← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep. 235 | Broadheads: Designing the VERSE
00:56:00
Remi Warren discusses the development of the new Day Six hybrid mechanical broadhead, the VERSE, and explores the intricacies of broadhead design, testing, and application for different hunting scenarios, especially elk and western big game hunting.
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Foreign. I'm Remy Warren and I've lived my life in the wild as a professional guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days perfecting my craft. I want to give that knowledge to you. In this podcast we relive some of my past adventures as I give you practical hunting tips to make you more successful. Whether you're just getting started or a lifelong hunter, this podcast will bring you along on the hunt and teach you how to live wild. This podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. If you really want to utilize a lot of this information from the podcast in the field, one of the best ways to do that is to be physically ready for the hunt. And that's really why I've partnered with Mountain Tough. So if you aren't familiar with it, Mountain Tough is an online training app designed for hunters with a ton of added benefit. In addition to the fitness programs built for that backcountry hunting, you also get access to nutrition and recovery guides for on and off the mountain mental toughness training and this really great in app community that connects you with other mountain toughers and coaches. This app is packed with value to help you stay ready and right now Mountain Tough is giving our LiveWild listeners a free six week trial when they sign up for the monthly plan using code LIVEWILD. To get started in the journey, go to mountaintough.com that's MTN T-O-U G H.com when you're out there doing it the hard way, the right way, you need gear that shows up every time. That's why I trust yeti. Whether it's keeping meat cold for the trip home or your coffee hot before daylight, Yeti just flat works, built tough, no shortcuts. Check out their full lineup@yeti.com and see why it's become a part of my system season after season. Welcome Back to the LiveWild podcast, everyone. You know, this week I'm going to be talking bow hunting and broadheads, so we're going to take a look at how they work, what their job is, and the situations where a certain style might excel and the needs of a broadhead for different types of hunts and hunt styles that people have out there. So this week, for me personally and my Day six company is a really big one because I'm extremely proud to launch something that we've been building, our new mechanical broadhead, the Verse. So we're going to actually dive in today. I thought it might be fun to dive into a little bit of the development of the verse and the why behind why we built it. So let's dive in. I'm going to run through kind of a candid compilation of hunts over the years, and then testing and through this development process, Some of the things that we ran into and then the issues that we wanted to address. So let's dive in. I think one of the fun things about growing up hunting and. And just seeing how things have changed over the years is when I. When I first started hunting, western big game hunting wasn't really. I don't know, I mean, obviously it was very popular among people out west or whatever. But a lot of the products and the other things out there were not specifically designed for western big game hunting or the hunting that I grew up doing. When I first started hunting, it was like we would get our. We would get like old desert chocolate chip, we call them the old chocolate chip camo from army surplus store for, like, high country Nevada desert camouflage. Because the only other camouflage that you could get was like a real tree or a mossy oak kind of camouflage. You know, like, it was just cotton hunting material, like cotton material, or very thick. Like anything designed for hunting was just very thick whitetail hunting stuff. It was designed for sitting, not hiking around. And like, the backpacks, it was either, you know, like, you either had a. All the hunting backpacks were designed for walking from your truck to your tree stand, being quiet, climbing up a tree, you know, getting up in there, putting it on a peg behind you. And that was like a hunting backpack. So if you wanted something that you were gonna pack out in the mountains or do anything with, it was like a. I don't know, some other brand of, like a Kelty frame pack that's probably bright blue or what have you. You know, there was stuff that was designed for actually going out and hunting in the mountains, packing meat back, whatever you look at, like, the hunting world today, and it's in many ways the opposite, or, I mean, there's. There's just so much stuff that's been specifically designed for this type of hunting. And I'm very appreciative of it because you get to benefit from, okay, better materials and clothing for hiking around, you know, lightweight base layers that dump heat and sweat. And then you can, like, layer up with different lightweight materials. Backpacks that can carry, you know, that you can carry and pack out with. And it seems like nearly every category. I felt like, kind of really caught up with that. You know, I was thinking back, like, when I started, it's not even that long Ago. Really? Well, I guess, yeah, it doesn't seem that long ago, but when I started doing the Solo Hunter TV show, that was like, you know, you think about how things have changed. Right now everything's social media or YouTube or streaming. And then it was what was really popular was like for outdoor stuff, outdoor television. We did the show Solo Hunter on the Outdoor Channel. I mean, there's probably people who listen to the podcast never seen it, but I guess it could be old enough now that you might not know. But I kind of like the basis of it was we'd go out, I'd go out by myself, had a camera set up, filming all self filming hunts, primarily western big game hunts. Obviously the hunts that I'm into and do and have access to and the things that I was passionate about. And when we first started doing that, companies were like, no, this like whitetails were king. Right? The whitetail world was the thing. You know, honestly, they're like, this is, this is cool. But like, I don't know if anyone will, will watch this or what have you. And you