This one is for Don!! Some pretty good stuff with EFOC and single bevel broadheads. I watched it several times and really got a kick out of how the guys shooting form starts out good and at the end is pretty out of whack....mine would be too! I think I'd have been tempted to have tried braining it after the first couple of shots, the opportunity was there several times and he had nothing to lose.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ture=player_embedded

Thanks chef,

I've been away too long - my 'puter died.

This video was made with the prototypes or first run from a new vendor or modified heat treat. They may have really improved them. I can't help but wonder why they did not do the video with their old stuff?

Don, did you watch it to the end? You have to sit through a lot of testing before you get to the hunting footage.

Watched the video. This goes against everything I stand for as a hunter. Needless cruelty by using substandard tools. Just use a large caliber rifle... will get the job done quickly.

Of course I would have had no objections to it if it was natives without access to guns, but a guy shooting a hippo with a bow, and even worse a longbow.. Just cruel and dumb.

Sorry, chef, for the late reply. Yep, saw the whole thing. He did make a good first shot with the longbow.

Have to add. It is also not any more dangerous than regular hunting. Surrounded by backup with big bore firearms.... Playing with (torturing) a magnificent beast not taking the risk it would normally entail to hunt with that kind of weapon himself.

Norsk you're off base I think. The first shot was a perfect heart shot and it wakes a while for any animal to bleed out from-even with your magic firearms. Many, many animals take longer to die from rifles than bows it just depends on the circumstance. I assume even if YOU shot an animal on a guided hunt the guide would be standing near with his rifle to back you up.

A hippo at that range would have had a brainshot from my 500/416 Nitro double rifle. Otherwise a heartshot with with a softpoint and a follow up headshot with a solid. Bleeding out would not be an issue in any of the situations unless something goes wrong. I don't know if that was a perfect heart shot or not but he fires 4 arrows at the Hippo (one hitting the belly). Didn't look pretty.

We all know accuracy with a rifle is better than with a bow (especially a longbow), no matter the circumstance and given that the hunter has practiced an equal ammount with the weapon. So unneccesary wounding will happen a lot more often with such a weapon. Rifles are more effective than bows, why else would bows have been replaced by firearms as hunting tools?

Lets say the arrow weights 800 grains and moves at 300 fps (probably less with the longbow) it will have energy = 159, momentum = 34. A big bore like a 500/416 will launch a 410 grain bullet at 2400 fps and have energy = 5242 and momentum =140. It is pretty obvious the bow is at best marginal for game such as hippo. The rifle has 35x the energy and 4x the momentum.

Of course I would have had backup, but I would not pretend I was doing some impressive feat (including risk) by killing the hippo by ancient means while at the same time having modern backup. It would be real bowhunting if the backups also used bows. I would of course still be against it since the increased risk of wounding the animal would be there but no other benefits other than pretty lame "sportsmanship". That is my opinion anyway.

I just love these "it's not dangerous because he had a rifle backup" crap posts. Hippo hunting with a rifle is NEVER dangerous? Because you use a bow w/rifle backup it is not dangerous??

Name me one country where you can hunt hippo with anything WITHOUT rifle backup...just one..any one....

I'll give you a hint...there is NO SUCH COUNTRY. Dangerous game qualified PH WITH a rifle is required by law. Bitch about something else for a change.....

"unneccesary wounding will happen a lot more often(with a bow)???? BS. I hunt with rifles, compounds, recurves, and (LORD forgive me) a longbow. I find in my experience of taking over 500 head of game with all combined that the wounding rate is pretty much equal..that is VERY low.

and I sure didn't know my (LORD forgive me) longbow had been replaced by modern rifles. I'm betting that the 2000# bison I killed last year with my (LORD forgive me) longbow and a (double forgive me and bless the Pygmies) stone point will be glad to know that information.

Your use of comparing "energy" levels between an arrow and a rifle show your true ignorance of bowhunting and how an arrow kills. It has nothing to do with "energy". Penetration by a cutting edge is what kills. Kinda like what killed that hippo.....

