00:00:13 Speaker 1: Welcome back to gear Talk everyone. Jordan here and I've got Iannis with me up. Dude, what's new? What is new? It's not new. It's the same old, same old, which is a lot of snow here in Montana. Just when we thought we had a lot of snow, we got two plus feet on top of it. And now people are talking like this is the most snow they've ever seen in places, which I don't know. I'm not quite believing it because if you go buy snow turtles at the local ski resort up at Bridger, it's like two hundred and thirty inches, and I think that closer to three hundred inches is when it gets like when people are like, oh, that's a big snow year. So I have a feeling it's a result of having multiple poor winters, low snow packs, and then we come to a normal one and everybody's like, oh my god, a lot of snow and it's cold. Even Steve Ronnello is telling me yesterday these like it's so there's so much snow that my snowmobiles are snowed in. I can't even get him out. But yeah, I hunted lions the not yesterday, but the two days prior to that, which, again, when I say hunting lions, it means I'm out hiking, snowmobiling, driving a truck looking for lion tracks. Most time it has nothing to do with the lions themselves physically. But I hunted with Jason Red, who owns Timber Ninja Outdoors makes climbing sticks, saddles, really cool, high end stuff for the white sailed world. He came out because he had never been in Montana, had never done the mountain hound hunting thing, so I said, yeah, come on out and I'll take on some hikes. The snow was so deep the first morning. I got a sled out to go just do a couple mile, a check up and down a drainage, and I could ride the road when it was flat, and as soon as the trail. I when it went from like a four service road to a trail and there was a little bit of pitch, my poor little ski doo tundra just bogged down and I couldn't go. Luckily, it had just enough where I could reverse, make it forward, reverse make it forward, and eventually was able to spin a donut, get turned around and get back on my track and make it out of there. But it's literally too deep for my own snowmobile to go. So then we took to hiking. We hiked eight miles ish each day. Even in snowshoes. We were knee deep. If you took your snow if you put your ski hiking pole just down in the snowpack a lot of places you could put hold the end of the ski pole for my hike and push it, push your hand all the way down in and your hand would just disappear in the snow, like walking walking a trail that was packed out. The trail is like like the edge of the upper snow is at Mingus' is the top of his head, and he's a tall dog. He can put his head on your kitchen, his chin on your kitchen counter. It gives you an idea of how deep the snow is around here. So anyway, it's still lion hunting, still looking, but uh yeah, it's uh it is what it is. It's snowy soon here though springtime temperatures. The snow is gonna settle and it'll become travelable where you can hike on top of it. And not only well, I build a hike on top it, but hopefully the lions will too, which will make him move and then I'll cut a track. So I'm gonna try again this weekend one day and ross gross my fingers. Yeah, what about you? Yeah we uh, I thought the spring was here and it snowed about five inches last night. It was sixty degrees yesterday and it was like hot, you know, and yeah, woke up this morning. We've we've got our first turkey clients in and and uh. I took them out this morning as it was basically Christmas, and they're like, this is gonna be an interesting morning of turkey hunting, and I said, yep, it is. I would I would recommend heaters for the blinds, but they didn't end up going that route, so we'll see. We'll see how the uh, we'll see how that goes this morning. So you've got hunters out right now as you're recording this podcast. He dropped them off this morning and they're sitting blinds over some uh decoys, I guess uh yeah, yep. I think they brought their own decoys in their super experience, so um, I could just kind of you know, scout out the birds beforehand in and set up some blinds as good starting points. And then they said that they brought all their own decoys and they're like, if it stops snowing, we'll probably put some decoys out. But if it doesn't, they're in a good enough spot that they might have some turkeys just stroll through. But it's it's been interesting. I haven't I haven't really heard turkeys, Like there were some hens talking last night. I haven't really heard much for Goblin yet, and nor have I seen any strutters yet, So I don't know. It's it's like a little it's a goofy year. But we have five inches of snow right now. It's supposed to be sixty degrees tomorrow, so average spring, nice, nice muddy mess. Yeah. Yeah, I've killed several birds in one to six inches of snow in Nebraska. It's not snow in Nebraska is not only reserved for late March, you can easily get that well into April as well. But yeah, yeah, it is what it is. Yeah, all right. One other thing I want to mention because I feel like I've been reading it in the comments a little bit, people commenting on Instagram when I was telling them to go listen to our last episode about Knife Sharpening, which is a great informative episode. I got a lot of positive feedback on that too, that a lot of people learned things that they didn't know. And maybe it's, uh, I'm at a loss for words. It's gotten excited to try sharpening their own knives. I'm one of them after that podcast. And then I got like the field sharpener and I took a couple of knives, and man, once you start doing it and like get into it, it's I don't want to say it's fun, but it's like pretty rewarding doing your own stuff, which I have always just avoided in the past. Yeah, it forces you to slow down. It's kind of a kind of a meditation therapeutic session, just slow down sharpening a knife. But yeah, once you get the skill, you really feel proud of yourself and it's like, all right, yeah, I made this thing sharp. And especially when you get that thing really sharp and then you put it to work, I think, yeah, it's like a proud proud dad moment, Like all right, I did. Moving on. But what I was gonna say, My point to this they got me thinking about it was that some people feel like we're I don't know if it's just this podcast, or just in general with Meat Eater, where it's always trying to sell you something, and with Jordan and I when we want to do this podcast, it's not about that. It's about educating everyone about gear, including ourselves. There's a lot That's why we have experts on. Like today, we've got Taylor Chamberlain on who has killed truckloads more dear than I have with the bow and arrow, and we're gonna talk to him about broadheads because I don't know if there's anybody else possibly living alive in this country that's done it more and seeing more arrows go through deer. I'm sure there is, But anyways, I want to make the point that if you are buying spending money on gear and it's keeping you from getting outside and going hunting, you're doing it backwards. Getting out and doing it should always be the number one goal. And I don't want to sell you something or tell you to go buy something that ever keeps you from going out and hunting. So if you need gas money, truck money, whatever it is, the basics, don't buy new gear. You can always make it work somehow if you want it bad enough. Now, when you do decide that you need a new soft shell or new pair of boots. Hopefully, by what you've learned on the gear Talk podcast, you'll be more informed and be able to make a better decision, be able to ask better questions to the manufacturer or to the salesperson at the store you go to about the specific gear you're looking at and buying, and you'll end up getting the better product or the product the better suits you, and you'll end up having better experiences. So, um, yeah, I don't know, that's not like a PSA. What is that. It's just like it's my statement. Yeah, it's a statement. And something too I think people got to keep in mind is like some of these people that we're getting on to talk about things, they it's going to be really hard to find somebody that's around, you know, X gear thing all the time, if they're if they don't have a company of their own, or if they don't work for another company. Like you know, we didn't get Steve on just to say that work sharpeners are the best. Uh. We just talked about sharpening knives and that's pretty universal with all sharpeners. I mean it really is. So we just want. I feel like we want to make a podcast that you can even reference too later when you're like, oh, hey, I need to go get a new knife sharpener, I need to touch up some knives. Like I'm just gonna listen to this podcast real quick and just you know, pick up a few things or whatever. So that's why I think good, I'm glad, I'm glad we're aligned with our mission. Yeah, we have a new segment. Everybody likes segments, so we're just moving on. That was our catch up recap segment. Now we're moving on to a segment called What's New. And because Jordan and I are doing this podcast, we've been in touch with a lot of companies that make gear, and a lot of companies that want to send us gear to talk about and maybe to possibly have on their gear experts, which which is not always going to happen, but we get so much stuff whether and sometimes a lot of times I buy it, Like this thing I'm gonna talk about here now, I bought it because I wanted to check it out. A bunch of people had said, look, you need to check this out. But a lot of times, take for instance, we just Jordan I both got a big box stayer water filtration products and I'm very gracious for that. I'm excited to check it all out, but didn't have to pay for it either way. All this to say is that just so that we can when we see something that comes through our hands that's exciting, we can mention it, talk about it. Maybe we've used it, maybe we haven't used it, but it's it's I think again for the listener, it's a way to say, hey, this is something you new. You might want to check it out. It looks interesting. Yeah, it looks interesting. I hadn't heard about it, or I had heard about it. This is a different way of doing it UM And hopefully if we if we check out the product, whether we like it or not, later we'll probably talk about it in depth more. But so yeah, let's get on with what's new. What's you guys? Jordan? Yeah, yeah, so many know. I'm out in Nebraska on the ranch helping do calving stuff and we've talked about it a little bit before. I've been calling kyotes and mostly just for UM yeah, predator control for calves, and like we've had a little bit of issues. We had a coyote. We think UM killed, like killed a calf, a healthy calf, and so I was like, you know, mostly for the most part, they were running around at night, like dogs were barking on the house, Like there were kyotes coming like literally like fifty yards from the house in the night, and it was kind of crazy. So I was like, I need