LOCKED IN 🔒 for September EP 1 Broadhead Tune

What's up, welcome to the video series of locked in. This is the countdown to September 1st. Me and Riley are going to help you guys get ready for your elk season. And we're together through your comments, going to figure out all the stuff we need to do to make sure we are dialed. Separation is in the preparation. This first video is about release aid, broadhead, and some fitness. Are you guys ready? This series is brought to you by Black Rifle. Every Monday for the next four weeks, we're going to drop a video on getting you locked in for September. This first one, if you notice I have an index on my right hand and I will have an index on my right hand all September long. I am going to switch back to an index release for elk in 2025. Why Dan? Because Riley's doing it, right? Basically. Basically. No, the, the reality is, is that this strapped to my hand makes more sense. Yes. I could do a buckle strap to my thumb. I'm just, I'd never have liked the way it feels. Number two, I've had a couple of bulls just step out wanting to die broadside. And I have been fumbling for my release in my right front pocket. And I know they make doodads that touch your, you know, handhelds to your, but I've never liked those either. I don't like attaching things. I don't have to, this allows me to hook on extremely fast. All I gotta do is knock an arrow, pull back and aim and start talking loud to myself and break a shot. And so I think it's just a faster target acquisition. It's a faster transaction for me. And things happen fast when you party with elk and things happen unexpectedly. In fact, expect the unexpected when you're locking in. The next thing that we're going to do is in order to shoot this, I have to, for my facial features, I have to move my peep up quite a bit, which is fine, but I'm going to have to tie in a new, I basically have to move my peep and tie it in. I'll typically set that peep or what feels really good at 50 to 60 yards. So I don't adjust, I don't set my peep height at 20 yards. I always kind of find a 50 yard target, have a buddy help me out. Riley did it today, draw back at 50 and he just moves the peep up until it's absolutely perfect. I don't have to move my head. And that kind of covers me for all my ranges. Let's go shoot some broadheads. See if we can pick a winner. See if we need a broadhead tune. That's the one thing about the Lift X is broadhead tuning. I don't need a press. I can do it right there in the field, which is awesome. All right. First shot is going to be 2D with the fill point. Part of being locked in is I'm not dialing to specific yardages. That bull is 28 yards. I won't dial to 28 yards. I'll use my 30 yard pin and put it a little low. Awesome. I'm going to test broadheads. These are the four I've got picked out for elk. Then I wanted to get you guys locked in on your broadheads, your broadhead of choice. Go back, watch a couple of our videos on, we made one with Joel Turner at the Elk Immersion on where to shoot an elk. You shoot this elk right here in the pocket and the edge of the diaphragm is right here through this triangle right here. See this triangle that's formed, right? This triangle right here, that will center your lungs, but then you're playing with scapula, right? So like how far do we have? We know that if we go too low in here, like that's why we say shoot it at least a third of the way up, if not halfway up the body just to get this lobe of the lungs. If you guys really look at this, there's not a lot of lungs behind the crease and it's not low. And it's not just because this critter is is flipped up, right? This is how they sit. There's not a lot like if you shoot it like, oh, man, I smoked right in the crease. Yeah, cool. But there's a lot. I mean, flip that thing up. The lungs are way up here. Now its lungs aren't inflated in the video, but they're not deflated. So it does paint quite an obvious picture that elk vitals are shoved up into the chest cavity. We want to blow those lungs apart. So the further you aim off the shoulder, the likely are to hit diaphragm or the back of the lungs or worse yet liver. And if you're low, you could miss liver. You can miss heart and you can hit stomach or guts. And that's not good. So tight to the vital V and the vital V goes in towards the elk a lot more than you think. And yes, there's some muscle there, but you can punch through it. So I'm recommending a very sharp three or two blade fixed. If you are going to use expandable, that's fine. With me, because my opinion shouldn't matter. It's your whatever gives you the most confidence. I will be using the hide. It's a hybrid. It's a cut on contact opens up. It's devastating. I've never shot an elk with them, but I've killed a lot of deer with them. And I feel confident. So today I had Riley film me and we shot these broadheads. 