know, we just, we just kind of did what was true to us, what, you know, we liked. I remember when I was growing up, you know, I would watch shows or other things, but I loved hunting. Yet what I saw portrayed was not my experience with hunting because I just didn't grow up. I grew up in one of the only states that does not even have whitetails. So for me it was chasing mule deer, chasing pronghorns, chasing elk, backpack hunting, going into the wilderness, those kind of things. And so, you know, even when I started doing Soul Hunter, there was not a presence of western big game hunting. There's guys that did whitetail stuff that would go hunt those things, but there wasn't like a big presence of that style of hunting, especially not doing it yourself or you know, backpack hunting or public like it just like when we started that really wasn't, you know, seen as far as in media stuff. Obviously it was people did it, but just there was no representation for it. And you know, we continued to just kind of do what we did and literally saw kind of a shift in, I don't know if we call it the market, but just like content, what people wanted to consume. You know, we showed what we did and like people that didn't even do that stuff were like, whoa, that's really cool. I'd like to like, it's one, entertaining and two, very aspirational of like, oh, this is something that I could do too. And then within that you kind of started to see, you know, more companies latching on and building things specifically for that style of hunting because, you know, the market was there and whatever I felt like in most things, almost everything, there's a lot of great gear and other stuff for western style hunting. The one that I feel like kind of never really caught up was mechanical broadheads. And the reason being, like, when you look at the mechanical broadheads on the market, the thing about them is they're really good for a certain task. And that certain task was designed for whitetailing. Like, the origination of them is so you could have, you know, good flight out of it. I mean, primarily a couple of things you get with like a mechanical broadhead. So one of them is I remember, like the original ones, the first ones that I ever used, and I can't remember what company it was. Might even be a company that wasn't really even around anymore. But I remember I got the first mechanical, first mechanical broadhead I ever got. And it was like, you know, sold as flies. Like your field tips, because nobody was really talking about bow tuning. It was just like, here's your bow. And I mean, I had aluminum arrows. I had on those aluminum arrows. I had feather fletchings and knew nothing about tuning nothing. It's like, okay, every time I. I used to use these or they like thunderhead hundred crane come in, you assemble the things, you'd cut yourself up pretty good. And they would always fly like high and right with my B.O. and so I just resight in and shoot. I knew nothing about tuning. There's just like a lack of information and knowledge around that. And then these mechanicals came out. It's like flies, like your field tips. You're like, cool, screw one of these on. Oh, yeah, it flies more like my field tip. I don't have to change my sight as much. And that was kind of like the original selling point. Hey, we're gonna ignore this really poor aero flight over here. And here's something you can slap on. And it's gonna shoot you your 30 yards to, you know, for like whitetail hunting. Probably only going to be shooting 30 yards or closer. And this will fly better. You don't have to do anything. It'll be great. And then another added benefit is you can get a, you know, from that started going like, hey, now you can get a bigger cutting diameter. So for whitetails, that's great because you might be in a tree stand. You've got really clean shooting lanes. You don't have to worry about Branches and other stuff in the way. But there is a lot of COVID around. So if you get a good hole, you can get like a good cutting hole. You can get a better blood trail, faster recovery, great. It's a great thing. And for that use case, phenomenal. But then within that, more and more competition within that, for that market, that space and those broadheads were designed for that. Now, a few of the fallbacks of those broadheads were not great for bone or other things. Now, white tails, like you can kind of like aim for the center of a white tail and still do okay. With a lot of other animals, A lot of their vitals are tucked a lot tighter into their shoulder and or higher like you think about an elk. Elk are grazers. You know, they like similar to a cow or something. Where they graze, they fill up their stomachs and then that stomach that they've been that is full can then push like that kill zone. Vitals up and toward the shoulder, Especially when they're like, they've been eating a lot. But aside from that, their lungs are a little bit higher. They're tucked in more protected with the shoulder blades because that's how they survive. You got big old long elk tine. And they use their shoulders and everything to protect their vitals so they don't die while fighting. So a lot of animals, you know, the sweet spot is really tucked into that protective shoulder. Yet the mechanical broadheads aren't super durable. They don't penetrate well because they lose a lot of energy. And so they're really designed for closer range shots, very controlled situations. They're designed to stay closed while flying, but not necessarily great at staying closed while crawling, scooting up, moving around. I, for a very long time had always what I would consider like a mixed quiver, everyone. You know, I'm a big proponent of fixed blade broadheads and have used them for a long time because the style of hunting that I do, they're just more conducive for that. You know, the goal of a broadhead is to cut through the vitals. Now, unlike a rifle, where it's delivering or transferring energy from that bullet and creating shock to shut the system down. A broadhead you uses cutting, slicing, and hemorrhaging to increase blood loss, which then, you know, takes. Takes whatever you're hunting down. So what you really want is you want something that's really good at cutting, but you also, there's this factor of cutting and penetration. You need it to cut, you need it to stay sharp. So when it gets to the vitals, it can continue to make, like a clean cut that will