I started bow hunting when I was 15 years old, I will be 31 by the close of this years archery season. I have always used a Mathews bow and Muzzy broadheads. Last weekend I was in need of some new arrows, and while I was in the bow shop the owner (also a friend of mine) talked me into switching to Rage broadheads. Everyone that I can think of that I know locally uses them and swears by them so I was on board to give them a try. Last night I had a mature doe come in at 33 yards perfectly broadside. At the release of my arrow she lunged just a little causing me to hit a little forward in the shoulder. I wasn't too worried as I've had this happen before and the arrow would still penetrate plenty deep to kill the animal. This was not the case last night.

I got a little over 4" of total penetration, and the broadhead broke off inside of the deer. At first I thought the insert pulled out, but no... Anyone else have something similar happen?

Cant say as to the Rage Extremes....never used them. Always shot the std 2" cut with no issues

If the doe lunged a little at your release and you hit a little forward on her shoulder then I call suspect because i have never had a deer lunge backward...something tells me you would have shot really far forward if she hadn't lunged.
As far as the penetration??? What's your setup? Poundage? Velocity? Weight?

I let a buddy come shoot this deer in hopes that he could get his first P&Y buck.



He raged him. He got less than 2 inches of penetration. This is a game cam pic a neighbor got of the deer 2 months later.



I make the argument about muzzies that some guys make about TSX bullets. If I had hit that buck with a muzzy where my buddy hit that deer with a rage, I would have killed him.

Ditch the expandables and go to a quality cut on contact fixed blade. VPA's come to mind (as well as others).

Expandables work. Seen too many shot with them to believe otherwise. And thats around here....not on tv. Ran the Rage 2 blade last year. Gaping hole in and out. That from a 60# bow shooting a 400+ grain arrow. Havent tried the Grave Diggers on game yet, but hope to real soon. Betting they work well too. But, if I decide to go back to ST its simply a matter of screwing them on and going hunting. The ST, the rage, and the grave diggers all fly to same POI as my field points with no adjustments required

Bet ya I could blow a rage through that buck. Blood trail be short and plentiful. Takes a bit of common sense to run the mech heads. Higher FOC and a heavyish arrow do the trick every time. Most arrows are fast off the shelf but shed momentum quickly upon impact which greatly affects penetration

He runs a 80lb matthews monster and ACC arrows, I would have thought it would have blown through instead of bouncing off the shoulder. I understand they now have a model with trocar tips, they may have worked better.

I should have mentioned that the broadhead broke just like the OPs

Wonder if it was the same 2.3" rage extreme? Again, I have no experience with it. Havent tried the 3 blade either due to rumors of penetration issues. But the original 2" cut 100grn rage has piled up quite a number of deer the last few years with no issues. But just because one particular model is having issues, dont bash the whole line up

I had really good success with the Original Rage two blades. Good pass throughs & great wound channels. But I just hated the Mickey Mouse rubber bands that kept the blades folded in flight.
I went back to using plain old Muzzy 3-blades, & untill recently, believed nothing could beat them for Penatration. Blew lots of them right through the shoulders & grissel plates of big feral hogs here at the Ranch. Never had a failure or broken blade, either. Just never was happy with the accuracy of Muzzys past 40 yards.

Then, I switched to SlickTricks, last year. Exact same terminal performance & Penatration as Muzzies, but much more accurate with my Matthews Compound.

Now I'm shooting the SlickTrick Viper Tricks & old Zwickey 2-blade traditional broadheads with my new Custom LongBow, comparing to see which perform better on Feral Hogs. Haven't had time to shoot any yet, but I'll post some Picts & results when I do.

Too many stories of expandables failing, why take the risk?

I hear what your saying, but I do not bash just rage, bash all mechanicals. I have never heard anyone say, "If I had just used a rage (or any mechanical) I would have recovered that deer."

Just a fixed broadhead guy, ahve been for years ever since I learned a lesson about the old vortex broadheads.

Good advice right there!

I don't think I have ever said this on here before.

I HATE EXPANDABLES!

Do they work? Sure they do and well when everything is 100% right. It is to easy to use a good quality fixed blade that flys to same POA/POI as a field point. There are a bunch to choose from like Muzzy and Slick Tricks to name a couple. They work end of story.

What I've found is that the deer I've shot with the 100 gr 2 blade rage generally die within sight and a blood trail Ray Charles could follow,including Punching a shoulder blade,I used to shoot muzzies but just not as accurate and yes they kill,just not as quick as the Rage's

Clearly not, at least in this case. A broadhead that breaks apart on impact doesn't work. With proper tuning, any COC will shoot the same as field points.

125 gr G5 Striker Magnum is a dirty rotten killing SOB, brutalizes anything in front of it at 489 grs total arrow weight and 300 fps.

Gunner

You can't beat a chisel-tipped fixed-blade broadhead for a direct shoulder hit. But for deer hit too far back, nothing will kill like a Rage.

Is that because of the 2" cut I'm assuming?

Again, i have had absolutely no issues with the Rage. I can tune almost any broadhead to shoot to same POI as fieldpoints. Some just do not read the script and prefer to plane badly. I have run and continue to use slick tricks. But I also like the Rage and am also field testing the Grave Digger. Could give results if I could just SEE a deer. Guess someone tipped them off.

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.

That is simply not true. It may Group as well, but very rarely will it shoot to the same POI as a feild point.