3D elk 67. All right. First up, iron will wide freaking bullseye iron will single bevel. Say just a little right both. It's in the bullseye hide glue in. All right, let's go pull them. We're going to shoot next 100 yards. All right, friends, we're locking in testing broadhead flight. The iron will wide will probably be in the front of my quiver. Anything 50 and under, we're able to shoot 67 and then 50 and then 100. And I would say this broadhead actually flew well out to 67 and a half. Really good. And then we knew it kind of planes and we proved that at the 100 yard mark. It definitely didn't group with everybody else. It was inches low. And so that's to be expected with this big chunk of metal. It had a unique sound to it being vented. Yeah, it's a loud broadhead, too. So if you have or can afford the extra rate, go to 150. It's a solid. But this is a great like when we did the bone test and we were shooting through scabs and humorous and hide. I'd say this was one of the shining all stars of that video. It just kept crushing and stayed sharp and nothing came off. So this is definitely what gives me good feels. The other one is the smaller brother, the standard single bevel to the left. And this thing grouped well at 50, 67 and a half and 100. In fact, I think it hit right in the middle at 100. Doesn't plane. It's I think we made four clicks to the rest today. And all it is is move the rest up four clicks, which is pretty common when you're broadhead tuning. Didn't have to do any left or rights. And I'm I'm not going to do that with the rest running the Matthews lift decks. I'm going to do those adjustments to the wheeling. But I didn't have to do that today. So just move the rest up four clicks. Got this super tight with fill point and then the hide blue in one twenty five. Did have to make any adjustments. It's right there with the fill point. Fifty, sixty seven and a half and one hundred. I don't know. Those were just the random yardages. We want to do fifty and a hundred, but end up doing an extra group at sixty seven and a half. Pretty fun to like quickly move my peep up, tie it in and then have some string twist. So put a half a twist in my string so the peep doesn't twist back anymore. Tie in my D loop. Get back with this. So the lift decks is my elk rig for twenty twenty five. And we're using an index. I do want to say I give a shout out. The most affordable broadhead on the market. God bless this. This is the terra firma Gladius single bevel broadhead, pre sharpened one piece construction, solid single bevel to the right. And we didn't realize it was single beveled. I didn't pay attention. And we shot it at sixty seven and a half yards. Is this terra firma Gladius? Oh, terra firma Gladius. Unscrewed. That sucks. I don't want to broadhead just laying in the ground here to step on. And the arrow barely hit the target and then bounced off. And I was like, what? And then upon review of the slow mo, you can see the Gladius comes off the arrow. Hits the dirt a few yards before the target and bounces, and we still can't find it, which is scary. And we're gonna have to get the metal detector out, right? But like, OK, so if I wanted to run the Gladius, I would have to make arrows and orient them with some offset to the right to match that. That really does matter. And with those broadheads, we saw here because I had that thing screwed tight. And by the time it got almost to the target, it was completely unscrewed and hitting the dirt. Hmm. Yeah. Do they make a left helical version or? I don't think so. I'll look, but I will say I bought nine broadheads plus international shipping and it came to like 85 bucks. Oh, wow. Yeah. And shout out to the guys at Gladius because we Ben used them when we did that broadhead test. His veins are to the right. And that thing destroyed all bone. Nothing broke off. They stayed pretty sharp. They just kept penetrating based on our own like redneck testing. That's a good option, especially if you have an offset to the right on your veins. And I could make some arrows that way for sure. Dan, why are the broadheads so hard to tune? Yeah, fixed broadheads are hard to tune. Expandables have a great flight characteristics. They don't really add a lot of drag, but fixed broadheads do. It's like putting veins in the front of your arrow, especially so like that big wide from iron will is like two giant veins in the front and the back competing. And so it really exposes your tune. And it's really common to like with fixed broadheads to go out to 20 yards, shoot a broadhead, shoot a field point and they're inches apart. And you want to eliminate that. And once you can eliminate that, then you can graduate double the distance to 40. Shoot a broadhead, shoot a field point and eliminate the distances. Make sure you're shooting good. Make sure there's no wind. When you get out to like 60 and 80, those kind of things, like even if you have it pretty well tuned, it's a good chance that those veins in the front, aka your fixed broadhead, are going to grab more air and plane your arrow down, which is why a lot of years I've always had like really good tune jobs from obviously like MFJJ and good peers. But then when I get out to 80, my iron will or my Grim Reaper micro will be like left and right perfect, but like six inches low at 80. What I've learned over time is to not adjust anything other than the rest and just slightly bump it up. So if your fixed broadhead is hitting low, which is common and you need to get that gap closed up, just bump your rest up. And that's why I like