Well I don't believe in the "LORD" and I find your account of similar results for your hunting with bows and rifles unconvincing.

Of course the pointed arrows penetrate relatively well in spite of their less than .22lr energy (and modest momentum). But the idea that it is humane to let animals bleed out over long periods of time is humane is total BS. Try it youself with an arrow sticking out from your chest...

As for not hunting dangerous game without backup, I am not saying you should. I am saying you should use a gun to minimize suffering and possibility for wounding.

You just prove that you are totally ignorant about anything regarding bow hunting Norsk.
I think you are in great need of educating yourself about it if you want to come with such strong opinions.

Yes thankfully I have no experience hunting with a bow. Wound statistics from deerhunting with bows are easily accessible just doing a google search however. Less than 1/10 deer are harvested cleanly and over 50% are lost, many dying from bacterial infections.

So using the same tool on game like hippo is self evidently inhumane. Of course one can kill a hippo reasonably fast if one is lucky (like in the video) but that will be the exception rather than the norm.

In this day and age we all know (unless severely deluded) that there are superior tools for humane hunting of big game. Unless one belongs to a "primitive" tribe the only reason to shoot big game with a bow is for personal satisfaction (achievement), narcissism and "play" bearing the cost of animals suffering needlessly.

But I suspect that to be taken seriously here, one must be a bowhunter, and of course of the opinion that bows should be legal for hunting anything on the planet... Not a very fruitful ground for debate.

quote:

Originally posted by Norsk:
Yes thankfully I have no experience hunting with a bow. Wound statistics from deerhunting with bows are easily accessible just doing a google search however. Less than 1/10 deer are harvested cleanly and over 50% are lost, many dying from bacterial infections.

So using the same tool on game like hippo is self evidently inhumane. Of course one can kill a hippo reasonably fast if one is lucky (like in the video) but that will be the exception rather than the norm.

In this day and age we all know (unless severely deluded) that there are superior tools for humane hunting of big game. Unless one belongs to a "primitive" tribe the only reason to shoot big game with a bow is for personal satisfaction (achievement), narcissism and "play" bearing the cost of animals suffering needlessly.

But I suspect that to be taken seriously here, one must be a bowhunter, and of course of the opinion that bows should be legal for hunting anything on the planet... Not a very fruitful ground for debate.

You prove it again .
Please show us those wound statistics.
Not even NOAH uses numbers like that for bow hunting and they are an anti hunter organization. I guess they use the worst statistics available.

Funny thing that you use the same arguments against bow hunting as the antis use against all sorts of hunting.....

Quote:
Unless one belongs to a "primitive" tribe the only reason to shoot big game with a bow is for personal satisfaction (achievement), narcissism and "play" bearing the cost of animals suffering needlessly.
Unquote

To be taken seriously in a debate about bow hunting, you might consider to educate yourself more. Because so far have you showed very little knowledge regarding bow hunting. No need to be a bow hunter yourself

In my part of the world we consume every edible part of animals shot (+some leftovers for the dogs)... It's not about ego, or the fun and the thrill of it, even though i am not saying it isn't a thrill. I am shooting moose with an elephant rifle just to have the marigins on my side for the animals sake. When i shot one one of my first moose at the age of 15 I miscalculated range and speed (should of course not have shot), hit the moose in the thigh and tracked it down with a dog an hour later where it had bleed to death. I had nightmares about that moose getting lost for weeks and have never done something like that again. I have the impression a lot of hunters and especially bowhunters have a very different sentiment. To me taking the shot carries enormous ethical responsibility and there is no reason to increase risk of wounding by using a bow.

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
indicate an average bowhunting wounding rate of 54%, with the shots per kill averaging 14. We believe that these ... It is disquieting to know that we probably wound one deer for every animal harvested. Samuel also .... This statistic shows that ...

Can't link the PDF but you come across a lot like this googling..


