Mech Head Failed To Open This a.m.

[LampLighter]

My buddy up in Indiana shot a gobbler this morning. He is still following blood. Got the arrow. Said mech head failed to open. Asked him what brand. He didn't say specifically, but said it was supposed to be a good one. :confused:

[Waidmann]

I had a buddy hit a doe on the shoulder blade last fall. He's pulling 70 lbs, so he broke through the blade itself and went 3/4 of the way through. The doe dropped on the spot, and he could see the last 5 inches of the arrow sticking up from the shoulder. A minute or so later, she got up and ran away. We followed her trail for a couple hundred yards, then lost the trail.

I'm fairly confident he had a mechanical broadhead failure on this one. If he's right about where he hit her, I don't see how it would be possible for her to have run off that way.

I've never used mech broadheads, and I'm not thinking I ever will. Too many moving parts to fail.

Waidmann

[ncboman]

What's the #1 reason mechs are used?

ncboman

[Waidmann]

ncboman,

I'd say there are two main reasons.

1. They're supposed to fly the same as your field tips, so you only have to sight in once.
2. They don't slow down your arrow as much as a broadhead.

I don't use them, so I'm really guessing here.

Waidmann

[ncboman]

1. They're supposed to fly the same as your field tips

You win the prize. :D

imho, mechs are often a crutch for those that can't or won't tune their bow correctly.

ncboman

[LampLighter]

You win the prize.

imho, mechs are often a crutch for those that can't or won't tune their bow correctly.

ncboman



I agree 101% with the above. I would never use them, BUT they are supposed to be a top choice for TURKEY. I have no exp. w/that, so I not qualif. to comment.


Mechs came popular back when 3d summertime shoots were popular. Come October, the 3d guys had modified their bows so much with overdraws, too light arrows, etc. and now they wanted to go hunting. Loe and behold they had boo koo problems, and the mech was supposed to be a band aid.

[StringJumper]

I have the opportunity to work quite a bit with our engineers on failure and repairs. One truth stands out in my research - you build enough of something mechcanical or electronic and some of them are going to fail. Period. Nothing is infallible. Any engineer will tell you that a certain percentage of anything mechanical made by humans will fail. He will also tell you that as a general rule that the greater the number of parts, especially moving parts, the greater the percentage of failures. In our electronics we see a direct correlation between failure rates and the reduction of components on the motherboard....as we reduce the number of parts the product failure rate falls with it. This is electronics of course but the same principle applies when discussing anything mechanical.

I have heard countless stories of mechanical broadhead failure. All anectdotal of course. But it's rare, very rare, that I hear of a deer escaping because of a fixed blade failure.

You do the math.

[dave-t.]

I'd bet that the mech didn't fail to open. Turkeys take a lot of punishment.

It's not that I don't know about mech failures, I just think it's a catch-all for anything and everything that goes wrong, from poor shooting and bad hits, to just making wild guesses about what could/should have been.

I quit shooting turkeys with bows because I shot two as good as I could, within 20yds, and never recovered either one.

[Twanger]

I do believe there's a lot of blame put on Mech heads because hunters are just too proud to blame themselves for a poor shot.

Kinda like Rosie O'Donnell blaming a fork for making her fat. :p

I've killed enough deer with both kinds of heads to know that they both can work just fine.

[LampLighter]

I've killed enough deer

he was hunting turkey.


I know the guy. He found the arrow and he said only one of the blades were open. He followed up Sunday morning with a shotgun and he did finish him off.

Funny, he is from New Orl. All his guns got ruined in Katrina. House went under for a week. He bought 1 new rifle, which he used to kill a monster trophy buck on public land. He bought one Glock 40 Cal. to stay alive in New Orleans. So he said he didn't have a shotgun so he went with his bow. Now that he is in Indiana, he is going to trade the Glock for a shotgun.

[GF.]

My old college shroomie never became an engineer, but he did always think like one (which is probably why he got to design the interior of the BMW 6-series :cool: )

Him say: No moving parts is Good moving parts.

JMO, the only way a head can 'fail' is

1) if you're not tuned, it can plane off target (and whose fault is that?)
2) it can be too dull to do the job properly (and whose fault is that?)
3) it can break - but the more pieces parts there are, the greater the risk of that, so we're back to parts pieces and if you can't count, then whose fault is that?