the QAD rest. It's like one click at a time. So I'll literally do very few clicks. Like if I had a six inch differential at 80 yards, I'm just going to give it like one, two, three, four clicks up. Shoot it again. Make sure they're all good breaks. Now, when the broadhead starts going right and left, and I mean, like guys will miss a target at like 20 yards. Yikes. If you want to save your target, try doing a bear shaft. So you just rip the veins off, put some electrical tape on the back so that it weighs the same as your fill point and veins and then shoot a fill point, shoot your bear shaft. If they're not hitting what the bear shaft doing is exposing your tune and it's similar adjustments. So so if you're broadheads to the right and your fill points in the middle, you need to move your rest to the left. And you're basically not following the arrow on your left to right. But on your ups and downs, you follow the arrow. So if you're broadheads low, move your rest up. If you're broadheads high, move it down. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I think everybody should like go to Elk Camp with a bear shaft and with electrical tape, get there, shoot a fill point at 20, shoot your bear shaft at 20. And you might be able to do that at 30 and 40 if you're really tuned. That's that will save you a broadhead target. I have lots of broadhead targets, so I usually skip that and just shoot broadhead and then fill point. But I want you guys doing it now. Week one leading up to September 1st. So you have all month to kind of fine tune, make little micro adjustments until everything's grouping. So today, those broadheads, are those the broadheads you're going to hunt with? Or do you resharpen? Or what do you do broadhead wise, sharpening wise? Yes. So though I am not going to use the iron wool wide that I shot today. That's my practice one. But I have a case of six. So those are all virgin, never been shot. Those will get screwed in. And then I've also hot melted my components so that I every broadhead is lined up exactly the same. They're all congruent, meaning when I come to full draw, my cock vein is up and that the iron will wide. The longest blades are parallel to the earth and the bleeders are up. You could orient it the other way. I don't like having a mixed match. I want them all oriented the same. OK, that makes sense. You can do that with hot melt. I haven't had hot melt stuff come out. I do know some guys who right before season take the hot melt out and put real epoxy or glue in and glue it in. You could do that, too. Whatever gives you the most confidence. But I do like to index all the broadheads and I like to shoot virgin broadheads. And I even have arrows that I haven't been shooting into targets over and over and over that are all ready to go. So I have like elk hunting arrows, practice arrows, practice broadheads, real broadheads. And then I even do have a bear shaft, too. So when's the last time you shot an index? I know you just switched back to it, but it's been a while, right? In 2019, I shot a Wyoming bull at 35 yards frontal. Not on purpose. It was a cold call sequence. It actually I've done. I had done a cold call sequence at this exact spot in Wyoming the day prior and called in two bulls that I passed on. So I'm like and they weren't talking. It was like September 1st. So on September 2nd, I went back to the same spot, which was a few miles away from my truck. Nice little bench. Did a whole series of calf calls, cow calls and spike bugles. And then this big six point walks out, stops at 35 yards. I'm at full draw. And I'm not going to shoot him. But my pen's buried right in the middle of his chest. And I think he sees me and I think he's going to like bolt and I'm going to cow call and he'll stop and look back and be quartering away. And so my hands on the trigger and I'm just waiting to cow call diaphragms in my mouth. And then I was like, oh, ----. And it goes and he didn't go 20. Oh, wow. Did not mean to do that. And I don't really I'm not I feel like this is more of a confession than anything like stuff like that might happen. But like typically indexes or I don't run my indexes hot at all. Like if you watch the way I shoot in this video, like I get my aim done. I put my finger wrapped around a secure and I'm on it quite a bit. And then I'm pulling my hand through the strap and it takes a while to break. I can't really punch this either. The way I have it set up. I have other indexes that I shot today, like thinking I was going to try them. And they were all like not very easily adjustable. And they were hot, hot. And like as soon as I put on there, my aim was I was like, I don't want that hot of a trigger. And I want that clicker from that Joel was talking about that they made. Is it the Solix? Yeah, the Solix click. I'll be honest, that is something I'm eyeballing for sure. Now I've used I've used it and it gets to the click way too easy and it doesn't have enough adjustment. So once they come out with version 2.0, I think it'll be able to tolerate more pressure to the click so you can adjust the travel and how much time it takes to get to the click. I don't mind if it breaks pretty quick after the click, but I can't