Broadhead Tuning: Perfecting Accuracy with Fixed and Mechanical Broadheads

For bow hunters, ensuring that broadheads fly true and hit the target with repeatable precision is paramount before heading into the field. Broadhead tuning—whether using fixed or mechanical broadheads—helps ensure that your arrows fly accurately and consistently, mimicking the same flight characteristics as your practice field points. Proper broadhead tuning can be the difference between a lethal shot and a missed opportunity.

Here’s an in-depth guide to broadhead tuning, tailored for both fixed-blade and mechanical broadheads, along with tips for achieving optimal flight performance.

For more, go read the original article at: https://huntingforjustice.com/f/broadhead-tuning-perfecting-accuracy

5 Turkey Hunting Safety Tips for Your 2024 Season From a Hunter with a Law Degree

As turkey hunting season approaches in Pennsylvania (May 4 for general season and April 27 for Youth Day), I am already seeing news stories and social media posts about hunters getting shot down south. Although it sounds incredibly difficult to screw up that bad, this happens every year. I used to think most people had baseline competence, but after 20 years of turkey hunting experience, I no longer think that. So, I thought I’d cover the basics on turkey hunting safety so you don’t get filled with lead or TSS this year and end up the hospital, and subsequently in my office for a consultation.

TIP #1:

DON’T MOVE.

Let’s start with a big one. WHEN YOU SEE ANOTHER HUNTER, DON’T MOVE. You would think that people wouldn’t just shoot at movement in the woods, but every year people somehow mistake a guy sitting against a tree in mossy oak for a right white and blue head of a gobbler. It’s so dumb its actually impressive. If you are new to chasing thunder chickens and don’t believe me, just yesterday I saw this happened in Mississippi:

Here’s another recent one (March 18, 2024) from down in Florida where a guy took a shot in the dome: https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/florida-hunter-mistakes-man-for-turkey-shoots-him-in-the-head-police-say/. Now, the Florida story is a guy shooting at a decoy which I guess is more understandable but still painfully stupid and less avoidable. I have two stories on those instances I will tell you later.

​The main point here is most hunters (believe it or not) get shot by waiving when they see a hunter to notify the other hunter of their location and when the shooter does not even see a decoy. The good news is this is entirely avoidable. When you see another hunter, do not move at all. Use your voice and let the other guy know you are there. Very simple. Congrats, your chances of getting shot this year just went down considerably.

TIP #2:

DO NOT STALK TURKEYS

You can only sit and call to turkeys in Pennsylvania for this reason. You of course can (and often must) use woodsmanshipto outsmart the bird, but never stalk hen clucks or cadences, or even jake gobbles. Any one of those can be a hunter calling. Yet every year, people ignore this rule which results in close calls or accidents.

I’ve got two personal examples where I had a close call due to violations of this rule.

Let’s go back to 2017. I was seeing my girlfriend, now wife, down near McCandless for the weekend when her friend Nichole wanted to go turkey hunting for the first time. Far from where I normally hunt, I figured I’d just take her to the Wexford Gamelands in Allegheny County. Never hunted there before but I assumed, even if we went in blind, we may hear a gobble and that would make Nichole happy. We get to the parking lot an hour before legal and get set up 40 minutes before legal. I have one of those cheap foam hen decoy ten yards from us in a small opening and we are tucked up against a big blowdown tree.

About 15 minutes before legal I get on my Talkin’ Stick glass call and start with a intermittent soft purrs. A couple minutes later I hear consistent, LOUD crunching behind us and hen breeding cadences from a novice caller. I look behind us and a guy with a bright headlamp on was stalking up to where he was hearing the purrs which was, as described above, putting myself and Nichole in danger. I did not move and yelled at the guy to make our position known. He walked away. I knew I was in yuppie country, but I will admit I was shocked at what had just happened. Thinking it could not get any worse, we kept hunting.