a lot of times it's just me going out there and it's really hard to try to shoot and hold a light at the same time, which, uh, just putting it out there. Nebraska is a state where you can use artificial light as long as it's not plugged into a vehicle or a boat. I believe it says. But I was like, I need something that attaches to my rifle. So I literally went to the store and I got I looked at a couple different lights. I looked at the Wicked Lights, and then I looked at the Fox Pro light, and just doing a five minutes of research online in the store, I was like, Wicked Lights seemed to be the way to go. So I got a Wicked Lights, a seventy five I C Predator light and that thing is like a torch. I've got it. I have it on my cross. I mounted it to the side of the handguard on the cross and then there's actually a remote control on and off that runs. I have it ran to the left side of the rifle kind of back like right above where the magazine attaches. It's just a little velcro strip that sucks on there, and you have like a push button like turns it on and off, and then you have a rolling dial that will turn up the intensity and turn down the intensity. A shot a coyote at two hundred and fifty yards with it the other day at like one in the morning, So what tells pretty much max of what it could do. But yeah, are you running a regular light or does it have a like a filter that makes it red or green or whatever? Yeah, it has I'm running just a regular light that gets you the most distance. And I haven't seen it really mess with the them too much. Like I'll pop a light on. Usually it's just like a spotlight. I'll pop a light on and do a scan, and once I see them, I'll turn everything off and then I'll like lay down or get in a position to shoot, kind of get everything ready, and then I'll pop the light on and usually they're still right there. They don't even pay attention to it. But it does have a dial on the side that model anyway that rolls to green to red. I think it's green, red, and white or just those three. But you're just running white and then it's not. Doesn't bother him. No, No, I was the first kyad I shot with it. I was probably seventy yards from him maybe, and I popped the light on and he didn't He didn't even look up. I didn't pay any attention to it. Yeah, I've used I think I've used one of those life a long long time ago. Steve had one, but I remember being a very solid, seem like, seemingly well made products. When I bought it and got it for Steve. Um sweet something new that came across my I don't know why it's so easy to say came across my desk. I've rarely said at my desk. My desk is just covered basically in piles of small gear. The big gear goes down to the gear shed, and then I have all this little stuff sitting all my desk. That's why I'm always at my kitchen table working. Um. But I bought a peak's headlamp. What's it called? It called the backcountry duo headlamp. A bunch of people. After we had talked about headlamps on one of our earlier podcasts, quite a few folks said we should try this one out. So I bought it. Actually, interestingly enough, I didn't know, but made in Bozeman or the company is out of Bozeman. I'm guessing that the products itself has made somewhere else. But very simple design. It's actually similar to what Steve used to rock. He might still use it, but it was I think it was a surefire headlamp. But when I never liked about Steve's it was very it seemed heavy and bulky. This one is a little bit smaller, lighter, machined aluminum, seems super tough. I mean, honestly, I've only used it, I don't know, three four mornings probably, and that's been very light use, just jumping in and out of the truck looking at tracks. But it's cool. One end of the sort of the battery compartment unscrews to give you access to the charging port, so once you're charged, you just screw it down and it completely seals it off, makes it waterproof and keeps it dust out of your charging port and all that kind of stuff. Two lights red and white, and you can go, like most headlamps high low. I don't think this one has a medium, but high low. And it runs chargeable, which I think for a lot of us, for a long time it was scary to think about going rechargeable going into the mountains for an extended period of time. But just with the luck that I've had with my black Diamonds running, you know, you gotta be smart about it, right, can't accidentally turn it on in your backpack, then you're not gonna have a headlamp anymore. But I've had plenty of week long trips where one charge is doing me just fine. This one might not quite have the battery life of us these smaller headlamps that we talked about, but it's what it does have. It's brightest setting. It's quite a bit brighter than that. Um. I can't remember the name of the black down that I was using, but it's it's not quite spotlight, but it's it's bright. It's out there, so anyways, that's it's new. It's I like it. I'm digging it so far. It seems tough, very simple to use. Check it out I think it's only rechargeable. Yeah, yeah, like no no option for double a's like pulling a no it's it's it looks like a oversized double A but long, right, not not oversized like a C or a D. But it's a little bit fatter than a double A, a little bit longer. I'm guessing you can probably buy a second battery from them and just have it charged up and pop it in there if you want to have that, have that back up. But yeah, what what's the loomins on it? Max output is a thousand lumen range is four hundred and ninety feet, well over one hundred yards, almost one hundred fifty. Yeah, I think that we should get somebody on to talk about lights and lumens and outputs and all that stuff that is confusing. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. Weighs in at two point oh says two point six five ounces. That excludes the battery, So I don't know. I'm guessing it's three three and a half, which I was looking at some weights some other headlamps. It's that three to four ounce range is pretty common for headlamps. And again, if you want that, if you want one hundred one hundred yard range with your head lamp, it's gone. It had to be a little bit on the heavier side. Like I've got that little bitty petel E light as a backup in my little kit in my pack. Sure it's a foot Yeah, it's not that bad, but it's probably not much past ten or fifteen feet, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, but it's it serves its purpose as a extremely lightweight backup battery, and I've had it come in handy most of it's I've never left my headlamp behind, but I've had twice where it's gotten dark and we're getting ready for the hike out and on a trail, it's never that big of a deal. You can make it down a trail it's no headlamp. But if you're bushwhacking down some nasty creek bottom, no fun without a headlamp. And I've had some buddies that were like, he no headlamp. I'm like, up, here's my little petzil you light and it's just enough to illuminate, you know, there their future so that they don't get get a stob stuck in their leg. Yeah, yeah, nice. I've looked at that thing a bit, and I have been wanting to pull the trigger on one. I just haven't done it yet, so it's good to know you like it. Cool. All right, We'll take just a quick breather and we'll be back with Taylor Chamberlain. Okay, Taylor Chamberlain. Taylor haunts suburban deer around Washington, DC around between one hundred and fifty two over two hundred days annually in the last fifteen years. He's co hosts of the Hanging Hunt podcast, so you can get a go a deeper dive on what he's got going on by listening to that podcast. If you want to see sort of how Taylor's hunts go and Taylor, you can tell me if if if First Light did a good rendition of how you're hunting goes there. But there's a First Light made an episode for their YouTube channel called in City Limits. It's all about how Taylor goes around knocking on doors to get permission on one to three acre properties and hunting people's backyards. I just rewatched it last night. It's entertaining and it's way way different than a lot of us look at white tail deer hunting. So the reason we have Taylor on today. Is because Taylor told me that his success rate is around thirty five percent. So if you do the math of fifteen years of hunting one hundred and fifty to two hundred days a year, that equals a boatload of deer. I'm not even say the number. Do the math at home. It's not that hard, but it's a lot. And that's why I feel like he's a great person to talk to us about broadheads because I think for me personally, I don't know of anybody else personally that I've met has probably put more arrows through deer. Specifically, I've met some people that have killed a lot of elk, but not these kind of numbers. I'm talking, you know, fifty to maybe a hundred elk with a bow, but not these kind of numbers of deer. So we're gonna talk specifically broadheads with Taylor, talk to him about what he's seen over the years, the different styles, different types, the results of all of them, and going from there. So m Taylor first, I want to know, I want to I want to settle the stage a little bit so that when people listening they'll have a some context around why we're talking to you about this, But tell me first, how are you able to hunt two hundred days in a year like it? Just even as a guide, I felt like I rarely made two hundred days a year. I am. I am nothing short of addicted and terribly obsessed with hunting white tail with a bow. And I am very thankful that I have a wife that does not like me to be in the house because I am often gone hunting whitetail, you know, around around our house in the suburbs at DC. So the real reason and what allows me to hunt year round. So here in the in the Northern Virginia DC area, we have a year round deer season and the reason for that is our carrying capacity should be in the ten to twelve deer per square mile range. They are so overpopulated. They can't even quantify how overpopulated the deer are because when they do a thermal imaging or they fly with the white hot stuff, it just looks like somebody kicked the ant hill. The best guess for for our deer population right now is four hundred and twenty to four hundred and twenty five deer per square mile and their pockets that they estimate over six hundred. So like in anybody who's seen a my content. For people that haven't, it's not uncommon to signature, especially this time of year when we're starting to get a little bit of spring green up right now. But from January one through March first, you can see forty fifty sixty deer in a hunt because they're literally they're like rats on stilts around here. Is actually what a what a homeowner called them one time that really stuck with me. But they're just incredibly overpopulated. They have nothing to eat, They've eaten themselves out of house and home, and it's a huge, huge problem here. So what I'm fortunately able to do is hunt them with a bow and arrow and use this overabundant resource to help