From Wikipedia: Opponents to bowhunting argue that killing an animal with a bow is difficult and the animal will be left wounded instead of killed. Due to the very nature and aerodynamics of bow and arrow hunting, placing an exact shot that guarantees an instant kill is challenging for even the most experienced hunters. A study conducted by the Oklahoma Fish and Wildlife Agencies found that approximately 50% of deer that were shot were never recovered. Some deer survived for up to 5-7 days before succumbing to their wounds.[16]

And here we are talking about superlarge animals like hippo... go figure.

My good range with a bow is 25 yards and anything I've ever shot at that distance has been dead in about 30 seconds. I've learned the hard way to keep my shots close. The exact same thing is true of firearms, if you overstep your range you'll have more woundings-fact. So keep shots reasonable distances and wounding goes way down. Rifle hunters and bow hunters both wound unnecessarily when that rule is broken.

Incidentally like you I haven't shot ANY animal in the leg with either gun or bow. You really should learn to shoot better.

An arrow has way better penetration than a bullet of similar speed so it is in fact a BETTER weapon. If I could shoot an arrow at 2500fps. I'd be able to penetrate an elephant end to end and then some.

As to an animal bleeding out, arrows bleed out faster than bullets, another fact. It can't compare to a brain shot but many hunters use a chest shot with rifles anyway so they bleed out also, even though slower than arrows.

Yes the guy shot more than one arrow into the animal, but honestly only one was necessary as the first one was a lethal shot. Whether with a gun or a bow it's prudent to keep shooting until the animal is down. I also suspect that since a hippo can stay underwater so long that it doesn't run out of oxygen as fast as other animals. This probably led to it not dropping sooner.

Get your facts straight before you come into a bowhunting forum and show how ignorant you really are.

As far as your double rifle, why aren't you shooting a modern bolt action, something that can reliably shoot several hundred yards instead of that "old fashioned" gun? Honest question and I'd like to hear an honest answer on that one.

I didn't know you are allowed to hunt in Walmarts.

Jim

Yes wounding is of course possible bow or rifle. I learned my lesson as a teenager after taking a stupid shot at a running moose at 200+ yards through open sights of a ww2 mauser. I had as I wrote terrible regrets after this even though the moose blead to death within an hour. I guess most hunters make a mistake sooner or later, I have not done it later.

Wounding is more likely with a bow however as the marigins for error are smaller. I am sure there are bowhunters who are very proficient and only make shots they are sure of, but have no reason to believe that is the norm when looking at the statistics I have come across... Comparing bowhunting to riflehunting most riflehunters wound and loose around 10% deer while bowhunters wound and loose around 50%. . I wonder what the statistics would be for bigger game...

As for penetration at similar velocities, I do not see many hunters of big game shoot airguns (300fps). We are talking 8-9x the velocity... Penetration of arrows is probably good in spite of their low velocity and "killing power" is good with well placed shots, but the time it takes for the animal to die is unneccesarily long from what I have read and heard. You can also kill a hippo with a .22 lr, but the time it takes for the animal to die will be long.

I am not principally opposed to bowhunting in general but you should know the limits of what game should be shot with such a low powered weapon. To me a bow is obviously inadequate for game such as cape buffalo, hippo or elephant. Sure it is possible, but why should one take such unneccesary risk of wounding and prolonged suffering?

As for me using a double rifle. I use it because it is a good and humane tool for the job. It does not kill more slowly than a bolt action of similar caliber (416 rigby) and I never shoot big game beyond 150 meters so the reduced accuracy at longer range is not a concern. I can place two shots within 2 inches at 100 yards with regularity something which is good enough. I also have a fast followup shot if neccesary. So my choise of double rifle is quiet different from choosing a bow instead of a rifle.

Norsk you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground so you're of no use to converse with. case closed....go spew your garbage somewhere else.

You seem like a bright lad! I agree no use in going further with this. Deep inside that massive hulk of a brain you have you know it. I am right and you are wrong.

May I jump in here?