Seems to me that the more conventional the design, the less likely it is that something can or will go wrong. You get into these radically-designed mechanicals that are supposed to cut such wide wound channels, and you're going to be putting some pretty ridiculous forces on blades which (perforce) are relatively loosely attached to begin with.

The firearms equivalent is using something akin to a varmint bullet on big game. It might work great when it works. It might work 9 times out of 10. But if it screws the pooch for you 1 outta 10 when the conventional blade or bullet might (conceivably) 'fail' 1/100, then I just don't see any damn justification for it.

MHO, it borders on unethical...

[dave-t.]

Without even knowing the brand name I would bet that if the head goes in the game, it opens. The way you find it on the ground, is not indicative of what happened while it was in action, it's just the way that is was found laying at rest.

[Twanger]

Without even knowing the brand name I would bet that if the head goes in the game, it opens. The way you find it on the ground, is not indicative of what happened while it was in action, it's just the way that is was found laying at rest.

Dave - yes, I was going to say that. Most mech heads that I pull out of deer or out of the ground (usually) have the blades folded closed. Failure? Nope. There's usually a nice 3-blade hole coming out of the deer, or in the ground if you look close enough. The blades on most of these heads fold back up when you pull them out. I can't imagine how you would ever know if the blade did or didn't deploy unless you recover the animal and actually had a pass-through.

[Hink]

Yup, there's a certain amout of force when the head exits and again when it stops. For those that don't believe then put a bowling ball loose in the back of your pickup. :)

You guys make it sound like a mechanical head is one of the most technologically advanced pieces of equipment ever designed and because it does have quadruple failsafes to guarantee it works then its not going on the space shuttle and its sure as heck not going in your quiver.

They work kinda like this. A rubber band (like you hooked to your braces to pull your teeth together when you were a teen) holds the blade in tight to the shaft. A portion of the blade sticks up and when it hits a target the force of the hit makes the blade open and fully deploy. The only time I've ever seen one not work is when you cut air with one or two blades i.e. on a high backbone hit. The one or two blades that did deploy severed the backstrap imobilizing the deer. Failure? Nope, bad hit on a bigtime duck by the deer. Result, dead deer after follow up. Any different result with a fixed head? None that I can think of. The other type of mechanical has the cam or little bump that hold just enough to keep the blade deploying when it hits and not until. They certainly aren't some complicated piece of engineering.

Failures are excuses for hitting air or hitting deer where they don't bleed and they run off and die or run off an live. There's always excuses but go ahead and pile on the bandwagon. The mechs to work as designed though.

Edit to fix poor wording on heads with cam.

[GF.]

It's not that they're so damn 'advanced', it's just that they bring with them some avoidable points of potential failure - so why mess with a design that has been working for at least twice as long as some folks would tell you that the universe has existed?

Personally, I'd be more concerned about losing a blade than a failure to open, because I believe I saw some high-speed video of a mechanical that opened up just fine on a water balloon--if they're all designed to open up that easily, it shouldn't even be possible for one to fail in that regard... or so I'd think...


But again, me bein' a suspenders-and-a-belt kinda guy on projectiles, I just can't fathom how any kind of pivot point could be as solid as a big, solid piece o' metal.

So looking at it in terms of what I can control...

I can control how well-tuned my bow is.
I can control how sharp my blades are.
I can control my shot placement and the range so as to minimize the chances of hitting a whole lotta air or nothin' but hair.

So when I take my shot, I do it knowing that there is just no damn way that animal is going to go very far after the hit. That's what my brother did on his Elk last year - he made a good shot with a good blade, and got good blood sign all over the arrow when he picked it up. He watched the animal start to act like she was going down, and then watched her wander off with the herd. Damnedest thing was, he was never able to track her down :confused: But, knowing that he had made what had to have been a killing shot, he stuck with the recovery job for a couple of days, passing up a gimme shot at a 5-point bull in the process.

A guy shooting a mechanical might have been making excuses for himself; might have convinced himself that the head had failed and that he ought to just go right back to hunting.

JMO, there's no sense in using anything that isn't as nearly bomb-proof as we can make it, and mechanicals just don't pass the sniff test for me.

Plus, there's the matter of punching the animal in the ribs vs. making a really slick, potentially painless entry. Had my brother used a design that's not as razor-sharp on the entry, that cow might have run off and made it that much harder for him to trail....