like put my finger on it goes click. I'm like, what's the point? Right. Oh, sharpening broadheads. Definitely, if you're not going to replace them with new ones. WorkSharp makes a whole series. This is actually the WorkSharp I take in the backcountry to touch up my Montana knives. And I typically will cut half an elk up and then I'll just take a break, give my lower back a rest and then I'll touch this up and we'll be good to go. You can actually touch up broadheads with this, too, in the backcountry if you're in a jam. Otherwise, they make specific attachments for specific broadheads. I think it's called WorkSharp. That's what you want to use or just use brand new ones. Switching back to an index. Was it like a not like a learning curve, but kind of getting back into it? Or did you notice that your how was your how was your shot break? Like working through your shot? How was that going back to the index? Knowing what you know now. Knowing what I know now, punching it is not an option. Pulling my hand through the strap is something that I didn't really grasp. In 2019, I would I would have all my fingers closed and I'd be like this now that I have my fingers open and this in a 90 degree and it's just stuck there, then I'm really having to pull my whole elbow through the strap. I'm getting clean breaks and I don't know when it's going off. And it's I almost want to like speed it up a little. It's a little on the it might be even like breaking longer, taking longer to break than my index, which is fine. I just need to get loud. But you can shoot these. I my groups are as just as good as this as my handheld. The only thing I like about a handheld is that when I anchor, I'm more inverted and it's more bone on bone. So for me, I get a better anchor with a handheld. But at the end of the day, you got to get a peep around a circle of your site and make them line up and it should be a hallway. So regardless. And so, yeah, I think this is a great way to go for elk. And I think I can get set up faster. Awesome. As far as locking in your fitness, Riley, for week one, I'm going to have you do. I want you to work out almost every day if you can break a sweat because you're going to be working out every day when you're elk hunting. And most likely you'll elk hunt for more than a day. It'll be days upon days. Right. So you need to get a backpack on. So, yes, you should go on some rocks or walk with your family and just put the backpack on that. You're about the weight you're going to use, which is probably 30 to 40 pounds for most folks elk hunting. For me, I like to wear I have a go ruck pack. And what I will do is I will do a workout circuit and then I will do X amount of step ups every round. And I'll just wear my 40 pound go ruck. It's like a little weight vest that I put on and I can keep it on so I can be doing pull ups, push ups, air squats, bike. And then when I do all that, I'll go over to the box step ups and I'll do like 20 box step ups. And so if I'm doing like five or 10 rounds of that, I'm going to end up with, you know, getting 200 step ups. And I'm just trying to get time with my feet and my ankles and my knees and my hips with load on the spine. Guys, I know you don't love the fitness part of stuff, but I want to get you a locked in workout to try this week. Basically, I have 18 minute EMOM every minute on the minute. Station one is 10 burpees. I'm going to be wearing this 30 pound weight vest. And then minute two will be max step ups on a 20 inch box alternating. So there's no rep assignment, just 60 seconds of max effort. Should you be able to get these done with a little bit of rest? That's the whole theme. Moving into dumbbell power cleans, 10 reps should have a window of rest and then a minute of max step ups. And then you're going to do the sorenex press. You can sub that out for dumbbell bench press, barbell bench press or push ups right into again, max step ups. No rest. Start back over. It's three rounds. And then maybe go on a long ruck afterwards with your backpack on maybe the 40 pound that we talked about with your hunting gear in it. Or maybe you want to go to 60 pounds and do something a little slower paced like to simulate that pack out. We want you to pack out. If you want to pack out, you've got to be locked in. All right, guys. Week one of the lock in series in the books. What do we do? Broadheads are dialed. Two is one on index releases. Timing is checked. Tune is doped. Brand new broadheads in packages or freshly sharpened broadheads, and we're shooting them from here on out. We're also locking in our fitness. Try this simple workout. It takes 18 minutes. That's it. Let me know how many steps you got total. I was getting 30 to 32 step ups total. Each max rep set. Finally, tune in the next episode next Monday. We're going to drop a video on how to do a dress rehearsal shoot down with all your gear on your backpack, your binoculars, your boots, all the angles you need to practice, all the scenarios with holding your bow back at full draw. If you're going to saddle hunt for elk like we are, how to dress rehearsal that separation is indeed in the preparation. This is August. We're locking it in for September. We'll catch on the next one.