnus, VPA, RMS Cutthroats, and several more. I liked some better than others mostly for the materials, and second for design. I can sharpen some better than others because of the steel, but like the design of a few that I cannot get as sharp (Ive made knives for about 30 years fwiw). Last year I started making my own with 8670 steel and using a titanium body..it's a combination of my favorite design features, but with a steel I can control the heat treatment of to be both sharp and tough. The titanium body is prob overkill but the weight comes out at 150g and they look cool. Deer die the same with them as any others I've used, but it's very difficult to make the all the same with my manual lathe and mill...I wouldn't use them with my compound unless I really upped my consistency.

I like what you said about the broad head and shot placement. People forget that Fred Bear killed everything on the planet with a bear razor head sharpened with a mill bastard file.

Will qualify this a bit, suppose my goal here is to generate a discussion. Accepting that great blood trails do not necessarily need to be the normal occurrence. Though once in a while we can experience commercial worthy blood trails. My goal here was to generate discussion. I do not feel anyone of us should be criticizing any BH company for not selling us a less than sharp BH. IMHO we own the cutting edge & it is our responsibility to sharpen the BH or at least verify the sharpness, prior to using said BH to take a game animal.

Previous deer I have taken with the single bevel BH resulted in ho-hum blood trails at best. Though the tracking job was very short. Couple of previous deer taken with the single bevels traveled less distance b4 expiring as I watched them expire within 50 yards of impact.

I had taken practice shots with the BH used in the above example shooting into the dirt b4 leaving the stand on prior sits. B4 taking that BH out hunting again The BH was brought back to better than factory edge where paper slicing is effortless. That edge is only achieved with a final stropping process that allows that degree of sharpness. The soil in the area those practice shots were taken, is more conducive to minimal BH deterioration. I do not take such practice shots just anywhere. Though I do accept that I run the risk of destroying a head or entire arrow taking such practice shots.

I have taken a few deer from that stand I took the practice shots & found the arrow buried in the soil quite deep after passing through the deer. Surprising How little the edge was broken down when penetrating the soil.

Some steel that is utilized for making some BH's offered should never be used for a cutting edge. As some steel just is incapable of achieving the degree of sharpness we are seeking. Or the steel will not be tough enough to retain that sharpness in the path to & through the vitals.

I am not a expert shooter by any means. Though the frontal shot taken was taken at roughly 8 yards. I tend to do very well at these distances & deer reaction time is less of a factor IMHO. I am reluctant to take a frontal shot & the choice to shoot or pass is situational. More often than not I would pass on this shot.