I want to thank everyone who participated in the attempt to search for the origins of this mystery broadhead. It is puzzling indeed isn't it? And part of the enigma is that the person who is doing the demonstration in this video was using broadheads that random people on his Youtube channel has given him in order to conduct this testing.
One of many types of broad heads that do the same thing. There have been hundreds of designs over the years.
Last year I had visited the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution in order to more closely study the small-arms of the entire feudal period of the Republic era (1905-1949) since the graphic novel I am currently producing takes place in this era and deals with a vast amount of both military and civilian rifles, handguns and ammunition. While the guns and all of the various designs and improvements in firearm technology that took place in China during that time was absolutely incredible, I could not help but be drawn to the Tuancheng Fortress, a Qing era defensive installation located in the same district that has become the leading curator of weapons and armor from the medieval era all the way back to the age of antiquity.
Two things stood out the most while at Tuancheng:
1. It is almost impossible to fathom that it was in the same year that Great Britain adopted the .75 caliber musket for general infantry use that mail-and-plate armor reached the peak of it's perfection in China, that is 1702. The Qing imperial heavy cavalryman from the 1650s to 1720 was almost identical in appearance and armament as the Ottoman
Sipahi or the Safavid
Qurchi, who were the Qing's distant cousins. Massive overlapping "lobster scales" of steel plates draped over a body-length chainmail hauberk and coif. Equipment included a flintlock carbine, lance, curved-blade
Khanjar sword, curved blade dagger tucked in belt holster, quiver containing 30 arrows, horse satchel with 100 more arrows and arrow-building components, and a composite or steel recurve bow of over 100 pounds of draw weight. Think being a modern technical soldier is hard, imagine having to perfect all of these weapons and be able to use them in a pinch, on instinct.
2. The sheer amount of archery equipment, most notably, BROADHEADS, that were developed in China over the ages since the reign of the Shang Dynasty. Archery also reached the peak of it's perfection in China during the early Qing, which was the 1680s to the 1720s. The emperor Kangxi was a prolific bowhunter and paintings of him in full battle armor taking on some of the world's most dangerous game with a bow adorns many Qing-era fortresses and were often used as diplomatic deterrents to frighten and discourage the various Turkic tribes of the steppes who would harass the Qing borders during the early years of Qing rule. One of the most chilling and downright terrifying exhibits in the Hall of Medieval Weaponry in Tuancheng was the display board of broadheads. You think the torture museums are disturbing, the arrowheads were of downright sadistic design and makes you glad that we are not living in an age when constant dueling and death-matches were a daily fact of a man's life. Some of the designs I saw were as follows:
CRESCENT MOON: A shaft terminating in a razor-sharp crescent with the two edges facing outward. Would have cut a 2-inch wide wound channel straight through anything it came in contact with.
TRIDENT MOON: A crescent moon with a longer spear point in the middle to facilitate penetration, while the crescent edges cut through the wound.
HAWK WINGS: Basically a two-blade extended outward in a reverse-V for wider wound channel.
TENTACLE: Razor sharp, outward flailing steel legs, up to 8, all coming out of the shaft end in a floral pattern like a lamprey eel's teeth. This particularly brutal arrowhead would have created a wound pattern almost like that disturbing photoshopped image from years ago where a lamprey's mouth was carved into someone's fingers. The actual ballistic channel from being hit by one of these things would be around 3 inches wide and usually pass-thru penetration with a warbow.
INCENDIARY BODKIN: Basically a tube of gunpowder with a timed fuse on the end of a bodkin point. The idea was the bodkin would penetrate a heavily armored soldier, anchoring the arrow in place, while the incendiary package ignited, burning him alive. That arrow was also used against wooden fortress walls and on the sea against wooden gunships to set them ablaze.
Add those with the hundreds of variations of the 2-blade and 3-blade arrowheads already in use during that time and you would have a downright frightful arsenal.
Interesting bow, other than that I think I'll stick my 100gr Slick Trick mags.
I have always been drawn to bows that could be taken down. The Primal Gear Compact is just one in a class of many. It's rival, the SAS, also comes in a 55-lb package that could take almost any species of big game with the proper broadhead. There is a Youtube video featuring a British hunter in South Africa who have taken a 800 pound wildebeest bull with a 55-lb and a two-blade. Really impressive and shows just what these types of bows are capable of.
Imagine the kind of damage this thing would do against big game or in a urban defense scenario. The thing is shaped like an ace of spades and contain two hollow channels like jet engines. Upon impact the channels cut straight through the target, slicing two identical tubes of hollow wound track in it's wake.