hemorrhage real fast and then ideally exit out the other side. So you have an entrance and an exit hole where you have more likely. Where you're more likely to get a good blood trail, which is going to lead you to the animal. Because unlike the shock delivered by a rifle, which might stop them or put them where you shot them at, an arrow is going to go through, the animal is going to run off. And then you need to be able to track and trail that animal. And so you need something that cuts through. Like, the way a broadhead works is twofold. You need to hit them in the right place. You need it to cut, and you would ideally need penetration to aid in the objective of that broadhead. And so the type of hunting that I like to do, spot and stock hunting and other things, mechanicals that were built out there, just really weren't thinking or focusing on that originally. Now, there's a few that you could kind of start to put in that category that fixed a few of these problems. But a few of the problems that I noticed was durability and penetration. Never on the forefront of a mechanical, because realistically, they were designed to sit in one place, shoot close range, and, you know, like, make. Make a big hole. And so one of the things that, like, I. I would always have at least one mechanical in my career for certain situations, because there's definitely even western big game hunting, definitely situations where they can be very beneficial, where you might need a bigger cut or you might want less steerage than you might get from a fixed blade, where it's like, okay, out of a tuned bow, I could shoot a field tip. I could shoot a mechanical. I could shoot my fixed blade all in the same place. So if I had a different broadhead in my quiver, that's okay because I could utilize it if I needed it. Hey, maybe I need a further shot and I just want to, you know, whatever. Like, I need a more pinpoint shot, or it's closer to evening time, or I like that animal's near cover, and I want a little bit better hole. Okay, I can grab this arrow and utilize that. Now, over the years, I've tested, like, I've said this before. I've tried nearly every broadhead out there. Mechanical broadhead. Because I was kind of constantly searching for. I like the benefits of these. I'm just trying to find the one that ticked a certain box for me, my style of hunting and what I really like to do. And I Mean, I tried so many things. There was a lot of them that like, you know, I mean, in all honesty, I understand why. Like, you know, there was a lot that I tried that were kind of like all the, I don't know, I guess all the, all the talk, right. I heard a lot of people talk about it like these are the best. These are great for mechanical broadcasts. And I would try them and I'm like, dude, like I, I get like. I think that they're really good for what you do. A lot of which might be stand hunting whitetails. And I like, I could see the, the analysis of it. I can see how they would work and I, I can see that they definitely will work on certain, like, yeah, plenty of elk have been killed with certain types of broadheads, like mechanical broadheads. Plenty of elk have been killed with whatever. I don't discount that. I know that, that you know, animals have been shot and taken with pretty much everything out there. But I also know that it might not be ideal, that it might, you know, there's situations where it's like, okay, if you hit a rib the wrong way or it's quartered a little harder than you would have liked, or you've got to crawl in and the blades pre deploy and now you've got like a weird flight and a weird impact. There's a lot more things that can go wrong. So like in, in my testing I just kind of set out like I, I probably took about three years, maybe even more to just try. Like not, not try it arranged, not try in a control like try hunting with different mechanical broadheads. And I made it a goal to try nearly as many as I could. You know, there was some within that might have been new that I, that I didn't get my hands on or whatever, but I tried a lot. Primarily a lot of this trying was in like places where, you know, a little bit more higher volume of opportunity. Primarily like Hawaii or New Zealand where I'd be hunting access deer, feral pigs, feral goats, fallow deer, even you know, white tailed does like things like that where. Not necessarily doing a lot on elk. Now. There was some, there was. You might remember I told a story a few years back, called it mechanical failure, where I snuck into this mule deer buck. I had a sheep hunt coming up. I knew that I was going to be getting a new bow just in case I was having any trouble tuning. Like I wanted to make sure that I had, you know, I was going to. I was like, well, I'll use this. This was one that Some friend had recommended, like, oh, this thing's great. And so I was like, okay, I'll use this for this desert sheep hunt. If I can't get my broadhead to tune right, or new bow, I don't know. Just didn't know when I was gonna get this new bow that I was gonna use for it. So. So I'm on a mule deer hunt earlier that year. I sneak in, I'm literally sitting there, like, on top, five yards away from this buck, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try this. This mechanical that I hadn't hunted with. Like, I think, you know, maybe hunting a whitetail doe versus hunting a once in a lifetime sheep tag or an elk tag or something like that is different. But I generally wouldn't take untested broadhead onto a. Let's say, like a once in a lifetime hunt if I hadn't tested it on something else. So I'm there on a mule deer. I'm waiting, I've got the broadhead on, and I'm like, I'm literally five yards from this thing, standing above a cliff. Like, the line of sight might have been longer than that, but, like, the distance away from where I was standing, call it five yards, horizontal distance. Line of sight was probably 20 yards. Maybe something like that was straight down. Anyways, I'm sitting there waiting on this buck. I mean, you know, great stock, great opportunity, good buck, one of the best bucks I saw that season. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, like, okay, I got. I want to test this broadhead. I mean, surely, like, I gonna kill this deer with it, but it'll be cool to use it on it, and then I can have some confidence. So I'm sitting above it, and I actually. I can't remember how many times I did, but I actually was like, ah, man, I'm just gonna kill this deer. Just use my fixed blade, whatever. I switch it back, and then I end up switching it back again. This is all while right above the buck. I was waiting there for a long time for it to stand. And so finally, the buck stands up, I draw back, I shoot the deer and get absolutely zero penetration. I was able to recreate that. That failure in that. That particular broadhead. And what had happened was like, the. The way that the blades deployed, they slide back, but it actually like, pitchforked. So the. The ends that should slide back somehow pitchforked forward. And I literally got the penetration of essentially the broadhead. Like, it didn't go in to the cavity at all. It, like, stopped. I don't even. It's like, probably hit the hide, hit a bone. It was like almost shooting it with a judo tip. It just pitchforks and didn't go in. I. I think that if I would have had just like a field tip on there, I would have killed this deer because it would have got that penetration. But it was a massive failure. You know, in other testing and other things. You know, one of my biggest gripes was crawling in, like, stalking in, and these blades, like, pre deploying. You'd hit one little thing and it would open up, or you'd put in your quiver and open up. Or you go to crawl and you're moving and blade pops down. I was testing a few different ones in Hawaii, and I'm like, just stalking these feral goats. And I crawl up and I draw back and one of the blades is dangling down. You go, well, crap. Like, if that was a bull elk, and the one opportunity that I got, it wouldn't have worked out. It would have caused crazy arrow flight. The impact would have been weird or other inst. Where, hey, I've got an animal and it's quartered away. But, you know, the blades, I've had it where it hits and then just kind of skids along the side. Doesn't penetrate. So, you know, ran into a lot of problems for the style of hunting that I enjoy, style of hunting that I do now. I definitely think that there's a time and a place, and I definitely know that plenty of animals, even out west, get taken with certain types of rodents. There's things that I did find on the ones that I liked, ones that stayed closed, ones that, you know, seemed more durable and penetrated a little better. You know, there were some that I, like, tried, and there was some technology in them. And I'm like, man, I just don't know about this. Like, the blades moving around the bones. And I'm like, okay, you're admitting that you have, like, a. A product that's not great around bones. Well, bones. You're going to encounter bones, especially on elk, like big ribs, big other stuff. These animals have bones. You got to get through the bones. It has to be sharp and has to get into the vitals and hopefully exit out the other side. So, you know, you could bite going, like blades going around the bones. You can maybe get into the vitals and maybe have an exit hole because it won't slow it down as much for the penetration. Yet your blade is moving around bones and other stuff. What's that causing it to Do. What kind of entry and exit is it creating? You know, how reliable is that? Entering the vitals, and I had a few that did that, and it was, like, not great results. So I've had. I've seen failures with, like, a gamut of. Of different broadheads. In the testing. You go, okay, well, what are some of the ways that we can fix this? And those aren't, you know, not every time you get those, like, you can have a really great experience and work exactly as planned. But my thought is, like, need something that has those things happen less, right? And the fact is, there are plenty of people that prefer a mechanical broadhead because they do a lot of hunting where a mechanical type broadhead is ideal. They, you know, maybe it's a situation where it's like, hey, I'm doing a lot of whitetail hunting, and I want to be able to transfer what I use there to whatever else I might hunt later on. There's a lot of people that enjoy it for the fact that it is really good flight. Like, it does fly more similar to a field tip. There's less steerage, like, for longer shots or really pinpoint accuracy. Mechanical broadheads definitely, like, the flight is a big factor in why they might be marginally better. You know, you can argue both sides. And I think the one thing that I try to stress a lot is, like, there can be two sides to something. And I feel like my big gripe is people sometimes think when there's two sides or two opinions, one person's right, one person's wrong. There's a lot of instances where both people can be right. You could make an argument that a mechanical broadhead is superior than a fixed blade. And in certain categories and other things, you're going to be right. And on the fixed blade side, you can make these arguments and you're going to be right. And so what it boils down to is there is personal preference as well. There's something that you believe is something that you like, a style that you like. And that doesn't mean that the other person's wrong. It just means that it's differing of opinions. I think the same thing when it comes to arrows, heavy arrows, light arrows, right? Both people can have two completely opposite views on it, and both could actually be right. In a way. Both do work. It just depends on what you're more comfortable with, where your style of hunting and the things that you're encountering, what's more likely to be successful for you in those situations. And then pick the option that best Suits that are you a person that's like, hey, I'd rather have less drop and a lighter arrow. I know that the drawback's gonna be less penetration, but the animals that I'm hunting, I might not need as much penetration. There's guys that are like me, where I'm like, hey, I'm hunting elk a lot. I'm hunting heavier, bigger animals. I really want that added penetration of the heavier arrow. I've got a really long draw leng, so that helped. Like, I can still get pretty good speeds out of heavy arrows. And so for me, it's like, way more beneficial to shoot that. I like a quieter setup. I like a more forgiving setup. I build mine off of hunting and not necessarily doing a lot of target shooting or foam like stuff. So, I mean, I just outside of practice for hunting, but me, you know, my whole thing is hunting. And that's a really good setup for me, and I've had a really good success with it. And that's the