When I hear about a deer taking a hit and just standing there 'til it drops, I don't hear about it happening with a mechanical...

Now, just to throw a fly into the ointment :D

I suppose it's possible that getting punched in the ribs would have gotten that cow's blood pressure up, which might have gotten her to sprint 50 or 100 yards and pile up, having left tracks that would have been easier to distinguish from those of the herd that wandered through so casually.

'Cuz you never know, ultimately. I just like to deprive Murphy's Law of as many opportunities to get to me as possible...

[Twanger]

GF - there are down-sides to fixed-blade heads too.

They are more affected by cross-winds than a mechanical, and I truly believe that they are less tolerant of flaws in shooting form. I seem to have more flaws in shooting form when shooting at a live deer from waaaaay up in a tree, than at 20 yards in the back-yard on a sunny day shooting at the block. :o

[ncboman]

GF - there are down-sides to fixed-blade heads too.

They are more affected by cross-winds than a mechanical, and I truly believe that they are less tolerant of flaws in shooting form. I seem to have more flaws in shooting form when shooting at a live deer from waaaaay up in a tree, than at 20 yards in the back-yard on a sunny day shooting at the block. :o


I'd guess the 'shooting form flaws' are more related to comfort (or discomfort) than bh design.

ncboman

[dave-t.]

GF- going by that logic skids are more reliable than wheels/tires since there are no moving parts. :rolleyes:

Trains are the safest mode of transportation, but they still derail from time to time.

Nothing is 100% bullet proof, but if a hunter has faith in a piece of equipment, then that is what he should use.

There was one popular mech head that my father inlaw had a failure with, that I honestly believe was a flat out mech failure. I had tried that head, used it successfully, but decided to go with a better design and never used it again.

Oddly enough, the best trophy hunter I know swears by that same head and has had nothing but excellent luck with them. I don't think he would use another head if you gave it to him for free. He also hasn't used a fixed head in about a decade +/-.

[ncboman]

I've seen deer killed with expandables that had far bigger wounds than my tunderheads generally make.

One thing I consider is the cost. I generally lose a few heads each year and the price of broadheads these days is considerable. I can look at my arrow and easily see a twenty dollar bill to replace. :o

:rolleyes: ... and what about squirrels and other smaller animals? They make good mounts on occasion but taking a trophy squirrel to the taxidermist in two pieces ain't good. :eek:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Ohio%20bucks%202006/2006Ohiohuntcamp004reh.jpg

trophy squirrel via Twanger (aka, Big Balls)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Ohio%20bucks%202006/2006Ohiohuntcamp005reh.jpg

:rolleyes:

ncboman

[dave-t.]

Well for a mount you just put the ugly side to the wall.


Also, NEVER mess with a squirrels nuts!:eek:

[Twanger]

Well for a mount you just put the ugly side to the wall.


Also, NEVER mess with a squirrels nuts!:eek:


Just imagine if we had a package that big in proportion to our body size!
Women would be running in terror. :D

That pic always get a smile outta me Bowman. I was quite proud of drilling that sucker. :D :D

If you shoot them through the ear you only have one hole to patch. Worked on this fox. (lucky shot)

http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/2008_fox_b.jpg

[GF.]

I got news for ya, Walt... That's no fox- it's a long-haired chihuahua!


Well for a mount you just put the ugly side to the wall.


Sounds like advice given to a guy leaving the bar well after midnight :eek:

[StringJumper]

I am not a mechanical fan (in case you had not already deduced that nugget ;) ) but I will certainly agree with the deadliness of mechanicals. Every deer I have seen shot with a mechanical head look like they came in second place in a knife fight. Man, what an entry and exit wound as compared to a fixed head. :eek:

[GF.]

Personally, I don't think I'd care for he amount of hide damage you just described... I always send mine out for tanning....

I'm sure that when the mechs work as designed, they're pretty impressive, but do they really put the animal down any quicker than a more traditional head?

Are the blood trails that much easier to follow?

Don't you sacrifice penetration in exchange for cutting diameter?

And isn't that a bigger issue for a light, fast arrow than a slow, heavy one?

And won't that come to bite you the worst in those cases where you really need that penetration the most, such as a heavy bone or heavy meat hit?