With a properly tuned bow they will. I own my own tuning shop. I go a bit deeper than your average pro shop when it comes to setting up a bow. Bareshafts and fletched arrows group together @40yds. That means absolutely perfect arrow flight. And yes it IS achieveable with ANY bow.

Never used a rage or any other mechanical on big game.

I have used the rage on turkeys. I'll not likely ever shoot anything else. Turkeys are often a difficult animal to anchor with an arrow. Once they fly, even with a solid lethal hit, recovery becomes difficult.

Since shooting the rage at turkeys, exactly above the drumstick, the furthest they have traveled is 6-10 feet with a minimal of flopping. This minimum of flopping and running keeps the rest of the flock in front of us so that another hunter can also shoot.

Turkeys that run off or fly disrupt the flock and there is only one shot. This has worked excellent for me archery hunting and another person with a shotgun. I shoot first, no noise no disruption, then the shotgunner takes one too.

Often an odd thing happens with Turkeys. The remaining birds in the flock begin to peck at and kick at the dead bird. They don't fly off. I think they want to kill the convulsing moron having the seizure.

I've seen plenty attack a SHOTGUN killed bird too. Its how I've seen multiple shotgun kills. Most I"ve seen was 4 birds killed from the same flock, all with shotguns.

I lost two bucks with Rage two blades and a doe that I found too late because she went way too far. I have since switched to Spitfire 3 blade mechanicals and am 6 for 6 with them. They do the job right.

Interesting that some, with mechanical failures, keep trying mechanicals when fixed are proven.

Mechanicals do more damage and make bigger holes.

My brother killed a buck this year with a fixed blade WASP and it had an exit hole, but damn little blood to follow. Arrow entered front edge of hind quarter and exited behind opposite shoulder. Lungs and liver were hit and it still went over 200yds. We used disturbed leaves as much as blood to track the deer.

I've hit 4 deer in a similar fashion with my mechanical broadheads, and the deer never made it further than 70 yds and often less than 50.

look at the pictures I posted 2 pages back and you'll see the typical sized exit hole. Beer can sized and LOTS of blood.

I wish you lived closer....

My local shop is run by "good ol boys" who do the best they can with the knowledge they've picked up over the years, but I don't think they can take it to the next level.

I've tried to set my bow up(Mathews Drenalin), but as of yet, it will not shoot broadheads and tips to the same place. Some broadheads it won't shoot at all. I realize it could be a number of things wrong.

I've got it to shoot okay with small COC out to the range I feel comfortable at.

But next year, if I've got time and the $$$, I want to get it tuned properly and shoot so I can shoot some Big COC out to 40 yards or so.

+1

A 1" 4-blade fixed cuts as much as a 2" 2-blade expandable.

4 blade Muzzies are devastating. Last 11 point I hit made it 18 yards. Last bear made it about 15 yards and was coming at me. It falling before it got to me made me a muzzy man forever.

Hard to beat a Muzzy. They're kinda the .308's of the broadhead world.

Yea, or the 300 RUMs.

Well, I guess for short range, you are right, in retrospect.

Rages might not be everyones fav, but I bet come Feb ltppowell will give the Grave Diggers a real serious look. Especially after he gets a first hand look at the carnage they cause

Well, lots of stuff has been killed with a bow, starting with a long time ago. Indians were glad to go to steel from flint and the next big step was twice as many edges.

killed a buck and a doe with 2blade rage broadheads this year. both went about 75-80yds before fallin over. both bled well and had 2-3in entry and exit holes. both shot thru the rib cage.boh shotwithmy tenpoint 165lb x-bow.

Killed over 20 deer with rage two blade never had any problem. 95% shot under 20 yards. I wrap floss twice around to keep the blades in place.

I've shot two in the shoulder with expandables and had them stop like a dart in a dart bd. Killed one of the deer a few weeks later and he just had a big knot on his shoulder bone just under the blade. Expandables work great for broad side rib impacts, but they suck on bone hits. When it comes to bone hits, pass the Slick Tricks please.

My brother had an issue with a Rage not opening when he hit a nice 10 pointer. He took them off and went to a fixed. He uses Muzzys, but I've heard good things about the Montecs as well. I would switch if I wasn't confident. I don't see the point of a mechanical broadhead and I will stick with a fixed one myself. One less thing to worry about. My 2 cents.

I fell for the Rage marketing campaign - the boy shot a nice buck with one a couple of years ago. Hit a little too far forward and drilled him in the center of the shoulder. Deer ran off and we watched him go for over a mile. Saw the deer again a month later fighting with another buck. Had a little limp, but otherwise seemed no worse for the wear. Have a friend that had a couple of bears disappear on him with Rages and his neighbor shot a gorgeous whitetail buck that also ran off. In every case a lack of penetration and almost no blood made finding the animal almost an impossibility. I've used Montecs and found them to be very deadly, but they don't fly as well as Slick Tricks. I think I've found the perfect broadhead for me in the Slick Trick Magnum. They fly great from my setup and they are sharp and deadly right out of the box.

I have never used the Rage heads Myself but several buddies have tried them with not great results, I only know of one buddy that still hunts with them...................Hb

I'll keep my Muzzies.

you might find reading this useful

http://www.american-hunter.com/broadheads/broadhead_test.htm
btw I know from experience that a decent arrow with these broad heads is very effective ON ELK from my 80 lb draw bow
I use carbon 32" arrows with a 31.5" draw length, and arrows commonly zip completely thru the elks chest on lung shots even if ribs are cut , yeah I use an old out of date bow but it works fine for me

http://www.american-hunter.com/broadheads/Phantom_125grain_4blade.htm