It is definitely much easier to get the axle out if you pound the bolts out of the flange on the front differential. You need to whack then pretty hard and often several times. Since there isn't much room to swing a hammer with the A-arm in the way, I used a long breaker bar. I placed that against the bolt and the other end of the breaker bar was outside of the brake disk. That gave me plenty of room to swing a heavy mallet. Turning the wheel all the way to one side give you a straighter shot at it. Don't forget to put a nut on the end of the bolts so you don't mushroom them and damage the threads when you beat on them.