provide for people in need, which we also have a lot of here in the DC area. So we're able to feed the homeless with them, take them to food banks, get them to churches, and have that food kind of disseminate out into you know, the world or this little area of our community and help people out. So it's really a good use for the overabundance of them. But you know, with hunting them year round comes a lot of responsibility, and that's kind of what we're going to get into with the broadheads. But you know, some of the parcels that I'm hunting are as small as a quarter acre. I have properties that are very near some three letter government buildings that you guys have definitely heard about that I do not want a deer to cross into. I don't want it to get near the fence or the parking lot. The last thing I need is to show up in my camo and try and explain to somebody who is not familiar with hunting, what the heck I'm coming out of the woods doing so shot placement and your equipment is. I can't imagine a place that it's more critical than where I'm hunting. But I imagine if if if the property you're hunting is a quarter acre, you've got to be thinking ahead and getting permission on the neighboring properties so that if something doesn't happen just by plan, the deer does you know, hop into the neighbor's backyard that you've already figured that out? No, oh yeah, yeah, a core acre spot, there's almost zero chance that that deer is expiring on that property. I mean, you can get kind of in the corner, and I get you know, shot placement is really key, right if you we can go down into this rabbit hole, but if you can hit them tight and kind of top of the heart and right behind that crease of the shoulder to where they're they're snow plowing, their chest will actually work like an air brake and they'll only go about fifteen twenty yards as opposed to like a true heart shot deer whose lungs are still functioning, that deer might go one hundred and twenty five yards. So every little inch counts in shot placement. But to answer your question, yes, you need to get permission or think about which way the deer going to go. But that's a double edged swords, so you also have to factor into what I'm doing here in the suburb as people are very polarized on the idea of hunting. Some people that have lived here for a while understand that the dey are overpopulated and they need to go. But the majority of people that I talk to, and I'm not trying to generalize, is just the fact of the matter. You know, DC is a highly transient area and not a lot of people have been exposed to hunting, and even if they have been exposed to hunting in some manner, their idea of hunting is much different than us as hunters portray ourselves and make a point to do right. I mean, we're all knowledgeable and upstanding hunters. That's not exactly the kind of feeling that a lot of homeowners have around hunting that haven't been exposed to it. So you have to be careful when you get permission. I mean, first and foremost, it's so difficult to get permission once you get it. If you know the deer is going to run one way, you need to have that discussion either with that homeowner or the owner of that property. But also the last thing you want is to go over there and have that person freak out, and now you have two neighbors that are going at it. There's pretty much zero chance you're going to keep permission in the event of that happening. So you have to be kind of cognizant of the risk you're taking by preemptively asking for a track and retrieve is what I call it permission, But most people don't want a dead deer on their property. Only once in my life, if I had somebody tell me no that I wasn't allowed to recover a deer on their property, which was a very interesting situation to say the least. So yeah, okay, to continue to continue paying paying the picture I want to talk about so again when that later we're talking about the performance. It's of all these different types of broadheads. People can understand how you were applying these broadheads and what the situation was like. So we know you're suburban DC. You're in a tree, I'm guessing all the time or most of the time, so you're shooting from an from an angle downwards. I'm all always elevated. Um, I'm I'm kind of lazy by nature. So if there's a playground set or something that's available, or a deck, um, you know, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to go climb a tree. But I'm never not hunting from or not shooting from an elevated position. Okay, worked great? Yeah, because the deer used to having uh kids and whoever hanging out in a right so it's not out of place. Oh what's the average shot distance? I will not shoot over twenty yards. Um. Shop placement accuracy is one hundred percent the most important thing. Sometimes I mentor a lot of new urban hunters that are getting into this, and I tell them that sometimes the best shot you can take is not taking a shot at all, because the downside for a wounded animal in a highly populated neighborhood or a deer ending up in a pool or whatever, is way worse than harvesting that animal. So I will not take a shot over twenty yards the average shot like my perfect shot, and he's anywhere from like twelve to sixteen yards. I would say that ninety five percent of the deer that I've harvested in my life have been between twelve and fifteen yards. Okay, nice, we're a shot placement wise, where are you looking to shoot one? I know you just talked about like the act of airbreak? Can you talk about that a little bit more? Absolutely, I'm very visual person, so everybody's different, But I think of a deer's front two legs as holding up a balloon. So think of like chopsticks that are carrying around like a kid's soccer ball, right, And that three D image has always worked for me depending on how that animal is quartering. So animals quartering to you, horrible shot, Do not recommend it. You guys have spent a ton of time in the woods or in the field rather with guiding. I'm sure you've seen every shot in the world. A lot of people tend to lose their metal with an animal facing towards them, and they inherently want to still aim at the crease, and you just end up with like very little bit of one long liver shot. That's not what we want. So if you think of those legs kind of holding up the ball as that critter is walking around, that helps me visualize where the armor plating is. Basically on an animal, which is your you know, the shoulder blades, the front breastbone. If you think of the way our anatomy is, it's very similar to a deer. It's just we're vertical. So I think of that little balloon or that little soccer ball walking around, and I just try to pop that ball. And I've tried a lot of different kind of methodologies for a shot, aiming, whether it's aimed for the crease or aimed for the exit. Aiming for the exit works really well, but for me, just kind of like threading an arrow through that balloon is just it works with my head, so you know, in a sense, I'm aiming for the exit. But that always helps with that animal, especially when they're quartered away. I find it really helps when the leg If that front leg is back when they're feeding, I can still see where those vitals are and put it through there. But I really like to be tight into that that soccer ball, which is very tight behind the legs. So if you look at the anatomy of a deer, the shoulder comes down and then comes back and there's a little v there which is right in front of the crease. If you hit them right there, all the ligaments for their legs are kind of in that area, and their legs will not work. So a lot of people think they're shooting through the shoulder. You're actually not shooting through the shoulder. You're below the shoulder bone. That scapulus sits at kind of a forty five degree angle. By coming in, it actually kind of goes forward, and then then the humorous sort of comes back towards what I would call the elbow, and then from the elbow the leg goes straight down correct and so it gives the appearance of it's being completely vertical, which in mind the interthal brain I see as chopsticks holding up a little balloon, but in reality, by putting it right through there, you're cutting through a lot of connective tissue that they used to operate their legs. And so if I'm hunting, especially on a quarter acre spot, and mind you you know, this is all incredibly specific for inside twenty yards. I'm six foot three, i have a seventy pound draw weight, and I'm shooting a thirty thirty and a half inch draw So thirty and a quarter is my actual drawing. So this is not, you know, the same for if my wife were to be a hunter, her setup would be very different, and I maybe would even tell her to aim potentially a little further back than this. But for me specifically, I love hitting them right in that little v where that bone has has gotten out of the way. Their legs will not work, and they will they will just run on their chest for about ten to twelve yards and just expire. So that's a textbook perfect shot for me. Broadside. So if that animal is quartered away slightly it started to cut you off, it's harder to put it in that pocket and still have a perfect shot. I do not like a pinwheeled heart like you know those pictures you see online, if everybody holding up the heart that's got the perfect shot through it. I find that a heart shot deer, especially low heart shot, or if you nick the top of the heart in the front. You know, people will say, oh, I think the deer getting an adrenaline dump or something. I don't know if that's true, as much as their lungs are still functioning and therefore their muscles are still able to function, and so they're dead on their feet. But I've seen deer around one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty yards perfect blood trail out out both sides, just because their lungs were able to function instead of them being able to expire faster. And that for me is a horrible situation because now I have more cleanup duty and a deer that's three properties over. You know that is now a problem. Right for most of us, we'd be like, sweet, he ran one hundred yards and you're like, oh, no, exactly, I'm watching it from the tree, like go down, go down, go down, go down, right, even though you saw, yeah, you got to see the deer fall down, which is the best feeling ever, in my opinion, is when you shoot an arrow and you actually get to see the critter fall over. I mean, the relief that sets over me is incredible. But for you, if it doesn't happen in fifteen yards, uh yeah, your night just got a little bit longer. But tell me, so I know kind of where you're aiming and what roughly where you want the arrow to go. But tell me exactly a perfect shot, what would the broadhead be cutting inside the deer? Like, what does a perfect shot look like inside the deer? A absolute perfect shot would be cutting the blood vessels, like the the main arteries that are coming off the top part of that heart and just smashing where they