How Your Bowhunting Equipment Kills
Although modern bow technology has dramatically improved over the years, it is still a short-range hunting tool. While bows are capable of shooting arrows up to 400 yards at speeds exceeding 200 mph, there are many other considerations in their application. To ensure accuracy and efficacy for arrow penetration, shots are usually limited to 40 yards when not in cover and 30 yards when in cover.
While bullets kill by a high-energy impact that crushes tissue and bone, often incapacitating animals by breaking major bones, reducing their chance of running away, arrows with broadhead-tips result in low-energy impacts that kill by cutting vital tissues. Since the impact of an arrow on game is not enough to bring an animal down alone, proper shot placement is of even greater importance to ensure a quick kill and recovery of your game. A poorly placed arrow may have little immediate impact on the animal, making it difficult and often impossible to recover it.
The reaction an animal has when struck by an arrow is likened to when we knick ourselves shaving. Often the animal does not realize the severity of the shot. The damage the blade wrecks on the arteries and veins of the animal causes massive internal blood loss, dropping the animal's blood pressure, cutting off oxygen to the brain (hemorrhagic shock) and causing death. In order for an animal to lose enough blood to die of hemorrhagic shock it must lose about ⅓ of its blood. The amount of time this takes varies depending on where the animal was struck and how fast the blood is lost. It may take seconds or up to several hours. This is why it’s important to be patient in trailing and recovering your game. You should wait and be sure that you do not spook the animal, giving it time to expire.
Other fatal archery shots include:
- puncturing the animal's lungs, collapsing the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain causing it to die, often before it can bleed to death,
- or an arrow striking the heart will instantly stop the flow of blood to the brain.