Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

This is copied from a crossbow forum I belong to....

"Has anyone had a problem with one of these broadheds deflecting off a rib?

I shot a doe weekend before last, while sitting on the ground. The deer was perfectly broadside when I shot her. I watched her run about 45 yards in a bean field, and go into the "death spin". I always like to head back to the truck to get rid of excess "stuff" I won't need (backpack, calls, scents, etc) before I start tracking a deer, besides, I'm extremely impatient, and if I don't walk away, I'll never give a deer time to expire. When I came back from the truck, I found the arrow without a problem, but could barely find any blood. Since I was sure she was down in the beans, I made a big circle (so as to not disturb any sign) and went to where I thought she went down. I couldn't find her right away, so I went back to the arrow (again staying away from the path she took), and started to follow the very miniscule blood trail, which made no sense, since the deer had been hit broadside, sitting on the ground from 20 yards, right behind the front leg, with a Horton Legend II, Horton Lighting Strike MX arrow, and a 100 grain Spitfire XP broadhead.

After finding almost no blood, I almost backed out again to leave her until first light, but was determined to find the spot where she spun around and went down. It took nearly an hour, but I tracked her (with some help from my brother-in-law) to the spot where she had spun and expired (I was only about 8 yards from her the first time I walked into the beans, and never saw her). Turns out that the broadhead entered right next to a rib, and as one of the blades opened, it deflected off the rib (instead of cutting through it), pushing the arrow through the near-side lung, the diaphragm, the rumen, and the intestines. When we found her, the intestines had plugged the exit wound, preventing much blood loss from that side, and much of the rumen contents had managed to work it's way into the entrance wound, clogging up the wound and letting very little blood exit from that side (The near side lung was completely destroyed, and the chest cavity was completely full of her rumen contents, for some reason). What should have been a perfect double-lung shot, had turned into what looked to be a marginal quartering-to shot.

Does anyone have any insight into what might have gone wrong?

I'm wondering if I should be looking into a heavier arrow/broadhead combo in the future."


This is the doe I killed on 10-03

HJ21, I have decided that if I get back into archery hunting that I’d no longer use the Spitfires I have because of reports such as this.
I can not prove or disprove any of it but I know of too many circumstances that this issue has come to be questioned.

What finally pushed me to this decision was the 5 deer that got away from my dad 3 years ago. Keep in mind he has over 50+ year’s experience archery hunting and when dad says it’s a good hit........It is!!!
He has been forced to now use a crossbow and in setting it up he decided to go with the mechanical style heads. The first few deer he shot with them seemed ok but the deer had gone farther than normal. Then the fun began. The shortest tracking we did was just over a 100 yards, the longest was about 300 yards before we lost it. We were completely dumb founded at what was going on. We checked the POI numerous times from the ground and at 18ft off the ground at various distances. (height of tree stand)
After hearing others complaining of basically the same thing with mechanicals dad went back to using his 125gr Thunderheads and has retrieved every deer he’s shot at within his normal 25-50 yards!!!

We have since come to believe that a deflection was occurring after the arrow made its initial impact!!!