I'm sure they work fine most of the time, but I always have to fight down the sense that these heads appeal most to the guys least willing to simply tune their bows properly in the first place, or maybe the guys most willing to swalow the advertising hype without thinking through the limitations that these naturally impose...'cuz you cain't fight fizziks! Either way, I'm always concerned that, like those Ballisti-bomb bullets that Herne and I love so much ( :rolleyes: ), they are more of a specialty tool that tends to be embraced most enthusiastically by those least qualified to use it in the first place. :(

[dave-t.]

Bows are putting out enough energy now that penetration is almost a non-issue. Unless you hit heavy bone, you're going to get enough penetration, and even with a c-o-c head, if you hit big bone, you won't get it.

The biggest advantage I see for c-o-c heads, is that a percentage of the deer won't know that they've been hit. It won't be a big percentage, but when it happens, it makes tracking a non-issue. They just mill around, bleeding, and flop over.

With mech's it's big cuts (possibly), good flight, ease of use, but possible problems with very steep angled shot with certian heads.

You can worry about durability, but my favorite mech, Rocket Steelhead 3 blade 1 1/8" cut, is known for deep penetration, and has been used to take hippo in Africa. That is enough of a durablility/penetration test for a deer head, imo.

The mechs I have used, all but the NAP Spitfire, have been as good to me as fixed blade heads. The c-o-c's do zip through a deer and it seems like the arrow never slows down. I can think of only one shot where you'd need all of that penetration though, and that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

[Twanger]

GF - I actually have a love/hate relationship with ALL broadheads.

You gotta have 'em, but every head is a compromise of sorts. Just because a head has fixed blades does not mean it's perfect. I want a head that I can use over and over again since I shoot a lot of deer.

I've killed a number of deer (100+) with a number of different broadheads (10 or so) including big diameter mechanicals (Wasp Jakhammer), small diameter mechanicals (Rocket Steelhead), a cut-on-contact two-blade head (Steel-force), 4-blade Slick Tricks, and several 3-blade fixed heads including Thunderheads, Muzzy's, Crimson Talon and Shuttle T-locks.

Two-blade COC heads tend to wind-plane and are hard to tune at best, particularly at speeds above 250fps. I had to throw away about 30% of the COC heads I was trying out, right out of the box, and forget about using them more than once if they hit rocky ground with any force. I will not risk a poor shot on a doe, much less a rare shot on a trophy buck to a suspect head.

Fixed-blade heads have a variety of blade-retention mechanisms. Some are good and some are not. Some hold the blade in by just the very tip using a screw-down mechanism and this is not generally robust. Blades can come out. The Shuttle-T-lock has a T-in-groove retention system that it very tough. Not all ferrules are made equally. Some are easy to bend, and if you carry enough energy you will shoot through the deer and can still bend a ferrule or tip on rock. Again, the shuttle T-lock has a very bomb-proof stainless-steel ferrule and I seldom bend one. I've broken slick-trick ferrules - the fact that they are cut completely through on two axes leaves little remaining metal. The triangular cut-out in a slick-trick blade (and many other blades) means that generally you're very lucky to be able to sharpen them again. The edge of at least one blade often gets bent out of a straight line after it passes through a deer and hits rocky soil. I will not trust any blade that's bent in any way after passing through a deer. If the edge is dulled (usually) I will sharpen them. Frankly, it's just about as easy to replace the blades every time, so I don't get a big practical advantage out of COC or fixed-blade heads over mechanicals. Blade re-use is generally similar in all cases.

The Wasp Jakhammer cuts a BIG hole. The robust O-ring makes the blades a little harder to open than the Steelhead (both a good and bad thing), but IMHO the WJH is too big and slows the arrow down too quickly, and I don't always get pass-through. I want pass-through EVERY TIME. The Rocket Steel head has modest cutting diameter and a very streamlined and sharp tip. It penetrates like the smallest best 3-blade & COC heads and I don't think I've failed to get pass-through in the last 20 deer or so. The Rocket SH will fly like a wild-weasel if you let the rubber-band get rolled down prior to launch. My foam-filled quiver has a tendency to roll the band down, and I have to be vigilant least I forget to check... usually I come to grief only if taking a second shot on a deer, or on a second deer and forget to check in the heat of battle.