At 8 a.m. after hearing nothing I was thinking we should pick up and take a walk. My dad always said “give it five more minutes” when you want to leave and so that’s what I just told myself. During those last five minutes, I hear some heavy thuds on the main trail not 15 yards from our opening we set up on. A few seconds later I look to my right and see a gun barrel pointing at my hen! Before I could speak, I hear, “no son, that’s a female turkey.” A father and son, the son about 16, wearing blaze orange hats stepped out from the thicket overgrowth on the trail and kept walking. In more disbelief than I was just as it was getting light, I said to Nichole we were getting the hell out of there.

Over the years I have found it is much more effective to use a jake decoy. If I was using one on that public ground that day, that kid would be buying me another decoy and someone could have gotten hurt. But to recap, I was stalked twice that morning and it almost caused some serious problems. Unless you see the bird you are calling to, just don’t go after it.

​Even if you think you are the only one on the property, it still isn’t a great idea. Fast-forward to the 2023 season, it was hot morning in mid-May and the birds weren’t talking as usual. I’m with my dad behind his place at a farm we have hunted for decades, and we were the only ones with permission. I have my Avian X half-strut I bought when I was a broke college kid and killed a pile of birds over on an old cornfield edge where I knew the birds fed during the mid-mornings. I was only hen calling when I heard movement to my right that sounded like scratchings at the time. I reposition and wait to see what it was. I see black, but much higher than a turkey. I then see blue, but a lot of it, and more like a mid-blue. Out steps some Amish fella and he raises his shotgun at my precious decoy. I holler at him. He looked at me, smiles and walks away.

Apparently, he got permission from the landowner, and I have no idea how he even got back there or why he decided to come to that area of a county where few Amish live. Either way, I applied the same safety principle of not moving and vocalizing which saved me, and certainly my decoy. People are going to stalk turkeys. They shouldn’t, but they do. Just remember this article when this happens to you.

TIP #3:

DO NOT WEAR RED, WHITE, BLUE OR BLACK

Going back to that Amish guy, he was wearing a black Amish hat. Terrible idea. The blue was also a bad idea because a gobbler’s head can be red, white, or blue, but they can also see color, so that guy probably wasn’t killing anything that day. Because turkeys can be any of the colors, just don’t wear ‘em or you are asking for trouble. Simple as that.

TIP #4:

DO WEAR ORANGE POST-SUCCESS

I actually don’t do this as much as I should. Every turkey vest these days comes with a built-in orange square in the back you can pop out when you shoot a bird to protect you from the numbskulls who shoot at movement or non-camo. You can also keep an orange hat in your vest/fanny pack that is more visible because it can be seen 360 degrees. Is this a law? No, but its smart, and you should do it. Especially on public ground.

TIP #5:

SHOTGUN ROUND SELECTION

Surprisingly, a lot of guys get hurt even before the season attempting to shoot rounds their gun or gun/choke setup cannot handle. Do not shoot 3.5” shells if your shotgun only takes 3”. It says what your gun takes on the barrel. If it doesn’t, use the Google machine. Make sure your selected choke is rated for what you are shooting. Don’t use steel shot for chokes that aren’t rated for it. It often says so on the choke. If you are a big baller and shoot TSS, the same rule applies. You can only blame yourself if you don’t follow these rules, and I’ll tell you that in person in my office when you want to sue the gun/choke company. Sorry, pal, you’re the reason “caliente” is on my coffee cup. The good news is, these blunders and therefore injuries are entirely avoidable with minimal effort and common sense.

CONCLUSION

Some of these “tips” may be obvious to you, but it’s always a good idea to review them and even hear some stories where they were useful. There’s a 99.9% chance, and yes, I made that up, that you won’t get shot this year, but there’s always one. Don’t be that one. Good luck this season!

Here’s a playlist of turkey hunts either filmed or edited by the author: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ7y_mBtxMklYBJqAtsO7Attlir_ucCnV&si=VnHeOvPCyV76HuWT

The Skeen Firm 2023 Holiday Primer - Products Liability at Christmas Time: The Red Ryder BB Gun in "A Christmas Story"

In the heartwarming holiday classic “A Christmas Story,” the quest for the ultimate Christmas gift takes center stage with young Ralphie Parker's desire for a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. Beyond the comedic allure of Ralphie's pursuit, the film gives us a useful lesson in products liability.

