Wierd Boltcutter performance

[tomcat]

I think a LOT of guys don't understand the reason high lung shots yield slow to start blood trails and immediately blame the BH. As already mentioned, shooting a little lower is the solution IF you care about that initial blood trail and ease of tracking, but just knowing that high hits often come with delayed blood trails will prevent one from wasting a lot of time and frustration (doing what we've all been taught)by looking intensely for that initial blood trail near the POI.

[nchunterkw]

i doubt it was your tip. You gotta hit them low if you want them to leak.

When deer are hit in the lungs the only blood they project at first is aspirated(blown from nose as they breathe) in the form of really tiny droplets in the form of a fine mist. The distance between these spatter patterns on the ground is obviously proportional to it's speed and with every exhale. It is very difficult to track. At some point the lungs begin to fill up a bit to a level above the trachea and/or arrow hole(s) and larger droplets are blown out of the nose/arrow holes. Obviously these droplets turn into "globs" of blood as the animal slows down(due to oxygen deprivation) and tracking becomes easier and easier. Obviously large cut BH's can be exception to this by adding droplets from the external tissue cut/bleeding proportional to it's size entrance/exit, but the external rib area does have a limited blood flow, and the large cut does help that initial trail by providing higher quantity of cut veins/arteries to bleed in more volume.

IMHO I've found that blood trails on double lung hits in the center and above are tough to find on an animal that took off running for at least the first 5-10 breaths of the animal, and that could be almost 100 yds or more depending upon it's speed and the height of the hit.

I personally use a small BH and deal with this all the time. My belief is that you are simply suffocating the animal by popping his lungs and depriving him "enough" oxygen to stay conscious. The blood trail has nothing to do with killing the animal in double lung hits. I believe that the reason they run so far is proportional to the holes you punched and how effective the bags(aka lungs) hold air long enough to be absorbed by the alveoli that remain uncovered by blood. This is obviously proportional to the amount of capillaries which are cut by the BH's damage and how quickly the alveoli are covered by the blood hemorrhaging internally. At some point this essential drowns the animal. Obviously blood is thicker and stickier than water so it's much more effective.

For me and my little BH's I expect a 50-150yd trail anyways...
I've often left a marker where I hit the deer and go up 100 yards in his direction of last travel and try zig zagging laterally 50 yds each way to locate some blood rather than obsessing for that first few drops near the site of impact.
This usually helps speed the process up for me in recovering deer.

This has not been my experience at all with Slick Tricks or Ramcats and broadside double lung hits in the middle of the body. My last one was with a Ramcat and I had blood within 2ft of where it was standing when I shot it, 2" - 3" blood spatter for the first 5-10 yards or so every 3 feet or so, the 4"-5" spatter every 2 feet or so for the next 20 yards and then a 2 foot circle of blood with a dead deer 2 yards away. The true red carpet treatment. Very similar performance from Slick Tricks last year. The only one that didn't bleed a lot was a quartering to shot where the arrow pulled some guts out the exit hole. But even then there was blood around the 30yd mark and a dead deer 20 yards beyond that.

I shot Sonics one year and had sparse blood trails. Same with Montecs, but Slick Tricks, Magnus 2 blade, Thunderheads, and now Ramcats all give me blood right away - again on double lung, middle body hits. Not low hits.

[Drew]

I'm thinking I'll get all kinds of blood this year...

[nchunterkw]

I think you might as well!!

I get plenty of blood with Slick Tricks and Ramcats. But by "plenty of blood" I call 4" to 5" spots every 2 or 3 feet "plenty". And my latest blood trails have been all under 60yds. (10 deer, 1 Thunderhead, 1 Montec, 1 Ramcat and 7 Slick Tricks). The only exception was the Montec - blood wise that is. That deer only went 40 yds.