connect to the bottom of the ones there and and getting all that lung. So what that's going to create is like instant I mean, first off, that diaphragm is popped. Hopefully that deer was just slightly quartered away like two degrees, so it's smashed through that v that we talked about with where the scapula and the leg bone come back. It's taken out those top arteries coming off the heart. It's not cutting the heart. That would be super specific and it's putting a giant hole in the lungs to where they're deflated and filled with blood and they're not going to function. That deer goes twelve yards, maybe twenty. I like it nice pass through. I also like to also like to eat the heart. So the heart I don't want to like smash up because I want to be able to fry it perfectly when I get home. You know, I'm very addicted to deer hunting, but I'm also not a small person and I really like eating venison. So it's nice to have. Um, what what's your method for frying heart? Butter? Baby butter and a little bit of interesting No, are you breading it at all? No? Fright and butter straight up, straight up butter, salt and pepper, cave man. Yeah, I have, um what's the salt SPG from a company called Kinders. It's pretty easy to find here. It's in like the rub aisle. It's a salt, pepper and garlic. And that was some butter, a little bit of onion, uh low heat or more of a seer, more of like a seer fry. Okay, I know we're we're getting on frying heart here, but One other question is how do you clean it up? Because some people Steve Ronella, he basically just cuts the top off of it, discards that, and then just goes down cutting it, cutting slices. If you were cutting across an apple to make the cute little star in the it all, He'll just go down the heart like that, cut slices right into the pan. I personally like to trim the whole outside, then open it up like a green pepper and trim any funky looking stuff on the inside. Where do you land on that? That's exactly exactly how I am. I trim all my stuff like very detailed trimming. Um I don't I find that it tastes way better. In my opinion, it's probably a placebo effect. But if I trim it all up, UM, I just think that that tastes like a completely almost completely different kind of meat than it does when you just you know good. Is Steve's method of just whacking it and throwing it in there. But the heart that you cooked in Idaho, which I think was Jordan's cab, that was some of the best heart I've ever had. That heart tasted completely different than white tailed heart from the Berbs. Eating shrubbery and flowers grass. Yeah, huh, that's interesting. The venison here tastes completely different also while we get down that rabbit hole. But um, I think it's because of what they're eating. I mean, they're basically living off the equivalent of deer taco bell compared to um deer that live in you know, an area with ag right, a lot of herb besides past the sides, right, Is that what you're saying, that just the stuff right? Part of the problem, that part of what creates the deer problem that we have here in the suburbs is the fact that we've taken you know, relatively poor habitat for deer in a very aging, mixed hardwood forest, which is like pretty much all this area is, and we've replaced it with manicured lawns and landscaping and all this stuff that the deer can thrive on. So now they just eat hastas and grass and you know stuff that is is I don't know how that falls on the quality spectrum for them, but it's allowing them to reproduce and you know, thrive here. But it's not the best quality food as my understanding, So I think that that's kind of what leads to a lower quality venison. I'd be interesting to try to figure that out if there's a way to like quantify it, like the nutrients in uh hastas and daffodils versus um, you know, corn. Yeah, yeah, But I mean, when I shoot a deer in Kansas, let's say, or like a mulier. Mulier doesn't count because it's a different species. But when I shoot a white tail in Kansas, that venison tastes completely different than one in Ohio or one here from a backyard. Interesting. I always have a hard time. My brother in law gives me some crap a little bit because my mind bags will just say grind and there could be elk in their mule, deer, pronghorn, whatever I've killed that year. It all gets ground. Usually at the same time. It all gets made into some sausage. But I don't have packages labeled elk burger, antelope burger. It's just all it's the same. And I'm like, I can't once it's in a burger, I can't tell. But he feels like he can really tell, and everything all the animals have to stay separate. But anyways, um, all right, we gotta get to broadheads here eventually. Um. But a couple other set up questions. I'm glad that you mentioned your your drawway, your length, UM, draw length all tell me too? Uh? What's uh? How heavy? I don't want to quite get to the broadheads yet. Let's let's do this one first. Are you looking through? Are you looking for a pass through? Why are we not? Yeah? I want two holes. I want and I specifically want a hole that exit hole. Being lower to the ground creates a much easier blood trail to find and follow. So a lot of the hunts that I'm doing now this is managing a deer heard. These are cull hunts. I'm not shooting just one deer and getting down unless I hear a splash or some tires slam and somebody's screaming. You know. Generally, I'm hunting doze, and if I'm in a pocket where there are dose present, generally another family group is going to come through, And so I'm able to maximize my efficiency by shooting a couple. More So, for me, I might shoot two, three deer and a sit. I stopped shooting at four because I've found after four the blood trails really cross and you start following your same path in the woods. It's kind of funny how easy. I mean, you're in a backyard, you can see landmarks, but when you're looking down following blood. I can't tell you how many times you'll pick your head up and you're like, oh, I've already been here. You know you have to go back around. It's very weird. And also those deer will often run on the same trail and then they'll split off, so it really gets mixed in. But I stopped shooting it four. I've found that after four it really turns helter skelter. But I want that pass through. I want to find my arrow immediately. I use a lot of white on my arrows so I can quickly look at them and verify that what the image that is burdened in my head of what I saw at the shot and saw what happened, I'm now verifying, so there's not you know, gut matter or anything on the arrow. Although I will caution people, I can't tell you how many times I've shot a deer like perfectly watched it run and expire and if it's early in the season, maybe got some of that diaphragm, and they'll be like some green bile on my arrow, and I'm how is that possibly on there? Well, it's just kind of exiting through. Especially if it's a hard quartered away deer and that arrow is exiting kind of in front of that offside shoulder, you can catch diaphragm and get gut bile whatever on there. So don't always go with you know what's on the arrow, But the arrow is a phenomenal indicator of what happened. And I'm a huge advocate for all white. Plus white is one of the rarest colors except for you, Yanni, because I think you said it's snow to don there. But white is very rare in the woods, so it's normally very easy to find white, whereas, like I used to run blaze orange stuff on all my fletchings and wraps that can be surprisingly hard to find, especially in fall foliage. So I want to pass through. I want that lower hole, and I really want white everything so I can find my arrow, identify what's on it, and fallow that blood trail from there. Yeah, just gonna say wraps can be really nice if you have them in white, because it just gives you more surface area for that blood to get on or whatever it is, because sometimes, like on fletchings, it's just it's hard to tell sometimes because they're just not that big. But yeah, the white wrap is good, absolutely. Yeah. White white is key. I mean all of my arrows are like all white. They look like Pablo Escobar's arrows. They're just like you know, I have like an eight inch white wrap with veins on my whites. My friend in the woods. Yeah, the only reason I run one vein that's not white is because I like to have a cock vein so that if I'm having to do a quick you know, a lot of times Elk County, you're just hiking along and also like, oh my gosh, there's a bowl in the same trail that I'm walking down, and you know, you go into panic mode, and it's nice to grab an arrow and know where you know to align it properly on your string. Not that it has to be that way, probably it's not gonna make that much of a difference, but I like to have a cock. Plus I go pink now hot pink, and too white because my photographers have told me that when they're watching arrow flight on their screens that those are the two colors that pop the best on their screen, white and pink um. And so, since we often have the luxury of having a filmed shot hit, it's nice to have whatever fletchings popping the most so you can and see exactly where you hit the most. You know, if you ran a four fletch then you wouldn't have to worry about that cock. My arrows are so heavy, I can't add another three grains because it's gonna slow them down too much. Um, I can't. I can't decide how we should get into the weight of your broadheads and the weight of your arrows because I feel like it could change based on the broadhead. Can you answer me that, will it change? Like? Should we should we talk about broadheads, the eight of broadheads and arrows as we talk about each specific broadhead or can we do it generally now and then go into the broadhead? Yeah? So I shoot generally the exact same weight. I shoot one hundred and twenty five grain head. The reason that I shoot one hundred and twenty five grain head is I want my full setup to be right around that five hundred grain mark. I would much prefer like a four seventy five four fifty if I could get there, But due to the draw length that I have, I haven't found an arrow that I'm comfortable with the outsert system and really the overall quality of an arrow that I can get that light on. So for me, righting that five hundred mark is perfect. I think that, like anywhere from four to fifty to five hundred, is a good blend of speed still keeping that momentum and kinetic energy, which is obviously very important. I know that's a highly controversial topic at the present day, and some guys like this ashby stuff and eight hundred grains. Whatever I've shot heavier arrows, I have not seen a decline in performance from a six and fifty grain arrow to a five hundred grain arrow. I have seen an increase in performance in speed and less drop. So even though it's funny that I'm only shooting deer at fifteen yards, let's say, I don't know why it matters to me, but I really like the idea of having a flatter trajectory with the same performance. It doesn't matter for the