Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting Not impressed with Rage broadheads so far....

I am one of two guys at my rod and gun club that does bow tuning, arrow building and so on. I'm a hunter safety instructor, archery safety instructor and I'm a board certified wildlife biologist. I've been bow hunting for 30 plus years. For half of those years, expandables were illegal in Rhode Island. My best friend and I petitioned fish and game to allow their use for years. Our biologist knew nothing of deer hunting and based her decisions on dubious stats. I remember her showing Puckett's blood trailers. Remember them? They were dogs. I used Spitfire heads in Connecticut and was going along happily killing deer with them. My friend Joe was hunting on damage permits happily filling box cars with dead deer with them. He told me once, he stopped counting at 300! Mostly on my recommendation, I would say 90% of the members of my rod and gun club use them. Everyone is satisfied with them. I butcher 20 plus deer a year for guys and they are all good. I've never seen a head come apart. I've never seen a broken blade. 30 years of bow hunting. Never. The way people talk, broadhead failure is rampant. With Spitfires, I haven't seen it. It's the oldest broadhead in NAP's line and still their #1 seller. I buy 2 packages of 100 grain heads every year and download their rebate forms on line and get $10 off each pack. This year they're only $5 but it's better than nothing. A good friend of mine owns a very busy archery pro shop in Connecticut and he has told me repeatedly that he has had good luck with Grim Reaper broadheads too. Same design with a different deployment method. I've been too happy to switch.

When it comes to Rage heads, my friend Jeff bought some and tested them in the block target. He found they weren't opening. He was told they were going through and the inertia was snapping the blades back closed. He got another "harder" block and fired a few arrows into it and he sawed the block open and cut the block away from the heads. Some indeed weren't opened. These are the first ones to come out. The 100 grain slip cam design heads. My other friend tried them and rolled a blade completely flat on a bone and gave up on them. I haven't tried them. I like the Spitfires for two reasons. They have worked for everyone I know that uses them and the cutting edges of the blades are folded up and protected. I feel that makes them a lot safer for the hunter as well.

With your head, I have a half dozen broadheads that are in tact but the arrows are broken 2" back. That's a perfect picture of an arrow passing through a deer's body and hitting the far leg or shoulder bone. The deer's first step is going to snap that arrow. It could snap the ferrel of the head too. I took a Spitfire on a 2" stick out of a 200 pound 11 pointer my friend shot at 30 yards on Saturday. He was walking by. My friend grunted and the deer kept walking. He shot anyway and hit it in the hind quarter. It broke both big leg bones (femurs?) and killed the thing within 40 yards. He thinks he shot the femoral artery. I butchered the deer yesterday and the amount of damage was remarkable. The blood shot meat was hard to accept for a archery killed deer. I got a quart zip lock bag of meat out of the hind quarters of a 200 pound deer. He used a Spitfire.

Before Spitfire heads, I used Thunderhead 85 grain heads and had no issues with them either. I switched to the 1 1/2" cutting head of the Spitfires. I shoot a 400 plus grain arrow 280 fps and if all goes well, I'm buying a crossbow tomorrow. A nice 340 fps Ten Point to tide me over until my much needed and put off for 7 years shoulder surgery. I know I'm sunk this season and a crossbow with a 5 pound crank is going to be the only way I'm getting out. I'm getting it from my favorite pro and friend and he said I could use my 100 grain Spitfires. Great I have some on hand. They make a 170 grain crossbow head that cuts a 3" hole... Nah!

That's what I would assume.

I think the Rage works good when everything is perfect.If you get into the shoulder your in trouble IME.The blades bend easy and that cant help penetration either.I switched to the WacEm Triton 3 blade and I'm not looking back.

Expandable are not legal in Idaho..........I hope it stays that way.

My buddy uses the rage with mixed results. Perfect broadside shots seem to be no problem. He has had them glance on quartering shots and had one come open in fligh and vear way over a deer.

I really like the meat seeker 1.5" 3 blade. They break bone and have opened everytime for me.


Josh

Shooting 70 lb draw weight ,I took a buck Tuesday morning I drove a 100 gr 2 blade rage through both lungs and stuck in the off side shoulder at 38 yards ,it literally stuck in the off side shoulder and literally wouldn't come out,I broke the arrow finally dragging him out,oh and he stood there a split second didn't take a step and fell over dead ,I can't ask for any better than that,but that's my experience

I wouldn't personally shoot a rage. Too many failure stories.