Norsk:
I am one of the people that you argue about. I hunt and have hunted a lot of Big 6 animals in Africa with a bow. Yes, I am a PH that specialize in DG Bow hunting. It took me many-many years to get proficient in and learn the trade through experience. That is not something you get in a book or on U-tube or on DVD's.

I come from a family that hunted Africa for a living and I grew up in that environment. I have guided a lot of clients to successful bow hunts for over 1000 animals to date.
I have guided clients for more animals with a rifle.

I think that I have a good idea of what a rifle can do vs what a bow can do. You can NOT compare them with each other. It is like comparing a Formula 1 racing car with a Dakar racing car. Both are superb vehicles and each is a specialist on his turf. You will never win the Dakar in a Ferarri nor would you ever win a F1 race in a Hummer.

The type of weapon is not so important factor as the person that uses it or the preparation that goes into before a hunt.
The fastest ever Elephant that went down with a body shot that I've seen was 45 seconds from when it was hit. This was with an arrow. I have never seen a bullet react so fast on a body shot.

I have also seen an Impala take longer to die than an Elephant with a well placed arrow. This does not mean a thing. If you do not like the bow hunting part on this forum, do not visit it then it will not upset you so much.

I myself use a .416 to guide over and above a .500Jeff. I had to use them less when guiding bow hunters than rifle hunters. Why is that?

There will always be people out there that abuse a bow because of a lot of ignorance or macho etc. The same goes for a rifle hence me saying that it is more about the person using the tool than the tool its self.

In 2011 I guided 94 animals with a bow vs 112 with a rifle. Of the 94 only 5 were wounded and only 2 lost. Of the 112 animals with a rifle, 13 were wounded and 1 lost. You do the math.

The research stats I found on deer was very different. I do as I said believe humane bowhunting in general is possible if one is exceptionally skilled and diciplined. I believe the marigin for wounding is too great in normal hunting conditions however. Shooting sedate animals being fed at waterholes from a shed (saw a nonproficiant bowhunting woman shoot a Lion this way on animal planet) is very different from normal hunting imo. I do not pretend to know how have lead your hunts and it is possible that it is done a lot more conservatively for bowhunters (range, movement etc), but given equal hunting situations I have no reason to believe wounding rates for bows will be in the same ballpark as for rifles. The same goes for handguns... I just wonder why? One must be severely deluded to maintain that bows and handguns are as effective as rifles. Better if people just were honest and admitted they do it because it is "fun"..

Norsk
Your comments refer to a lot of "googling" and "wikipedia" but I can't see anything about bowhunting experience anywhere in the text. It seems maybe you shot some moose with a rifle. This explains your limited knowlege on the subject. Read Fritz's post carefully. Here is somebody who does hunting for a living, both rifle and bow giving you the facts.
If you can't accept the facts, stick to the rifle forum and it won't trouble you any more .
JCHB

I can not understand your logic Norsk. How did you get to the "facts" that you quote?

I can do a search and come up with figures that states that more people were wounded by the Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki than killed. Therefore the bomb was not a success.

Also, more people are killed in car accidents each year than people killed by alcohol poisoning. Therefore cars are more dangerous than alcohol abuse.

Get the real figures from the industry that uses it and then you might just understand it better.

boys, ya'll are arguing with an idiot. He's going to drag you down to his level and beat you with experience......

Reading my previous posts I have come across as too opinionated. I apologize for that. That is not a good basis for getting a rational discussion started.

However, does one have to have personal experience with something to have an informed opinion about it? How would this work in science?... Not very well...

I am a recreational hunter. I have shot deer, moose (for 20 years) and various smaller game. Going to shoot Cape buffalo when I can afford it. I have had an 80 pound compound bow and have had a lot of fun shooting it through the years. Never shot game with it tho. But I don't see this as relevant for what we are discussing.

I am rational and will easily be conviced if you show me a serious study documenting low wounding rate (and quick death) for hunting big game with bows. Anecdotes and reports of personal experience is not very convincing. If I based my beliefs upon such i would be prone to believe in god, allah, homeopathy, esp, and all sorts of hogwash people report positive and real experiences with.