setup that I like, prefer, But I also see the benefit of different types of setups. And so when it comes to a mechanical broadhead, I feel like there's a lot out there. I got to test and go through a lot. And I felt like there was just something missing in the design and make of them. If there's going to be people that are, like, going out and chasing elk and they're gonna choose to use a mechanical broadhead, I do believe that not a single mechanical broadhead out there has been designed for elk hunting. I think that people have designed mechanical broadheads and taken them elk hunting. There's a big distinction because if it were designed for elk hunting, it would have been designed completely different. And you would have had to design from the ground up and create something in some ways new. Because currently there are broadheads that are designed for whitetail hunting that people take elk hunting and work, but you're using it like something that's not designed for that task at the top end of what it is. So what we wanted to do at day six was we wanted to design something for that top end, and then it can obviously be used on everything going backwards. Whereas if you've got something that's. If guys are going to go out and elk hunt with a mechanical broadhead anyways, they might as well be using one that was designed for that purpose. One that isn't maxing out on its abilities, but it's within its zone of tolerance. So you have fewer failures, more success, and a better end result of Ethical kills, quick and clean recoveries and potentially more success based on slight things that go wrong. Maybe the animal moves in quarters a little harder, maybe a shoulder, it drops down and gets a little bit of that shoulder. Something that's designed for those circumstances and situations. You're gonna come out ahead down the road. And that's what we wanted to do. It's, it's. It's the fun part for me of building gear and being a part of the development, testing and all that stuff is getting to see these things work in action. Now on our side, on the dasic side, you know, this broadhead is not just me. It is a. Is a massive team effort. You know, our guys, Brian and Dakota and everybody, like, it's been, it's been really cool to see the team build this. And, you know, my hat's off to everybody involved because I really do believe that we have something that's unique, something that's different, and something that's designed for. What I love to do for sure is get out in the mountains and chase elk and mule deer and other animals. Spot and stock style and chase those bigger animals. And this is a broadhead that's designed for that. Now it's definitely a broadhead that, because it's designed for that excels in the whitetail site as well. So this would be definitely a broadhead that I'd recommend for whitetail hunters that are currently using mechanical broadheads. But it's also one that, you know, really has design features that are focused on thinking about if I'm going to have a mechanical broadhead, I want something that is purpose built with elk in mind. And so I'll run you through a little bit of the verse, how it's different, why it's different. Some of the things that we did. One of the first things that you'll notice, and you can, you can go check out my Instagram and YouTube or whatever, so you can, you can actually see it if you want. But what we did is, you know, after testing so much stuff and looking at a lot of different options, what we landed on was a hybrid design. So the benefits and drawbacks of, you know, like, it's always like fixed versus mechanical. A fixed blade excels in penetration. A mechanical excels in flight. So I would say flight and larger cutting diameter, because as you get that bigger cutting diameter, you. You affect the flight. So you could have a. A smaller, fixed blade broadhead that flies really good, flies like a dart. But as you start to get that bigger cutting diameter, starts to adjust the Way that that arrow flies, sears the arrow a little bit more and gets, you know, a little bit trickier out at distances or other things. So the mechanical. The benefit we're going to just say is like the flight and then the fixed blade, we're going to say the benefit is penetration. Especially when it comes to bones, larger animals, you have a lot more likelihood of getting an entry and an exit hole. With a fixed blade, you also have a lot better chance of it, you know, crushing through bone and accessing the vitals. So what we landed on was a hybrid design. And there's a few things that I'll touch on on that. So the hybrid design, it includes a fixed blade broadhead with mechanical blades. So like a small fixed. Imagine just like any two blade, fixed blade broadhead as the main blade. Ours, we decided to go with it. Essentially goes for the length of the ferrule, which allows instant cutting, like cutting on contact, which I think is important for getting that bite, Especially when it comes to more quartered shots. Because what happens is, as if something's more quartered, what will happen with a lot of broadheads is when one of the blades deploys, it will deflect the trajectory of that arrow away from what it's hitting. If you have that cut on contact, not just a chisel point, but like actually cutting and have it way more forward. What it's doing is already entering and slicing. Once that blade starts to deploy, so it's continuing to cut. And then what that cut does is it allows it to maintain its same trajectory as opposed to get deflected. So but for shots that might be quartered, that will benefit. Now another thing is gonna be like the deployment. So there's a lot of different styles of deployment. We are utilizing a cam over type. So what that means is it rolls back and cams over instead of sliding or slipping. The reason for that is we wanted to guarantee an open and not have those problems of like the pitchforking or, you know, not fully deploying, not creating the hole. Because really that's where a lot of the failures would come from when the perform. When it doesn't actually perform correctly. So when we started out with Averse, we kind of went from the ground up going, okay, we're going to build something that is designed for elk. What would that look like if someone was like starting over? Never seen a mechanical broadhead. The only animal they could ever encounter was this giant bugling bull with big bones and large, you know, cavity