hunting application that I'm doing, but if you know, I go out west or whatever, I think it's a more efficient system, it's better blended, it's more versatile by having less drop, so five grains one hundred and twenty five grains. The way I ended up with one twenty fives was because I wanted a certain amount of front of center on my arrow, and that extra twenty five grains over the hundred grain got me there. I could shoot heavier, but it's harder to find one hundred and you know fifty, one hundred and seventy five, two fifty whatever type grain heads, And so I wanted to stick with something where like if I fly into Duluth and I realize all my field points aren't there, I'm like, oh my god, I can go to Cabella's and go buy someone twenty fives or something. I don't want to get into this like weird outlier broadhead weight or screwing point weight that I can't go like rapidly fine somewhere. It's a great point. It's a great point. That's why I'm always telling people keep shooting their three oh weights and thirty out six is yeah, yeah, right, same thing. If I go into you know, my elk hunt, and all of a sudden TSA pulled my amo out or something happened. I don't want to have to go find some like twenty eight nozzlar hotload special round somewhere. You know, I can just roll in and buy some thirty out six hornedies and be ready to rock, right, So same concept for my hunting setups. So I try to find generally readily available products. And that's why I'm stuck with the one twenty fives. And if anybody wants some hundred grain broadheads, I have a literal pile here that I can't use anymore because I've switched over to the one twenty fives. All right, let's get into the broadheads. Then we made a quick list, Jordan and I of because I didn't want to get into too much about about actual specific broadheads and the companies that make them. We can say that for another day. I think we can break it down. It's into sort of general categories and tell me if you think this is too many categories or if we even need more. But we had like fixed within the fixed blade category, you got to break it down, I think to subcategories, which is fixed two blade, fixed three blade, fixed four blade, and then we even have in the two blade you have double bevels, single bevels. Then we go to mechanicals, which I don't even know all the mechanicals enough. I think there's probably ten subcategories for mechanicals. And then of course we also have the difference in tips. How do you think best, as a person that has tried so many broadheads, how do you think it's the best way to break it up? I think that's very fair, and I think in order to assess those you need to kind of have categories, performance categories, right, and so what I'm looking for in a broadhead just that I'm that I'm using to analyze every head that I'm testing, trying whatever, are a multitude of things. I want accuracy in flight right. I want to rely on the arrow hitting where my pen is when I'm executing a shot. Now you know there is some human error in there. I like to think that I'm perfect, but I'm definitely not. My wife will tell you that. So you know, as long as I do my part, I want the head to fly properly. So flight characteristics the noise of a broadhead. People don't often think about how loud different variations of heads are downrange. I do not want that critter to have any notice of what's incoming, right, So the noise then, also, forgiveness is something that I think of, but not in the traditional sense of forgiveness from an accuracy standpoint, Yes, that's important, but forgiveness in shot placement. If I make a poor shot, I want the arrow or the broadhead excuse me to bail me out. And so what I mean by that is the larger cutting diameter, the larger cutting surface is going to help me out. If I hit back, it's going to cut more stuff. It has a wider a greater opportunity to hit that vein or you know nick that for moral artery and result in an instant death. That's something that I often think about with heads, and we can get more into that when we start talking about the different categories of heads and also the blade profile on them, both in numbers and type, and then lastly durability. Right, I'm shooting a lot of deer and I need to be able to reuse them. A head that goes in the trash after I shoot a deer with it is trash for me, Like I can't be spending what products cost nowadays, even at a discount or geez, Frankly, even if they're free, I don't want to go through, you know, five dozen, eight dozen heads in a year. That just doesn't seem right to me. So those are kind of the categories that I'm applying to all these heads when i'm testing them. Okay, I follow up on that though, Taylor's if you're reusing broadheads, are you sharpening broadheads? Oh? Yeah, okay, you do sharpen your own broadheads after they saw. I'm calling you guys from my man cave down here, my command center, and to my left, I have a pile of used broadheads, and so I basically wait until that pile gets a little too high for me, and I will sit here and watch TV and have a glass of water or bourbon or coffee, depending on what time of day it is, and just start sharpening away. So I try to have a couple of boxes of broadheads at the ready that are sharpened than ready to go back in rotation. Nice. So I do a lot of sharpening. Yeah, okay, So we know the categories that you're rating each broadhead on, and I want to hear pros and cons about each one. Let's maybe let's maybe do it this way. This might be a good way to just make it easier for us to follow along. Why don't instead of starting with, say, the category just that we're picking, let's start with a category maybe that you started with, and then we can go through the categories as you sort of progressed through them. Is that a good idea? Yeah, I think that's a great way to attack it. So, first and foremost, you're only going to get back from a broadhead what you put into your gear, right, and I think that goes with everything. Like, you can't say that your boots are crap if you haven't taken the time to condition them or break them in. You the same thing with a broadhead or with a bow. If you haven't tuned a bow, you're not going to get any you know, the maximum performance out of it. That's like driving your car to a racetrack and trying to race it when it's not designed to do that. I am fanatical about tuning my gear and having it perform as perfectly as it reasonably can. So for me, shooting a fixed blade head versus a mechanical head is not It's it's a level playing field as far as the accuracy standpoint. A fixed blade head is going to hit generally where a mechanical head is going to hit from me, unless there's some like weird variability that that specific fixed blade head is creating an issue in point of impact. So if you're not going to tune your bow, if you're if you're gonna just like grab your bow off the hangar on October fifteenth and go hunt with it, and you haven't touched it since last November, you know, a fixed blade head might not be for you. Very often on these forums and stuff, you see like oh, that head flies like crap, performs like crap. I mean, frankly, any head generally put in the right place will perform. It's the shooter, either shot placement, or your gear hasn't been broken down to operate correctly. So when I first started hunting, I taught myself how to hunt, and I bought some generic three blade heads from like Walmart. They did not fly well. I thought that it was the head that was not flying well. In reality, it was the Indian, not the arrow, and it was my lack of bow tuning and performance. So I quickly switched from fixed blades to mechanicals, which I think is when a lot of people do that don't put the time in to tune their bow. So do you just want to start with like fixed blades versus mechanicals or do you want to go down my path of heads? Yeah? I don't know if it has to be a fixed blade versus mechanicals, because I'd imagine that there are some pros too mechanicals. I'll be honest, I've never shot one. I've guided people that shot elk with mechanicals, but I've personally never shot one. So I just think, however, you want to do it whatever makes sense in your mind, and to help keep us on track and to make it not too confusing. But just as long as we can sort of go over every group or every style category however we want to say it of broadhead and sort of go through the pros and cons and and and talk about the results that you saw with each style. That's what I'm trying to get out of it. Jordan, Okay, Yeah, same, So let's just go down both categories. So let's start with fixed blade heads, right. The in my experience with a fixed blade head, the pros are the penetration of them, So if you hit bone or something harder, you are less likely to have either a deflection or have your arrows stop abruptly. In that fixed blade category, you have two blades, three blades, and four blades, and then you have the two blade with a bleeder as like a hybrid. So in my experience, the smaller the cutting diameter, the worst the performance was for me. And the performance that I'm looking for is easy to follow blood trails and the fastest expiration of that critter possible. And so when I had smaller holes, especially the smaller slits versus chunks, so two blades versus three or four blades, the worser, the worst the performance was. So if you look down on a scale of fixed blade heads and then zero being like the animal didn't die, which we all know isn't possible, although we have to tend like, oh my gosh, the animal took two steps and fell over. On that scale, two blade heads would be closer to the ones and twos of it, and going up until like eight or nine would be the larger four blade or three blade cutting heads. However, you end up with a little bit of I guess unintended consequences of shooting heads of that size are you know, they're a little outer in flight, you have four blades instead of two that are making noise in the air, and that four blades or three blades instead of two potentially can create less accurate broadhead flight. So if you're tuning your bow and you're out there and you're listening to this, and you're thinking, like, I don't know what head to get, you really need to play around with a couple different ones to try and figure out what matters most for you and for me and my hunting situation. With my draw weight, my draw length, I have no problem shooting a giant cut on contact fixed blade head. I prefer four blades. Say that time times fast, because I want to put that giant chunk, that big, large cutting diameter through an animal. But when you say four blades, because I think, if I'm correct, the one you're shooting now, it's it's basically it's a two blade with bleeders, not four actual blades, right, correct, Yes, So the head that I'm shooting currently has a very large bleeder on it that's almost the same size as the actual blades. So it's an inch and an eighth by an or excuse me, inch and a quarter by inch and a eighth cutting