Excluding spine-hits, I have only ever had one deer not run like the wind when struck, and that was a small doe hit with a big (Wasp Jakhammer) mechanical. Go figure. :confused: I've only killed 4 deer with a cut-on-contact head so it's not a big sample size - maybe that 100% full tilt run percentage would have been different if the total number killed was bigger. Many 3-blade heads have very sharp points and angled tips that cut through pretty danged well. Slick-trick tips are extremely narrow and sharp, and Shuttle T-lock heads are pretty decent too. All the deer I've shot with these have run. IMHO, using a COC head because you think that most of the time a deer won't run when hit is playing the wrong side of the odds. If you break a rib the deer will run. Who can shoot between ribs (going in, and going out) on-demand? Not me.

Interesting, some years ago I shot a small doe with a pistol (410gr conical bullet) and had the bullet slip between two ribs going in, and two ribs going out. Very lucky. That deer didn't know it had been shot and continued to walk for 30 seconds until it tipped over.

[ncboman]

good post Walt.

Durability is a big plus for me too. I used Rocky Mountain Razors for a good while and sometimes the ferrule bent when it hit rough ground after the passthru. Deer would bend em too if the nockend of the arrow was still inside when they took off.

Thunderheads seem to be better.

I've wondered about the similar looking but cheaper heads Cabelas offers but haven't tried them. ... yet.

and I've shot some slicktricks but haven't been impressed with the durability at all.

ncboman

[GF.]

Lotta good info there...

I should point out real quick that I have no expectation of consistently plunking a COC through a deer without it running off. Sure, it can happen....and so can winning the lottery :D

But maybe I'm crazy... I just don't honestly expect a broadhead to survive a head-on with a rock. So of greater concern (to me) would be simply what happens when you hit a heavy bone.

Obviously, it's asking a lot of an arrow to simply shear right through the bone-- though Pope & Young reported that happening when they struck the humerus on a Griz they were collecting for the museum... Triple-digit draw weights and 4-digit arrow weights being a whole different animal than 1/3 the arrow mass at probably twice(+) the feeps...

But I wouldn't expect anything we're talking about here to blow through a leg bone on a squared-up hit, so what happens on a glancing blow to the bone? That's where the longer, slimmer heads oughtta do the best, no? Both in terms of the head surviving and the animal not....?

[dave-t.]

I would bet that if you glanced a b-head off of a big bone, you'll roll the edge or dull it enough that you won't get the clean cut on flesh that you're looking for. It'll also eat up a lot of your straight line momentum/energy. The front of the arrow doesn't move independently from the back. If the tip of the arrow is pushed off bone and makes a left, the nock end will make a right, and your straight line momentum/penetration goes to pot.

[ncboman]

usually the blade breaks.

Still can kill the deer though. I've picked up a number of arrows with two blades left after a kill.

ncboman

[GF.]

That'll keep you careful while you gut it!

That's what I was talking about, Dave - as the angle of the blade (relative to the axis of the shaft) approaches 90 degrees, the tendency of the impact to stop the head increases - not just cause of angle of incidence = angle of deflection, but as you said, because all of a sudden your shaft is out of alignment with its flight path and you're scrubbing the shaft against the inside of the critter, and scrubbing off speed all the while...

And of course, the closer the blade angle gets to 90, the more damage you'd expect to your head/blade, so the lower the angle and the narrower the head overall, the better, as regards penetration...

Unless I'm wrong, of course....:o

I was just thinking it through, and wouldn't a 45 degree blade be less likely to stick straight into the bone on an off-center hit? So what's best for penetration in a fairly uniform medium might not do so well on a glancing blow?

Not that it really matters, but it'll be something to think about on the ride home, at least...:D

[Hink]

Lotta good info there...

But maybe I'm crazy... I just don't honestly expect a broadhead to survive a head-on with a rock. So of greater concern (to me) would be simply what happens when you hit a heavy bone.


I haven't connected with any shoulders while using mechs. I have with fixed heads in the past. The blades broke or gnarled and you usually got less than idea penetration. You tracked til you recovered the animal or until there was nothing and then you did an ever widening grid. Would the mech do any different. I doubt it, a bad hit is a bad hit and the making of a long day or a next morning find, hopefully. I honestly don't see one hanging up in the shoulder but I can't see them penetrating both either.

Now, here's the one advantage a fixed head has to have. When you've screwed up and made a bad hit instead of having an egg beater in the chest cavity with possibly 1,2 or 3 intact razor blades on the beater you are going to have a beater with 1, 2 or 3 razor blades that are flopping around that may or may not sever anything or do any collateral damage. That might be reason enough, might not.