and whatever. What are we going to need? And the basis of it is going to be durability and penetration. How do we create a mechanical broadhead for durability and penetration? And so a couple of the features. The first one was like, okay, well we know that we have to. We have to have like. Because it's based on cutting, we have to have a sharp blade that maintains that edge. We also need something that's very durable. So we started. Our ferrules are made for 100 grains our titanium, and then for 125 grains are hardened stainless steel. The reason is because we're able to get those exact weights without changing the size. One thing you might see in others is like, they add a little weight here or it pushes like a little bit longer ferrule or what have you. By keeping this shorter ferrule, we're keeping it's a short profile, it's a real compact. Like when it's screwed on from where it is to your arrow to the tip is only an inch and a quarter. So that short profile actually helps it maintain that good mechanical flight that we were looking for. And so by having those two different materials as the ferrules, we're able to achieve that. Now another thing that we needed to do was the durability. So the durability factor, the blades themselves are 0.05 inch thick. So it's like when you, if you aren't like it's almost twice as thick as the majority of other mechanical broadhead blades out there, what you're getting with that extra thickness is like nearly bomb proof construction. Like these things are insanely durable. And then we decided to go with the Magnacut steel. You heard me talk about it for our other broadheads. This was a big factor in this, in switching to Magnacut as well, is knowing that in the development of this broadhead, knowing that we wanted that higher quality, stronger, and still maintain that rust corrosion. Because Magnacut really excels in all three categories, Whereas most others like. Compared to other steels, most other steels only excel in two. So we're talking about like edge retention, durability and corrosion resistance. So you could have high scores and edge retention and durability, but it won't be corrosion resistant, which is very important. Or you might have high corrosion resistance, but it doesn't have as good edge retention and has like medium durability. So Magnacut is really a designed blade steel that has high edge retention, high durability, and then also high corrosion resistance. So it scores really high on all three of those, which gives you a way better product in the end. And you know, so switching to Magnacut for everything was like, we're going to do it for this, we got to do it. We might as well do it for everything because we're doing it anyways. But also we had the ability to do it and it just made sense for a premium high end product to use the best stuff out there. Was kind of one of the reasons that we jumped into it. So going back to the design of this, when we're talking about durability, so the durability came from the material of the ferrule. It's a single, like it's a machined single piece. These are all single piece ferrule and then thicker blades, magnacut steel. And then now when we're talking about penetration, the cut on contact, fixed blade portion of this hybrid and then the blade angle itself of the deployed blades. So what you'll notice is like you'll see a very swept blade angle. And what I mean by that is like it think about the way that one of the main problems with penetration on a lot of mechanicals is the blades once deployed are at this like closer to 90 degree angle. Now it makes a real big hole, but it also really slows down that broadhead. So if you can make the blades where they, when they roll back, they've got a more similar angle that you would find to a good fixed blade broadhead, yet you know, come out to that wider total cut, what you're gonna get is you're gonna get better penetration out of it. Another thing that we did is when it's closed the way that this like you have your cut on contact, fixed blade, but then you also start cutting immediately with the cam over blades. Instead of having a tab or something like that, the sharp edge, the way that it bows out, immediately starts cutting. So that really aids in those quarters. As opposed to hitting something and deflecting, it's actually hitting and immediately biting and cutting what we've got. And then, and then the other thing is the retention. So we've got what we call our six lock retention, which it's using specialized band. And that was actually in the development process we actually had to create like our own o ring essentially for or additional flexibility. But also you want something that does really well in the heat and the cold and is very consistent. The guys did a lot of testing on different bands like freezing them, thawing them, whatever. And it turns out we ended up just having to kind of create our own band that has the right elasticity and exactly what we're looking for, but we capture it the back. So what it does is it guarantees it opens, yet you get a lot of flexibility in the movement of the blade. So like going in and out of a quiver, crawling and hitting a little stick. It doesn't pre deploy, but when it hits the animal, it 100% opens every time. And so that was another big feature. But also being at the back there as it's cutting and deploying, it's not slowing down as much as other broadheads would. And the thing that we're getting with this is the fact that it's designed for crushing through that bone, hitting things and penetrating. I saw. I've had some friends also testing it. One of my buddies, Pedro and Puerto, was. Took it out on a red red deer hunt. And this particular red deer, it's so cool because it's such cool video because you can actually see he's using a super light arrow. Like, not my style. That's another. He's like, he likes his light arrows. I like my hair arrows. But look, I mean, his. His arrow, I think total with the broad, it was like 4, 400. And man, I don't. Don't quote me on this. It might have been like 423 grains. I'd have to look up maybe 450, but, you know, it's probably like 100 grains less than what I'm shooting. And anyways, he has this red. Red stag. Shoots the red stag drops like ducks the arrow. He's got the verse on there. It hits the shoulder, penetrates through, and completely comes out the other side. Like a red deer, which is very similar to an elk. I mean, just. It was