diameter, So I'm almost getting a full two and a half inch cut through an animal in cutting diameter, which is awesome. And if you look at the opposite side of the coin and expandables, expandables are great in the sense that they you know, they have a very low profile. When they hit they open up hopefully and then they're making a big hole. My concerns with an expandable, just to be general and kind of like start this off in chapter one, I guess, are that you don't know that they're going to open at all times, and so the potential for a lack of performance is very scary to me. I don't like relying on that that equipment to perform, and then it takes a lot of energy out of your setup to create that opening. And so you know, add in the fact that if you hit bone with an expandable and that your penetration is all but pretty much stopped, or the braids are blades are breaking or whatever. I've always shied away from expandables. Now you also have to know like where your misses, and I tend to shoot very tight to the shoulders, so my miss is going to be tighter to the shoulder than away from it. If you're a type of person that is the opposite of that, then maybe an expandable is right for you, because now we're back on the category of forgiveness, where you know that giant cutting diameter could help bail you out of a situation if you punch a critter through the guts instead of hitting him in the shoulder. So there's a ton of variability in what you're doing, and ultimately it's like what's right for me might not be right for either of you or anybody else listening. But the kind of my trials through fifteen years of doing this now have led me in a certain direction, and that's large cut on contact four. I mean three is good, but four is better. Giant chunks through animals, Yeah, my experiences with expandables were kind of it just took a lot of energy to open those. And I think a special I still have a pretty long draw length and think I'm twenty eight and then I'm shooting between sixteen sixty five pounds kind of depends on the year, but that's still just not as much as some dude with a thirty inch draw length and shooting seventy pounds, like you just have more umph there to be able to punch that expandable through or as I it just I don't have as much umph to try to push it through. So that's as soon as I had a couple experiences like that, I started going to like fixed blade or cough on contact in having way way better luck. Yeah, And it varies by bow also, right, So I do a ton of bow testing, and last night I was shooting five different bows and the speed ranged from two sixty five and these are all set up the same, from two sixty five with my setup to two ninety six. That's insane, right, I mean thirty feet per second is a lot of distance, in a lot of energy and momentum for an arrow to store. Yeah, the variables are it's astounding how many there are and how much stuff you gotta gotta think through, and it's it's hard to make sense of it all. But I think you've made a good point earlier really being picky about your shots and your shot placement, shot distance. That's a great way to reduce those variables. And it's something that it just takes time, you know. I get plenty of flags sometimes for the shots I've taken on camera, and I want to remind everybody I'm not afraid to say it. I've only killed a dozen or so animals with the boat. I've watched dudes killed fifty of them or more, but personally I'm at like a dozen. So I'm very early on in this process. I took a super quarter and away shot on a nil guy, but when I shot it, I didn't think it was two quarter in a way lo and behold, the era went through eighteen inches almost of pure stomach before it went into the vitals. The animal only went seventy five yards. But that animal, that arrow and the setup I had, I feel like helped it. But that arrow had to travel all the way through a very densely you know, brows packed stomach to get to the vitals and then still do his job of cutting and killing the animal. So in my mind that just that simple two blade, it was a single bevel. It allowed it to slice through all that and still get to where it needed to go to get the job done. Right where if a different broadhead and maybe even yours, Taylor, it hits all that stomach content and maybe it can't make it through there. Because it was just too much resistance, right, And that could be on me to not take that severe quarter bring away shot next time if I was using that. If you have totally you have to know you and your gear, right. I'm convinced that that bow hunting like part of that high, that awesome feeling that we get is remaining calm and trying to control yourself while you're having the most insane adjournaline dump possible. Right Like, there's a critter there, you're at full draw. You know what's going to happen, but you might have to wait ten seconds or thirty seconds or ninety seconds or let down, right like, like that is what we all live for. That's that rush. But you have to know in that moment. And that example for you is a perfect example. There are times where if you're taking a shot on an animal that is hard quartered away, you might have an entrance point that's at that last rip or second to last rip. I mean it is way back there and that's the correct shot angle that that arrow needs to travel. And depending on the animal like an elk, I mean that arrow has got to go another what thirty inches forty inches to even get into the diaphragm get into the chess cavity. So you know, in that instance, a smaller cutting fixed blade cut on contact head like a two blade, could be perfect. But you also don't have to have that animal die in fifty yards. So I think like part of it is like they say, you know, horses for courses, or you have to have your gear for the job. When I go out west, my gear changes up right, um, And and that's because I know I have more room to play with and I and penetration is key here in the suburbs. You know, failure is not an option, and that tends to take the fixed blade heads out for me and then or excuse me, the mechanical heads out for me and puts the fixed blades into play. And then you know, a critter going down as fast as humanly possible as important. So that's where these large cutting diameters come come, you know, useful for me. Where like you said earlier, if a deer goes down one hundred yards, for you guys, you're like, hell, yeah, it's down. I watched it drop, Whereas I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to go pull my street clothes out of my car and get changed and you know, I'm about to get yelled at by Karen, so here we go. So success for me is different than success for the average hunter. But I think knowing that equipment and how it's performing is really really key. And also, you know, early on I was shooting large mechanicals that were a two blade mechanical, so a rear deploying two blade mechanical. And what was mind blowing to me was how much variability you had just depending on what articulation that blade entered at. So if it was totally horizontal, you could get completely different results than totally vertical because you just have this like cutting slit that goes through there, and you could theoretically, you know, have one that went through vertically and you catch a bunch of goodies and the animal goes down right away, and if it's horizontal or it's some weird angle, you just have the potential of not getting you know, all the good stuff. So when I look at a larger cutting chunk, to me, that's more forgiving than just the slit right that goes through. I think a lot of people would agree with you there too. Where the anytime you can add an axis of cutting is better than just the one, and I've got the first elk I killed, same thing. It was the perfectness of perfect shots. Both lungs passed through through the scapula on the far side. I was like, oh, that thing's it's done right. I just I was kicking back with my wife, just saying, hey, let's give it thirty minutes, we'll go and start start butchering. Well. Twenty four hours later, I'd lost a blood trail over and over again, spent the night in the wood. It's I'm just doing mercy loops and randomly come upon this beaver pond and this cow's fallen into it, and this is I found it, so I can tell you exactly what the arrow did. It was. It was actually interesting because it was had the water had chilled everything down so much that it was a beautiful netcropsy, like all the everything, the heart and the lungs were in this like perfect state. Right. It was just cold and you could look at it and see see what all happened there. But the best I can figure is because there was only one axis on that cut, no bleeders. It was a Magnus stinger, which I think is a people consider a good broadhead. But if I was going to shoot it, I would definitely have bleeders because that just that single slit going through there. It allowed those lungs to sort of seal that slit and maintain some sort of compression and keep working. And that elk went a mile. Yeah, I mean, it happens. The there's a reason that after World War One, you know, triangle shaped daggers were outlawed right in warfare, and it's because it's very difficult to suiture that wound and fix it. That's what I want to shoot. I don't want, you know, something that's reparable. And you know, mother nature is great at surviving, and I've seen animals of buddies of mine that have gotten like one lung hits with a two blade head, very similar to like what you're talking about, Yanni, that the deer lived. I mean, we shot a dough once it twenty three and fifteen eight years ago that had been shot and only had one lung hit. And when we opened her up, her one lung was totally healthy and functional up until about twenty minutes before her other lung looked like a raisin. It was black and had shriveled up and was just like a dead lung. And the best guests that we had, now granted we're all not very intelligent people, was that, you know, that lung basically was debt. It ceased to work in her from that one long hit um and and she still survived though. So it's unbelievable the resiliency that these animals have, and and that's why it's important to put a big gold chunk through them, right Yeah? Can I kind of have a two parter here, but for folks going into like a store looking at some broadheads, can when they're looking at a pack of broadheads, can you tell them the difference between like a double bevel and a single bevel and then a chisel tip versus like a cut on contact, Like, what does that look like? Absolutely? Yeah? So, um, you know, a single bevel is just going to have the cutting kind of blade the shave part on one side. The other side will be flat or un sharpened. I guess it would be a good way to put it. And the theory is that that will core through as it's cutting. It will help kind of continue that spiraling for deeper penetration. I've never had an issue with penetration, so I can't really speak to like, hey, this arrow is buried deeper in the dirt than the