His studies are on arrow lethality. Arrow lethality is much more complex than simple penetration, but penetration is obviously a major component of it.

Dr Ashby has done in-depth, detailed, long term arrow lethality studies over a number of years, on the toughest game animals in the world, first in Africa and recently in Australia. He has documented, compared and analyzed actual performance of a wide variety of broadheads and arrow shafts on flesh and bone in field situations.

That's why I give his conclusions a substantially higher score on the credibility scale than I'd give some redneck doing 'penetration tests' on a sunny afternoon in the back yard with a block of foam, tape measure and a cooler of beer. Or the same 'tests' from magazine writers who are trying to appease their advertisers.

I don't put much store in stories from hunters who've probably been into that beer cooler before swapping lies around the campfire either. Hunters lie every bit as much as fishermen, if you hadn't noticed.

I've played this game before. Here's how it goes:

Nimrod shoots a critter with an aluminum arrow and it doesn't get passthrough, probably because they hit a heavy bone. They love to leave that 'bone' part out of the story, because it doesn't make their shooting skills look so good. So they switch to a light, skinny, super spiffy carbon arrow - most often with a hot new high performance bow as well - shoot another critter, miss the heavy bone, and the arrow blows through. Now they say nothing penetrates better than carbon. No matter that the new bow is putting out oodles and gobs more KE. No matter they didn't hit heavy bone. All they report is a passthrough. What BS!

Their heavy, thick old aluminum arrow from their old bow would have done exactly the same with exactly the same shot. Anecdotal evidence like that is practically worthless. If I heard the same story often enough - and I have, so spare me the repeat performance - it qualifies as enough to get me to try it myself. It's not something I'd just believe out of hand though.

Show me the charts and graphs. Show me the raw data of measurements taken from the hundreds of shots that generated those charts and graphs. The data doesn't lie. And Ashby doesn't have any advertisers to keep happy, so there isn't a pre determined bias built into the studies. A few more points in Ashby's favor on the credibility gap.

Anyway, that's who Ashby is. And it's why I give him more credit for being right than anyone YOU can come up with.