I shot Grim Reapers back when they were still new to the market and had a problem with blade snapping off on things such as a target and a rotten stump. I know people that LOVE them, and have a friend that has killed a lot of chit with GRs, but I wouldn't have any confidence in them after that episode.

I've never shot Spitfires, but those things just kill animals plain and simple. I don't know what it is, but they might as well be a pod on the end of your arrow. The owner of my local shop has shot two elk with them in the past two years, one at 60-ish and one I think around 20 and blew threw them with a 380-ish grain arrow running around 285fps. And you VERY rarely hear anyone bad mount them. I've been thinking about shooting some myself.

MUCH harder to have a failure with a fixed head... mechanicals are just more crap to go wrong at the time you least expect it.

BTDT with them, luckily, and htat was a HUGE luckily never lost any game with failed mechanicals, but came close twice...

Folks. YOu are BOWHUNTERS. Means close range work. Means learning to blood trail deer.

Not rely on 100 yard shots and cutting holes so big you don't have to trail WHEN they work.

Zwickey was the first head I used, after having a wasp blow up the blades on a doe. That set of 6 wasp heads, from the 70s, I probably still have some of them somewhere...

Zwickey never failed me. Tried a few different mechanicals. Some good things, some really bad things, or at least could have been very bad. Cost me a good buck too, from an angling shot when the blade caught the hair before the point got in, shaved his side.... never penetrated.

Wife ran with Muzzys after zwickeys and never had a bad thing from either.

Running the souped up muzzys now as in slick tricks. When I'm not back to Snuffers.

Too many folks have had failures with these mechanical heads to risk it when there are many otehrs out there that are proven to work.

Beg to differ. I've been using this make of broadhead for 15yrs and it has NEVER FAILED. Any angle, any bone, deer die quickly.



for the price of one rage broadhead, you can get three of these killers.




exit hole on one deer this year



exit hole from another deer




Shoulder of another deer with complete pass thru





I shoot a Hoyt magna-tec, XX-78 2315, 70pounds, and 29" draw.

Expandables work most the time.

Muzzies work all the time.

I've NEVER lost a deer to an expandable broadhead. They make bigger holes, fly true, and are not picky about the set-up they're used on. That broadhead pictured has even taking multiple deer at severe racking angles. That big chisel tip does everything a muzzy tip does, but the blades behind it do more damage going thru tissue and bone.

I gave up rocket expandable after seeing an exp. catch a high twig of weed or grass and after hearing a couple stories of same. It sure jerks them down quick. Lots of elky marshy spots have those 4 foot tall yellow "daisies".

I used rage turkey heads this year first time.

Astonishing gaping holes zero travel minimal flopping. Nothing ive used on turkeys ever worked this good.

I'm not at all sold on big game with mechanicals. But turkeys are troublesome sometimes. The rage expandabls are very good on turkeys.

"Lunged" wasn't the correct term I suppose. When I shot she started to turn to run back down the hill causing me to catch her in the shoulder, and not behind it where I had been aiming.

The bow is a Mathews Reezen. Last year I was shooting in the lower 280's. I've changed the bow a little, but I bet that's still pretty close.


I stuck this guy this evening with another Rage broadhead. The deer was within one yard of where the doe was standing a week earlier causing me to start this thread. Complete pass through this time, and stuck in the ground 6" deep behind where he was standing. The deer ran maybe 30 yards with a ridiculous blood trail. I never had a Muzzy fail, then again, I never got a red highway like I got from the Rage either...

Doe I shot Monday with a Rage 2 blade 100 grain, Pile Driver arrow and pulling a measly 52 lbs. First pic is the entrance side. The second pic shows what the Rage did to opposite leg bone. Rage in the Cage!

They all work with perfect shots. Expandables cut big and fixed blades penetrate. Pick your poison.

I'll let the Pile Driver penetrate and leave the cutting up to the Rage.

Ill stick with my No Limit Archery Grave Digger COC heads. The best of both worlds

Rage are garbage, ive been using Grim reapers, they are built like a tank, the only mech head that is worth using, they are awesome though.