other ones that I've shot through it. So I have not seen really any difference between the two of those. And then you said a cut on contact head versus a chiseltip, So you know, cut on contact head is just going to look kind of like the point of a dark not sharpened, whereas a chisel tip will have some sort of like sharp angles or sharpened structure to them to help kind of punch through or cut whatever it's potentially hitting. And now I have had phenomenal success with chisel tip type heads or something that gradually like starts at a very fine point and then goes up into a more gen totle angle to where that can help punch through something. I think that's a very important feature for a head to have. Well, hold on, I thought, the head you're shooting now it's cut on contact, isn't it. Yeah, Well, it's kind of a hybrid. It has a one that I'm shooting now is cut on contact with a little bit of like a fine point. The head that I shot prior to that one kind of a hybrid too. It came down to like a super fine point with a gentle ramping up to it, and I've had that punch through stuff that it should not punch through. So that's always kind of fun to see. Well, I don't know if that's fun. Actually it means you didn't put the best shot on an animal if it blows through something. But what a good example of a chisel tip be like a slick trick. Yeah, I would put a slick trick in the chiseltip category, even though it's kind of like gentle. I think the fact that it has the four heads that are coming down to a very fine point is what really helps that head penetrate through. And there are a couple of different variations of that head. So generally in a head, I want gradual cutting. I do not want something that just instantly fans out on like you know, a steep angle, because if you think about that head going through tissue or bone or whatever it's penetrating through, you want it to gradually cut as opposed to just instantly go from oh i'm flying, now I'm cutting. You know, that's that is taking away from that kinetic energy and momentum that is propelling the arrow through the air. Got it. So you're staying heads that would end up being too shallow of an angle or are and I'm guessing that's mostly mechanicals right to become almost too flat, too fast, that's what you're saying you don't like. Yeah, So one thing that I really had some of the worst success with were over the top puting expandables. So you have two ways for an expandable broad head to deploy. There's rear opening. So if you guys are thinking of a broadhead looking down from top to bottom, that heads, the blades are going to slide back into their open position and cut, so they're instantly cutting using the tissue to open. Whereas a over the top head, if you put your hands together and then open your hands outwardly, that's how an over the top head is designed to work. For me, I think there are a lot of potential issues with that type of system deploying because you're taking a ton of energy and momentum to open a head that way. Also, you're having a very small entry hole, and for me, I want giant holes everywhere that they are able to be, so to have an over the top opening head, to me, robs a lot of energy and momentum, and then also is not allowing a large head or excuse me, a large hole until the exit side. Interesting bones, what works well in your experience ripped through the categories, and let's just say ribs, because I'm sure you've seen plenty of scapulards get hit too, but let's just stay with ribs. Have you ever had anything failed just on a rib. I've never had anything fail just on a white tail rib. I have seen where people have had issues on elk ribs. I'm not the most experienced elk hunter, considering the fact that I'm more pear shaped than not so the elk mountains and I don't really get along, but for white tail, I've never had a rib get in the way of anything. I mean, I've smashed rib no problem now, I would think just generally when it comes to bone though, on our spectrum that we've talked about earlier, where you know, small as on one side, large as on the other. The smaller the head, the better job it's going to do to penetrate. There's less stuff catching it there. It's easier to kind of mal through tissue as opposed to a larger head where there might not be anything behind the blade kind of helping it push through. I do think that brings up an interesting kind of point though, where on some heads that are designed like a fixed blade, or you know some of the fixed blades that don't have a trust system on the blade, so if it does encounter some resistance, it might break away to where that will rob some energy. But what's left is able to still penetrate down into an animal and keep doing its job. There was a head that I used to shoot shot a ton of deer with that was a fixed blade head that looked like a mechanical where the blades were already kind of deployed, and I had many instances where that head would penetrate far beyond anything else because if it encountered anything, it would just kind of bend out of the way. So reliability or durability rather not the best on that head, But as far as doing its job, it was awesome, and the core of that head was great. The downside of that head the reason I ended up stopped shooting it. It was too big. So you run into issues where like these broadheads are a problem to fit in your quiver, or you potentially have like bow shelf issues where if that head is a certain way, it might catch the riser on your shelf. And for me, I do not want to put in the time and effort or have the potential for failure pop up in the tree. When I'm like spun around like a two hundred and forty pound pretzel and I'm getting ready to execute a shot, I don't want, you know, the arrow to fly weird and all of a sudden you're like, what happened? And you know, you realize that the arrow caught the shelf of your bow or there was something that created a potential issue in your shot. Yeah, man, I've got an and I do it for that one. My brother in law and I were hunting, I think it was two falls ago, and first evening out he gets a shot. It's a little bit on the longside, which is why I thought he had made the mistake. Initially it was it was fifty plus and I see the bull run off with the arrow stuck. I mean looked like he was aiming for the jugular, you know, just like high high neck, and I'm like, what in the world, Like, like, I know that was a little bit of a punk. Might have been excited, but I mean you're like three or four feet away from where you were supposedly aiming. Right. Well, we didn't find that bowl, but it was a week or two later when when he's reevaluating, he didn't even want to hunt forever. He just set the bow down and he was so upset about the whole thing. But it wasn't until week or two later we're shooting and he's drawn back, and I'm like, we gotta shoot the broadheads, like, no more field tips. We've got to figure out what happened. And sure enough, one of those blades was just long enough. And I always put felt down on or mole skin whenever you want on the on the shelf, right, so to minimize any kind of noise. Well you could see that that that uh one tip of one of those broadhead blades was just catching it enough. And sure enough, at twenty yards he shoots missed the target. So at fifty it was very easy to see how he could be off by three or four feet, you know, but he's probably shooting his field tips and hitting you know, inside out. Bull's eyes going liked already, let's go. Yeah, Yeah, you have to practice with the gear that you're going out in the woods and using, because otherwise you don't know that that problem exists until it's you know, too late. Yeah, are you looking at material construction and stuff too? On your broadheads? That's what they're made out of to some extent, although you know, not as much as I probably should be in the sense that all of the all the heads that I'm shooting and having success with, you know, they're not made of lesser material. Early on, I had an issue with a certain expandable head that was made out of an aluminum ferrell and that was an absolute disaster because the aluminum was crumpling like a can, right, So you can't have that. So but I don't know enough about like the hardness of steel, whether it's like four or fourty or you know, four to eighty or whatever. I like that that's Latin to me. Um. I know that when I have a head that is, you know, made out of quality material, quality material, it's performing flawlessly. What's the what's the most you think deer you've ever shot with the same head, resharpening, shooting a deer, resharpening, shooting a head like what's being your longest lasting head? I counted that. Last year, I had a twelve deer that I shot with the same head um and it unfortunately the head expired when it passed through and smashed into a quartz rock and looked like kind of like concave. It was very smashed um and that head performed flawlessly, and that was actually what won me over to shooting the head that I'm currently shooting now compared to what I had shot for for years prior to that. Can you tell us what the head was? Yeah, So the head that I'm shooting now is the method archery. It's called the VBS. So it's an inch and inch and a quarter by inch and eighth head. And I actually have that exact head sitting down here on my on my too sharpened pile. But it's really it's dead. It cannot be brought back. But it went through a pile of critters and I was like, you know what this thing is? Uh, this has won me over. Um, it's a you know, phenomenal head. The prior to that, the head that I you know, shot a ton was a four blade head that is readily available, and I just think the world of and I've seen it performed in situations that it shouldn't have. And um really just a phenomenal head that um you know works for everyone. Which one it's the slick trick grizz trick too, So the Griz trick for me, UM, I like the blade angle of it better. So the Griz trick is an inch and a quarter by an inch and a quarter head, but the blades are further back on that on that Farrell as opposed to the electric mags. So the electric magnum ends up with a little steeper cutting diameter or angle because it's like tip and then instantly blade, whereas that Griz trick there's a little more of the actual broadhead Farrell before it gets into the blade. And those heads are phenomenal. The only downside to eclectric head is that there's a washer on it, and for some reason, that washer you would think is square on both sides. But if that you have to spin those heads, and if they don't spend, true, you need to flip the washer over and then they will spin. So I just spin them on my finger, like anytime I get the deer camp or when I assemble ahead. I just you know, I'm sure you guys do is just spin the arrow kind of like a top on your finger, and you can feel if it's spinning appropriately or not. If you feel any wobble on that head, you need to stop and flip that washer around. That was the only downside to those heads is that