Krisken,

I shoot a longbow. Believe me friend I am not concerned with speed, albeit the longbow I have now is probably the quickest traditional bow I have owned to date and it is 4# lighter in draw weight than one recurve I owned, and which are supposed to be faster than longbows.

Two years ago I killed a buck which I hit a bit high and a bit back of point of aim. I thought the buck had stopped, and apparently he was continuing to walk up the power line I was sitting on.

The arrow hit him in the onside legbone, shattered it, went through the bottom half of the spinal column and lodged in the offside legbone. The impact, and the shock of his spinal column being hit I' m sure, knocked the buck off of his feet. He got up and headed back across the power line. He fell down three times before he got to the other side. Each time he got back up and continued on.

I didn' t see it because I was hunting from ground level, but my son was 35 ft up a tree about 50 yards behind me, and he saw the buck fall as it dropped down off the level of the power line to the forest floor on the other side. The deer never got back up after that, even though it did take another finishing shot an hour or so later when we gave him time to lay and calm down before we checked out the blood trail, which was massive, and trailed him to the end of it.

And what' s my point? Glad you asked! The point is my slow traditiona bow with a heavy wood arrow penetrated through two heavy bones and lodged in a third. The razor sharp SteelForce broadhead caused significant damage and did so without high speed to help it.

Insofar as the post above, the key element to which I would draw your attention is Dr. Ashby' s conclusion/postulation that Kinetic Energy has no correlation to penetration on a live animal. It is momentum that is the key measure that his tests have revealed to be the element to be directly relatable to penetration on live animals.

To be sure, there are lots of factors that come into play. A sharp/dull broadhead will have a significant influence, too. There are many a traditional hunter that routinely get complete passthroughs with their " slow" , i.e., sub 200 ft/sec, bows and heavy arrows. The real question is how far do you want to bury the arrow in the ground after it has passed through the animal?

A shooter wants to see how far away he can shoot an animal with his high speed equipment. A hunter wants to see how close he can get an animal so he can get a quick, clean and humane kill no matter what the speed is of his equipment.

Bil