Intended Use:

In products liability cases, generally, there are:

(1)   design defects: (your toaster burns your house down because it was poorly designed to get too hot); and

(2) manufacturing defects (your toaster explodes because during assembly, the well-designed toaster was assembled with the wrong electrical board that made the toaster get too hot).

So, how do you recover from a company when your toaster burns your house down? Luckily for Pennsylvanians, our state holds companies strictly liable (meaning there’s no legal defense) for defective products regardless of whether it’s a manufacturing or design defect, so long as a defective condition exists. Tincher v. Omega-Flex, Inc., 104 A.3d 328, 335 (Pa. 2014). A defective condition exists if [your toaster] is not safe for its intended purpose. Id. at 339.[1]

Yup. The short title of this section is, basically, all you need to know for products liability before contacting an attorney. If you or someone else is injured by a product being used as intended, (i.e. making toast and not sticking a butter knife in your toaster), there is a good chance you can hold the company responsible, responsible.

Although the toaster analogy was fun, let’s get back to A Christmas Story and later some more examples to iron out this “intended use” concept.

How this impacts you:

In the movie, Ralphie gets his Red Ryder when he thought all hope was lost. Excited, he promptly went outside to shoot “Ole Blue”. He put his target up, pulled up the rifle and let one rip, ending up with a BB that hit his glasses and cut him on the cheek.

Was Ralphie using the BB gun and BBs (there are TWO products being used here, not just the gun!) as they were intended to be used? Well, no. While watching the movie, it’s obvious that Ralphie may indeed “shoot his eye out” when he attached his target to a piece of metal. The round BB was never going to stick in or go through that metal, and so Red Ryder/Daisy Co. would not be liable for the BB that hit ole Ralphie. Bonus points to the company if it had a warning of such activity on the box/user manual. And no, you don’t get to use any excuses in court like a “an icicle fell and broke my glasses.”

Now, if Ralphie was shooting at cardboard and the gun somehow blew up or shot the BB backwards and into his face, you’d only have to establish that the barrel or air system was installed backwards, or whatever the defect was that caused Ralphie to get hurt. It doesn’t really matter if it was designed poorly or incorrectly assembled by the “new hire” at the factory in China. The company sold a defective product and is therefore, liable to Ralphie, the consumer, for damages.

As promised, here's some other random examples of non-intended use folks may run into during Christmas time I just made up:

• Your wife can’t sue the company when she burns her thumb with that new hair straightener you got her for Christmas;

• You can’t sue Huffy when your kid takes a tumble on the makeshift ramp he made;

• You can’t sue Muddy if you exceed the weight limit on the $99 deer stand you bought at Walmart and it breaks; and of course,

• You can’t sue Whirlpool or Remington for any injuries you get from falling debris if you take your grampappy’s Model 760 and some Tannerite and yeet your dryer into the stratosphere.

Those got progressively more fun, didn’t they? Now, let’s use those same examples where a products liability action probably exists:

• Your wife’s hair catches on fire because the straightener got hotter than its supposed to;

• Your kid’s Huffy’s brakes malfunctioned, and he’s injured in a wreck;

• Your $99 deer stand you bought at Walmart is missing a weld, broke while you were climbing it, and you fell;

• The factory 150-grain Remington Core-Lokt was loaded way too hot and it blew up your grampappy’s 760, hurting you instead of your dryer.

That’s a wrap:

“A Christmas Story,” provides a humorous lens through which I have now probably forced you to think about products liability for the foreseeable future. Sorry about that. But the film does not take away from safety concerns and using the products how they should be used. That’s certainly something to keep in mind during the holidays. The well-being of your loved ones is paramount, which is why Pennsylvania has strict liability for defective products. If you or someone you know wasn’t being a Ralphie with their Christmas gift and was injured, direct them to an attorney.

*Disclaimer: this article is for informational purposes only. It is not providing legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship.

[1] “Intended use” and “intended purpose” can be different things, but I won’t bore you with that here. For our purposes, we’ll just use “intended use”.