Bolt right through pig...cant find bolt. ideas??

New to the whole xbow scene.

Shot a pig Friday night with a 5 dollar bolt and a $14 dollar broad head. Started thinking this is going to get expensive. I'm shooting pigs at 25yds with a Bear Torrix FFl. Muzzy broadheads.

Newbie question.....is there anyway to not have the bolt go straight through pig? Pig didn't make it 10 feet from feeder but arrow was nowhere to be found.

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

Only one shot or did you do a follow up shot? That entrance and exit doesn't look like a 10 yd recovery. If it was angling away a cross bow bolt could be in the cavity. Arrows do weird things after exiting an animal or hitting the ground!

not sure for hogs and xbows but for turkeys and compounds I have seen big 'washers' on the market to slow down the arrow on impact.
also, metal detector comes in handy for finding lost bolts....

Lighted nocks

My buddy and I shot at the same time....we don't know who hit it or where the arrows went.

Im going to build a platform for my blind....perhaps shooting at a down angle will put the bolt in ground.

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For hogs- go to eBay and get cheap broad heads. And yes, shooting down really helps.

if the broadhead hit a tree or hard ground bolt & broadhead probably trashed anyway

If your only paying $5 a bolt that's pretty cheap. Try to aim for the front leg low on the body.

Arrows are buried in the ground/sand/grass and they can go farther than you think.

Run those bolts through the front shoulders if you want to slow them down. Guts offer little resistance to sharp objects.

Was there another hog behind it in the background by any chance? Might have got a twofer. It could have also ricocheted off something behind that pig and went a long ways. I had a bolt go thru an old shoot out target one day and it ricocheted of the netwire yard fence. It finally landed about 80 yards past the target. Had I not seen it do that and watched it land, I would have never found it.

Lighted nocks can definitely help in recovery, but a bolt can travel a good distance or bury into the ground pretty easy. I have recovered several arrows with a metal detector.

It can get pricey! Cheap Mossy Oak bolts from Walmart + cheap Muzzy broadheads make it a little less expensive to shoot pigs.

If I can I prefer bullets for pigs, lots cheaper

They all come from China, buy direct instead of an importer and the price is about half of a US seller. Or do like I did, I used a homemade copy of a Montagnard crossbow and used homemade bolts.

Yup, lighted nocks.

Get some of the cheap mechanical broadheads Wally world sells and run a test with them. I think they are designed for single use.

do deer somehow deserve $30 broadheads? Any broadhead will kill either why use different ones for different animals? Most all broadheads now are laser or chemically sharpened and are drastically sharper from the factory than they were even 15 years ago. I shot three deer last year with Allen heads from Walmart bought on clearance for $7 for all three and they killed hogs too.

A $30 broadhead kills them "deader" that a $7 version.

I bet if it’s shot from a $1000 bow they die even deader than that.

Cheap knives are sharp too. The quality of the materials and construction is what costs the extra money.

nobody sharpens broadhead blades anymore they are one time use. I’ve had ferrells break on the most expensive heads and cheapest, and if price means quality why would anybody shoot the cheap ones at the heavier boned animal? Bottom line razor sharp in the lungs they all die even if the package doeanst say Rage.

I've had some arrow do the same. Shot through and never found them. I've had some that fell just a few feet past the animal. I've had some that stuck in the cavity. As was said earler, arrows can do weird things once they enter an animal.

I've lost some over the years, and as others say, once they strike the animal, they can do odd things. Neck shot a turkey once, and it didn't pass through, just stuck about halfway thru its neck. I waited a few minutes thinking the bird would fall, but nope, it started walking away, pecking at the ground. Had to shoot it a second time.

And yes, shooting from an elevated blind helps you find the bolts, but in my experience, if the ground is hard either the broadhead, bolt, or both will be damaged. And they can still ricochet off bone, a rock, etc. and end up quite a distance from where you might expect.

I used to hunt a place in west Texas and after the season was over the ranch manager would go scouting around the feeders on horseback. He swore his horse would flinch when close to an arrow. Must have worked, he always found several and would put them in a rack for us to claim on our next visit.

I sharpen the G5 Montechs. One of the ones I have has killed four hogs and is sharp ready for the next victom

Montecs here too. I sharpen and re-use as well...if I can find them.