there's a little bit of potential for imperfection just because of that washer. But the system, the way they work together for resharpening them, they're an absolute dream dream head. The method head that I'm shooting now has a little bit of a swept angle to the blades, and I think that that really helps with the cutting, and it's more of like a gradual slice, just at rapid speed as it's entering an animal. I shot a dough recently. It took a step right when my shot was breaking, So as I'm applying tension to the release, shot breaks and it hit her. My initial reaction was, oh, no, it was back. She was broadside, maybe like one degree quartered away. She ran about ten steps, looked back and fell over. Debt better to be lucky than good. I definitely caught some goodies there right on the back side of the lung. But um, you know I have not. You must have opened it up. What did you catch to get that? So it was a result. I got the back of her lungs. I think that her lungs she you know, people don't realize that, you know, just like our body when we have air and our lungs, our lungs are expanded. I think her lungs had expanded out and I actually caught the back triangle, if you will, of her lungs. It was a perfect double lung shot. But visually it looked like looked at guts. I mean, it looked like liver if I was lucky. So I just happen to get lucky with her. But that's the type of forgiveness that I want, and I feel like by shooting a large four blade head, I'm getting forgiveness on both ends of the spectrum. If I hit back, like in that instance, I'm able to hopefully catch some goodies and put it. Deer down quickly also have large holes to where they're not clawting up or they're less likely to clog up, and they're easier to follow the trails of If I hit forward, I know that I have personally enough energy and momentum to punch through pretty much anything that it's hitting. I mean, unless I hit the absolute knuckle of a shoulder, you know, which some bullets aren't getting through, then I'm probably okay. A lot of info I don't know, if I don't know, if I have it, if I'm any clear now in my head about what I think about broadhead before we started. But I'm gonna I'm gonna personally have to read listen to this podcast in which you talked about So here's how here's how it would sum it up. Um, if you're shooting, if you're shooting a tunebow and you're hunting whitetail, um, you know, shots inside forty yards, it's hard to go wrong with a fixed head. If you are shooting less poundage where a fixed head might be detrimental for expansion or whatever. I mean, it's hard to go wrong with a fixed head. Fixed head in the right spot's going to do his job. And if you're hunting out west where recovery can be a little longer, maybe a slightly smaller fixed head, but never is a large cutting diameter broadhead a bad thing. Yeah, I feel like everybody should start with a fixed blade and then maybe like depending on the situation, and you're set up you could graduate into trying like an expandable, But I don't think people should just go to an expandable just for ease of not having to tune your bow or something. They should just do it right and go to a try fixed blade. I totally agree a fixed blade with bleeders on it. You want four You want to cut a chunk, not a slit, and then you know, if you are experiencing issues from there, start to address those issues. So if you notice that the head that you're shooting is loud in flight, Like if you start noticing that you're you're shooting animals and they're like ducking bad, they're hearing it, you're hearing a whistle, address that issue. Hots are you're not going to have much of an issue. Like if that's happening, your broadhead itself is catching a lot of air in flight. And you know, we're talking like minor changes that happen from a solid blade to a to a vented head. So start with a fixed blade and address potential problems from there. But you can't go wrong with a fixed plate. Yeah now, yeah, and again, you're just gonna have to take the responsibility to tune your bow to get your system dialed, because I think that's one of the main things you'll hear and we'll get it in the comments is going to be Yeah, but those things are so hard to tune. They're they're not though, So I mean, here for anyone that's shooting, you know, the first thing you need to check is your form. Is your draw length the correct length. Like I see these people all the time that are overbowed their draw length, their their hands back behind their head. You know, that's just it's bad. That's like trying to play golf with clubs that Tiger Woods is going to use. You need to get the bow correct for you, get the drawway to where you can shoot it, shoot a lot, get your grip consistent, and all you do is you shoot a fuel point and you shoot a broadhead and you move your rest a little bit and you're there, like, this is not extreme sign You do not have to take it to the level that I do where I'm like moving strands on I string around because I'm weird and OCD about it and I literally can't shoot it if I don't feel like I put that level of detail into it. I mean, there are tons of resources online for very simple bow tuning one on one and just get your stuff hitting in the right spot. Do not just move your your bowsite to where a broadhead's hitting and try to go hunt. Please, don't do that. You know, do a little level of tuning and you will be very happy with the results. It's more confident in your system too, for sure. Absolutely. And if like we all know that Murphy follows you into the back country, and the second that you're in the back country and something goes wrong, you're going to have the knowledge and the confidence to work on your gear and know what happened. You're not going to have to burn a day driving into town to the local bow shop that's probably slammed to figure out what happened to your bow. You know, like you're burning a day of vacation to hunt. Don't spend it at the bow shop. You can your boat right there in the back country and be ready to go. Yep. Absolutely, So we're going to close this thing out with a listener question from Lee underscore Lands on Instagram. He says he's having issues with making holes with little or no blood trail. He says how and why and is it too sharp? Never? Too sharp? Never? Tested your tested on your finger if you think it's too sharp. How many times have you guys cut yourself when you're when you're you know, doing something with a sharp blade, and you look at it for a second and you're like, oh, I hope it doesn't bleed, and then the blood starts trickling out right, You're like no, no, no, and then you super glow it back together. Um. I'll add to that real quick. The sharp cuts same way on your own finger something. If you cut yourself with an extremely sharp knife or a razor blade, it takes forever to stop bleeding. The dollar that knife is, or in this case, the dollar your broadhead is, the easier it is for that wound to close back up to coagulate. It's just it's science. You can't dispute that. So, yeah, you can't be too sharp, shoot sharp. Yeah. Now, so I have shot I mean hundreds and hundreds of deer with the same head and have seen brought blood trails where one you walk and you're like, man, Stevie Wonder can follow this blood trail Like I could video this and send it to Slick Trick. They're going to use it on every promotional content ever. Or whatever head you're shooting right, and I've shot deer with the same head, and then like, where the hell is the blood trail? You know, and you're like, I know the deer was right here. I can look at the footage and see it was standing in front of this tree, and there's not a drop of blood. The reason for that is shot placement. So depending on where you hit that animal. If you shoot an animal, and even if you're shooting from an elevated position, but based on the topography, that critter is almost level with you, that arrow is entering an exiting almost level and you get high lungs. It takes a while for that blood to fill up before it's sprang out. And anybody who's shot a deer like that, I mean, I know I have. I think you guys might have. Like you're like looking all over and then you find blood, and then you find a ton of blood because it's finally there and it's blowing out. That's why deer that's hitting the heart will blow blood everywhere because it's instant blood. It's pumping out, same with a like a fumoral artery hit. So the only reason that you will have poor blood trails are mainly it's shot placement. Now, if you hit a deer low and you get one hole, or maybe you're using an over the top expandable, so your entry hole is little, and your exit hole potentially gets clogged with you know, like a chunk of liver or whatever. That obviously will impact your blood trail, but generally lower in the lungs is hard to beat. You're gonna have spray everywhere and fantastic trail. A lot of gut shot or single like shoulder hit deer or any animal for that matter, will end up clogging up and you're basically doing the hail Mary circles from there trying to to you know, desperately find that animal nice anything else. Ye, So your answer to Lee is make better shot placement. Pay pay more attention to your shot placement. Get that a little lower in that that lower third of the animals. So I want the arrow to exit through my my little you know, soccer ball, my kids, soccer ball in that lower third of an animal. Um that's that's vital to catching what I want to catch and having it go through to where that blood trail is instant, and it's it's very frothy and short hopefully. Yeah, uh no, I don't have anything else, Taylor's there anything we missed that you want to add about broadheads on deer at close range and making them not go far at all? No, I'm sorry to take you down the rabbit hole. I can talk about this for days. I've definitely have a little bit of experience in it. So if anybody has any questions, let you guys know, and I'm happy to help in any way. You can ultimately trust your grell. Tell everybody where they can find we know, we have the Hank and Hunt podcast, and I tell everybody like work they can. They can find you on the Internet or Instagram. Yep. Instagram is Urban Bowman and most of the hunts that I do end up on YouTube under hunts Urban, so check them out. Lots of different broadheads being put in the air at critters on there for sure. All right, Well, thanks Taylor for everybody listening. You can send your questions, things you want to hear or specific questions to USK at gear talk at the meter dot com, and then if you go to the website at the mediator dot com, locate the podcast tab find gear talk on each individual episode. You can comment specifically on there and uh yeah, or you can get a hold of us on Instagram at Jordan's about his Mind and Yannes underscore patel us pretty sure it's an underscore gosh, y'all just thank you. Can't even remember myself now, shoot us a d M directly and we'll address it. So cool. Thanks for listening everyone, Thanks guys,