cool because he got. I mean, you can see it like coming out both sides, the way that this animal turned. But like that right there, even with a light arrow, any other mechanical broadhead I've ever shot would not do that. It would be stuck in that shoulder and would have. Were broken blades, would have been broken, would not have penetrated. And so that's like the durability, the penetration factor. That was like seeing it in action during the testing of like. Oh, yeah. When things like that happen, you want something that's designed to overcome that situation because, you know, there's been so many mechanicals or whatever with the flimsy blades. You hit a bone, whatever, nearly every time you recover it, something's broken, something's whatever. Even if you just hits the ground on the other side, the thing's destroyed for the most part in like, you know, if you're shooting, like, straight down into dirt, okay. From a tree stand, that's one thing. But when you're shooting it, you know, sneaking in, shooting an elk or something like that, almost every time a blade, unless you get lucky and you don't hit any bones or anything like that, something will be broken, something will be smashed. It doesn't survive the journey. These. These verse broadheads with the durability that we've built them with, like, you can literally use these over and over and over. You could resharpen the blades or replace the blades. They're darn near indestructible. Like, I mean, I had one go through, hit a hit like some lava rocks in Hawaii while testing it. And I mean, those things, like, just destroy everything. And it, like, barely bent one of the main blades. I was like, okay, but everything else is still intact. It was like stuck into this lava rock. And I go, okay, that's wild. For that kind of durability, Like, I would say that the durability of these is very comparable to any fixed blade broadhead out there. And that's pretty wild to say, but that's what happens when you set out with that design intention, durability and penetration. So as a guy that is a fixed blade guy, when you set out with the idea of, like, hey, we want to design a broadhead that flies like a field point, but penetrates like a fixed blade broadhead, you get something completely different. And I think that for a long time with. With a lot of other broadheads out there, you know, there's always these compromises. And we're saying like, this, you know, this design, this style, you get the best. You literally get the best of both worlds. It has incredible flight, you know, mechanical broadhead style flight, yet it has more qualities of fixed blade performance when it comes to penetration. So you get the best of both things. And I'm really excited about it. Like, I'm very proud of what we've built. I think that, you know, for a long time, especially when it comes to mechanical broadheads, a lot of them, you know, are marketed and whatever, and they were good for certain tasks, but I feel like they got taken to do other things that they would work on, but not like you're. I guess. What's the best way to describe it? Like. Like you're taking something that it's just outmatched. Yeah. Like, think of it like fishing. And it's like we're going pike fishing with our small trout leader and little rod. Right. Like our small stream rod. And so it's like, yeah, you can still land like a large whatever, whatever, but you're maxing it out. You aren't getting the same kind of hook set. You aren't getting the same kind of, of like, line strength. You aren't getting the same kind of, like, ability and finesse. You're working it to beyond its, like, capabilities. And it still can work, but there's more margin for that line snapping, missing the hooks. Like, there's more margin for error yet. You can still, it will still work. But what we've done is we've like moved the bar up. So by moving the bar up, you have. When things don't go right, you have way more opportunity for a successful outcome. And that's hunting in a nutshell, is things aren't going to go right, animal's going to jump, animals going to move, your shots might be, whatever. You're going to have those things. And so by creating what we did with the verse, durability, penetration, high quality materials, the blade angle, I think that we just, we made something that, hey, if you're going out there anyways and you're going to use this, you might as well use something that was designed for that type of punishment, that type of use case, because nothing out there right now, nothing else out there actually fits that criteria. And so I hope you guys enjoyed the kind of deep dive in that. You know, this has been something that has been in the works for a while. You know, I wanted to, we wanted to, like, as a company, we wanted to do it and we, I felt like there's, it's a, it's. There's a lot of people that use mechanical broadheads. We just wanted to give them a better option. And I think that you're gonna see people like, you're really going to see the benefit of this hybrid design. It's probably going to start showing up more and more and more realistically. Because what people are gonna see out of this broadhead is light years beyond what else is out there, especially in the durability standpoint and the penetration standpoint. Like, it's pretty incredible for a mechanical broadhead. And so it's like, it's a mechanical broadhead that a fixed blade guy could get on board with. Like, I've never been one to think about intentionally using a mechanical for elk. I mean, I know people do. It's just not my cup of tea. And in the testing, I'm like, if we're going to build a broadhead that we say was designed for that use Case we should. That's how we should be testing it. And we spent a lot of time chasing elk, getting in people's hands to chase elk with it. And honestly, in every situation during our testing, it performed exactly how we would have wanted it to. And, you know, it's really cool to see and be able to do that. Like, this is a broadhead that I feel confident and comfortable in hunting something like that with, but also going, you know, the use case of where majority of mechanicals are used, whitetails or, you know, anything else, mule deer, everything below. Like, I feel like elk is the. Our gold standard or whatever as guys that love to chase elk. And then everything underneath that is just icing on the cake of. Yeah, absolutely. It works for that because it works for