Like I said, crossbows are loud. But... they are also fast, very fast. At 20 yards or so Bambi is not going to jump the string even from a crossbow with no noise suppression whatsoever. Spooky deer at 40 yards probably can manage it though. Just because they're loud doesn't mean Bambi will be jumping at the noise, urban deer or deep woods deer. I have seen a lot of deer just stand still because they're no sure where the noise came from. One of the deer last November just stood and watched while the one I shot with a muzzle loader dropped so hard and fast it bounced.
Unless Bambi is on high alert and homed in on you, a normal 20 yard or so deer just isn't going to be able to move enough before the arrow gets there to make a difference.
As far as mechanical broad heads are concerned, I would be willing to be a pretty fair chunk of change that as many or more deer are lost with conventional fixed braod heads as with mechanicals. Shooting deer with arrows is not a very high success rate proposition. The last numbers I saw were 30 some per cent of the deer hit were lost. That's versus 19 percent loss for rifle hit deer. Both numbers are pathetic. The numbers of arrowed deer I have found dead in the woods seems to agree with those numbers. The rifle hit numbers also seem to agree with what I have seen. Bow or rifle, it seems that there's a lot of people who should be a lot more careful about what and when they shoot at.