I am not trying to troll, I am trying to test the very limited information I have found against your knowledge and hope you can show me studies contradicting what I have seen so far.

I don't think we can draw a parallel between rifle hunting and bowhunting, when an animal is wounded with a rifle the shooter often doesn't know it so reported wounding rates will be inaccurate.

If a rifle hunter shoots a moose at 150 yards and it walks away the story I usually hear is "I missed." I don't often hear "I went to the spot the moose was standing and spent 2 full hours looking for blood."

With an arrow we know we hit the animal if it runs away with the arrow in it. Also we can usually find the arrow and even if we thought we missed and the arrow has blood on it then there's the proof that we didn't. If I can't find the arrow I assume it's in the animal and the tracking starts.

Compare these examples and you can see where it's hard to compare guns and bows.

The only test would be to shoot many animals from reasonable ranges for both weapons. Say 30 yards for compound and 200 yards for rifle and compare the wound/kill rates. That's impractal at best.

Most of us in this forum have hunted with bow and gun and if we say a bow kills just as effeciently within its effective range it's probably based on facts not uninformed opinion

Fritz gave you his real world numbers between bow and firearm hunting. Those numbers are in fact the best example anyone could provide. I suggest you read his well informed post again.

Danger level for hunting Hippo with a bow?

Pish man!

Hippo hunting with 8 pints of Stella and a bag of chips on a Friday night in London is much more risky!

Amir I think you and I have hunted the same urban hippos!! A few times I've been urban fox hunting but woken up with a hippo. Those hippos sure are appreciative little vixens though.

Norsk, studies done in South Carolina and Alabama at military areas have shown that a high percentage of bow shot and not recovered deer actually do survive, seems like it was 70%+ survive, hence the reason they were not "recovered".

Common sense wil tell you that if a vital spot is NOT hit then the deer has a good chance of recovery from an arrow wound. Unless the arrow is in the guts, too far back. Too high, too low, in the ham muscle and you get blood and no deer. But it is not a FATAL hit for the animal.

given all of the misinformation available to folks I do think you need at least some personal experience to have an informed opinion.

troy

Norsk:
Between Dr. Adrian de Villiers and myself, we have hunted in excess of 2 000 animals with a bow and arrow. If that is not a good enough number for you then you just plain refuse to listen to facts. That includes many Big 6 animals. Dr. de Villiers used to be a hand gun hunter so you have that weapon in the stats as well.

Both of us agree that with the correct equipment and the right training, a bow hunter wounds less than a rifle hunter irrespective of the size of the animal.
Again I will state that it has nothing to do with the equipment (if the correct setup is used for the animal) it is rather the hunter that is responsible for wounding.

Do you really think that there will be an accurate figure on wounding listed somewhere? I do not think so because to many people do not report wounds. They just talk about their success. Also, what animals do you want in the research? Does vermin count because more of them are wounded than normal animals but to many that does not matter because it is vermin.

My season has started for this year and like the past 27 years, I shall log every shot taken at an animal. I do that for my own research and so that I can have an idea of what happens. Dr. Adrian does the same where he is.

If you say that a personal account does not qualify then what does? Any other stats is of someone else's personal account.

Even today in the 21st century, there are still hunters that believe that a bow is an inferior weapon to use even on normal plains game. They are welcome to their OPINION. That is all it is. They can not speak from experience.

Please do not try and compare a rifle with a bow. They are two completely different things and they work different. What percentage of wounding would be acceptable to you. Rifles wound and so does Black powder weapons, hand guns and bows. Even poison does not always kill.

Through the past 27 years, my stats has shown that only 7% of animals hunted with and by me were wounded and only 1,3% of them lost. That is good enough for me.

Other people might have a higher wound ratio but I am willing to bet that it was because of human error and bad judgement and not equipment.

quote:

Originally posted by calgarychef1:
Amir I think you and I have hunted the same urban hippos!! A few times I've been urban fox hunting but woken up with a hippo. Those hippos sure are appreciative little vixens though.