this up here. Like, you build it for the top and then it works for everything underneath. So I really see this as a. As a broadhead that will probably get utilized a lot in. In, you know, for what mechanicals are. White tails and other things, or mule deer, where you've got those maybe further shots in more open country. But also there's guys that are running and prefer to run mechanical broadheads. They like to chase elk. And here's one that is going to do a way better job at that task. And so I'm really excited about it. Like, I hope you guys, you know, check it out. Like, look at it go. Go. You can head over to my website, day6gear.com and see what. See what we're building over there. This is really exciting for me because, you know, this is our first real big launch. You know, I talked about last week or have been following along our. Our day six journey, we introduced Magnacut into all of our existing evo broadheads. So we just upgraded essentially to the best steel you could get for a broadhead blade. We're the first ones to do it. And also, so, you know, we didn't change the price of those. And if you're like, hey, I actually bought them. Like, we've actually been introducing the. Slowly trickling in the. Not slowly. We've been introduced to the Magnacut at the beginning of the year. So people have actually bought it and received it before we ever announced it. But we wanted to make sure there was nothing left before we, you know, fully announced. So people have actually been getting the Magnacut in their evos for a while now. But we just wanted to make sure that we were fully. Everything was transferred over before we announced it. But, you know, the verse is really our first big launch on something and we wanted to do it big. We wanted to do something new. We didn't just want to pump out a product. Okay. Like, that's what I, what I really like to do and what I'm passionate about is building better. Like, we build for the people that don't want to compromise. And that's what we're building. We're building the best. And we're really, you know, digging into that. All our broadheads, we make here in America. It's American rolled steel. Like it's an American product. It's American jobs. It's supporting essentially a small business of hunters that are very passionate about what we're building. We aren't just trying to turn something out, just to turn something out. We're turning something out that I believe fills a need that hasn't been met. Something that I think there's a gap in the, in the market for. Like I said in the beginning, you know, growing up as a western big game hunter, I felt like there was certain products and things that just never really were designed for the task at hand. So we would use things that were built for something else for what we did, and it would get by, but it wasn't designed for that. And then as soon as you got something that was designed for what you did, you go, wow, that's so much better. And that's. I feel like that's this step we really took the next step in doing that. You know, we're really leading the way in that you might see other people start to mimic it in the future. But, you know, we're. I'm really proud of what our team has done to kind of take that next step and really innovate to build the best and build something new and think about it in a different way. And I think that when you like for those that, you know, if you guys, if you're one of the people that's like, hey, I'm gonna try that, you know, keep me posted. Let me know, keep. Share your stories with me. Because these are the kind of things, like, I'm excited to get this into people's hands because I really do feel like it is something new and something that's completely different for a certain use case. You know, they're definitely. These are very high end mechanical broadheads. As long as you can recover it, you can pretty much reuse it. You can use our sharpener and stuff to sharpen the blades and what have you, or you can replace the blades. But it's a very durable product designed for the best of both worlds really. And I'm excited about it. So you guys, if you want check it out. It's a pretty cool thing that we're just excited about. So thank you guys so much for the support. Feel free. You know, if you, if you don't follow us on social media, Day 6 gear, you can find Day 6 YouTube channel. That's where we just release all of our information. So if you want to do more of a deep dive on it, look at it a little bit more in depth, head over to there. I'll put a bunch of stuff on my YouTube channel, go to our website and sign up. You know, because we make these like our, we make these ourselves. We can only make so many with our current production capacity. We, you know, we, we didn't launch these until we had a very large stockpile built up. Like we could have launched them probably last year if we wanted. But I wanted to make sure that like we launched them with enough time to, to give people, you know, time to, to buy them and whatever and get settled in with them before the season, but also to have quite a few on hand. However, you know, if this, this first run goes well we're, you know we're going to continue to, to make them obviously. But you know, if you're on our email list you'll just be informed of this kind of stuff. So if we do run out or whatever you get is a good way to just stay in touch and understand what we've got coming out or information on something. So it's really great resource. You can head over to my website and just sign up for that. Thank you guys so much for the support. I'm really excited to get these into your guys hands. I know I've said it a million times but it really does mean a lot to me. Of the people that listen to this podcast have been championing this journey and just been along on this journey of building this company, going out and just trying to create better things. I just. Thank you guys. It means a lot because I know that I couldn't do it without your guys support. I have a lot of support out there and I really appreciate it. You know, it means a lot to me. So when something like this, when we are able to do, we're able to do something like this because of that kind of support and I think in the long run we'll all get, you know, gear that's more designed for maybe some of the things that we enjoy to do. So appreciate it. Thank you guys. And until next week, I'M gonna say, stay sharp. Catch you guys later. Sam.