[ncboman]

The master Indian flintknappers favored 3 to 1 length to width ratio on their best points and a width to thickness ratio of 8 to 1 or thinner.

This was not without reason. ;)

on the shoulders ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Ohio%2007/12807Ohio030r.jpg

some deer are bigger and tuffer than others.

It pays to keep that in mind when a big one shows up.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Forum%20pics/Ourdeer---experimental014r.jpg

ncboman

[GF.]

Yup, that's the traditional 'ideal' all right, though I honestly didn't realize that it went all the way back to flint...

The Dunderheads ( ;) ) aren't 3:1, but they're pretty much 'old school' in most respects, and they seem to fly pretty OK for you, NC... (any idea what your speed is?)

Apart from using Judo points on a bunch o' littlecritters, they're actually the only head I've ever killed anything with--the 125 'magnum' model went all the way through the ribs of a 1.5 YO buck mulie (riding a 525 grain alumalog at about 180 fps) and the 'regular' T-125 came up about an inch and a half short of going through the meaty portions of both shoulders on that whitetail, which was probably a bit larger.... it had just one 13" spike, so possibly 2.5 yrs... The head was lodged against bone, but not stuck into it... That experience was why I switched to COCs, but of course, now I really don't anticipate any penetration issues on deer :p

Funny thing, though...

You remember the old Bear razorheads... Those are COC, but with the pointy end flattened to be shaped more like a chisel. I'm thinking that might help the head glance off of heavy bone, where a tapered-to-a-needle, 3:1 head might be a touch more likely to dig straight in... but I think the blade would have to be oriented pretty near perpendicular to the long axis of the bone for that to matter...much, anyway... I seem to recall reading somewhere where a guy did that with all of his COCs just to toughen them up a bit, so the tips didn't get rolled over every time they hit any bone at all....

Another odd thought, courtesy of Mr. Pope... In his book, he mentioned (IIRC) that field points penetrated better into wood planks than broadheads out of the same bow. His reasoning, I believe was that the field points had to blast a hole through the wood, leaving an arrow-sized tunnel for the shaft to pass through, whereas BHs push the wood aside, and that wood grips the shaft. Don't know how that would play out in bone....

[GF.]

NC - what the heck are we seeing in that picture of the dried-out old carcass? Is that an arrow that was in the animal when it died? It looks clean enough to be one right out of your quiver that you laid across the bones for some reason....

Just not sure what I'm lookin' at!

[ncboman]

The rotting carcass was a huge Ohio buck I found. I doan know the story but the head was gone.

I pulled that shoulder plate up and layed an arrow across it for size reference in the pic. Even the ribs on that ol boy are sizable.

I brought one of those shoulder plates back here and put it on top of the back building to finish 'ageing'. One day I'll take some pics of it beside one from around here.

ncboman

[LampLighter]

But I think the post was about Turkey. My friend up in Indiana did go back with a shotgun and did get that bird the next day. His first turkey. He told me the story too. It was a broad side shot- not the best for turkey. You want to catch him with his back to you. And he was my best confidential informant back in the warden days. He put me on alot of good poaching deer cases. He was the land manager for a 3000 acre tract that had plenty of deer. He knew people were sneaking in on his land by finding one strand of deer hair on a bridge. He cleaned the bridge every evening, and checked it the next morning to find out which night deer hair appeared. It was a Friday night. He called me one Friday night and said they were there. I was in a flannel shirt and blue jeans, and had an unmarked truck. I was blue lighting it down I-10 and eventually had 5 city cops on my tail. They thought I was the blue light bandit. ( we had some clown using a blue light in the city). So, we set up at the bridge, and by a little after midnight, I heard the chain link fence rattle by the bridge. A black guy came by first and a white guy behind him. The black guy was carrying a 30-30, and a buck over his shoulders. The white guy was dragging two does on a rope. He had the spotlight. I knew the black guy would run, so I posted another agent near the road. Sure enough we jumped them, the black guy took off right into my partner. They took a ride ;) . Turns out they were selling the deer meat in the neighborhood to get crack money. The judge, a black judge we called "the hanging judge" sentenced them to include $2000 toward food plot money for my friend, who is now in Indiana.

So, when my friend says he shot the turkey, recovered the arrow, and observed that only one blade of the mech head had opened, then there is NO question. That is what happened.