We all know that feeling chief.

quote:

Originally posted by calgarychef1:
Amir I think you and I have hunted the same urban hippos!! A few times I've been urban fox hunting but woken up with a hippo. Those hippos sure are appreciative little vixens though.

Ah the days when lasses were scored by the number of pints of Theakstons Old Peculiar than need to be consumed in order to make them look attractive.

The problem was the more they needed the less capaable of performing the desired task one became. Hence the term brewers droop.

From a pure terminal ballistics point of view the arrow armed with a sharp broad head is actually quite lethal, in some cases more so than a bullet fired from a gun.

The reason for this not that obvious to some so perhaps one has to explain.

As a missile capable of causing injury we see that the arrow in flight has a very high sectional density, extremely high in fact more so than any bullet.

So over distance say 90m a arrow will have extraordinary penetration capability relative to a bullet, way more than a bullet is like tissue of viscoelastic nature, even if the arrows launch velocity is relatively low when compared to a bullet.

The ability to perforate and penetrate targets by missiles is a very interesting study and based on the current knowledge the arrow fits the model very well. The ability to firstly perforate ductile materials and then to penetrate is sectional density driven. Threshold penetration velocity is dependent on sectional density, this hold true for any passive kinetic energy penetrator. ( not so for non ductile materials)

What is evident is that because of the very high sectional density the arrow loses very little of it's velocity and energy over the effective distance shot.

So a arrow launched from a bow at say 230 fps loses only a few fps over 90 m and will penetrate a viscoelastic target anything up to and even beyond 30 inches..... there are not many hunting bullets bar some designs that have the capability of doing this.

The wound channel caused by a arrow cutting a one and a half inch and more at it's widest and penetrating 30 inches is often lethal, and even in the event of marginal shots more lethal than bullet wounds caused in the same tissue and location.

The difference really comes down to the distance of application of the particular weapon and the limitations of this distance as it pertains to an arrow.

The only study that I know of that actually compared the difference in incapacitation time between arrow and bullet was done by Tony Thomkinson of the Natal parks board in the 80's in an attempt to legalize bowhunting in Natal South Africa. This was in the early 80's before Adrian de Villiers discovered bowhunting

Tony was given permission from his superiors to conduct and head to head study comparing a standard 30-06 against modern archery equipment in Natal parks culls and they set about to do this first starting with some 500 animals shooting them with a bow and then repeating the same on others with the 30-06 in each instance trying to emulate the same shot placement. They timed the event using a stopwatch and the finding was surprising.

Though there was a difference in the incapacitation time the statistical difference was not great enough to penalize the arrowed animal cohort to go against bowhunting.

What was interesting about the study was that failures to cleanly kill in the arrow group was largely due to broad head failure and this was one of the reasons that prompted the single bevel fixed head designs propagated here for large game shooting.

The Thompkinson study was expanded and more animals were added to the arrow group.
The rest is now history, bowhunting was legalized in South Africa largely because of this study.

Fritz, is a hippo chasing you or is that just the "happy hippo" dance????

troy, bowhunting for five decades.....

Another interesting point to ponder is the question of efficiency.

There are a number of ballistics efficiencies at play and in terms of terminal ballistics a way to measure lethality would be to put wounding as factor relative to the kinetic energy of the projectile.
In doing this we see that the arrow is very efficient, way more so than a bullet. Ie a large amount of wound volume relative to a smal amount of kinetic energy at impact.

The yield in actual wound volumes is high when compared to bullets. Guns are actually not that efficient if we consider that only one third of the total energy of the potential energy locked up in the propellant translates to bullet kinetic energy and then a fraction of the impact kinetic actually brings about hard injury. Impact kinetic energy does not neccesarily equate to a lethal wound. In the case of the arrow a larger portion of the total energy at time of impact is utilized in actual production of the wound.

quote:

Originally posted by DTala:
Fritz, is a hippo chasing you or is that just the "happy hippo" dance????

troy, bowhunting for five decades.....

This is me agreeing with Alf.

Yeah, what Alf says!