Home › Forums › Bows and Equipment › Considering the sound of arrow flight?
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I read the post on another site where Doc was discussing arrow flight noise and it got me to thinking (as ALL of Doc’s posts do!!!)
A lot, or at least of few of you are saying to yourselve’s “SO WHAT?” at this point, I’m sure.
Literally, for DECADES, I’ve successfully hunted and not gave much thought to it and no doubt could continue to do so.
HOWEVER, I do know I have had MANY animals “jump the string” and while I make all efforts to quiet the bow itself at the shot, should I NOT be concerned about the sound of the arrow in flight? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Thinking on this I ran what I knew through the ol’ noggin and came up with this.
1. Sound travels at 1125 fps. WAY faster than even the fastest of any arrow shot, let alone my weenie bow and heavy arrows!
2. Whitetail that I hunt, and all game animals that I can think of, can hear so much better than we can…..there is no comparison.
3. Whitetail can MOVE very rapidly. In fact enough to completely “duck” the arrow or worse, enough to give us a bad hit.
With this in mind, I thought while I MAY NOT be gaining anything, the consideration of my arrow’s sound in flight was at LEAST worth considering testing.
A buddy and I took four types of arrow fletching out and with one of us safely out of the way, half way to the target, we shot all four just to see if WE could tell the difference between them listening for the sound of the arrow’s flight.
I was AGHAST at the difference!!! Even to our poor human hearing there was easily double or TRIPLE as much “noise” difference!!!!
We shot 3 four inch parabolic, 4 four inch parabolic, 3 five inch high back shields and 3 SHORT five inch shield cuts. All were fletched RW helical on the same jig, the same amount of helical.
They rated in the following order:
1. Noisiest was the high back shields, five inch 3 fletch
2. Next to highest in flight noise was the 4 fletch four inch parabolic feathers.
3. Very close to the same noise level as the four fletch was the 3 fletch, four inch parabolics and it was HARD to tell one from another comparing 3 or 4 fletch.
4. Last, AND LEAST, was the five inch shield RW 3 fletch cut to just under 1/2 inches in height.The comparison was not even close!! These shot at what we estimated to be AT LEAST half the sound of the next quietest fletching!!! A good number of the time we could NOT hear the arrow pass at all when shooting the short five inch shield cut! By comparison, the other three feather set ups gave us a distinctive “bzzzzzzzzz” going by at various and MUCH higher decible levels. Even as much as 12 yards to the side facing away, the sound of the other three fletching types in flight was easily noticable.
One can only imagine what they sound like to a whitetail!
With the high FOC I shoot of 25 percent I have found, as Doc has said, that I simply dont need near as much fletching. I DO, however, have a wee bit of a problem getting my fat fingers off the string smoothly and consistantly with my 43lb bow. These SHORT five inch RW feathers give me all the stability I need even with a sometimes “iffy” release and group as well as any arrows I have fletched.
I cannot say that these are “the best” fletching for YOU yet I found this amateur test very interesting to say the least.
I’ve read that others with far more experience than myself feel the helical is a bit noisier than offset but I have found that I cannot shoot offset and CONSISTANTLY get good broadhead flight. That is MY particular issue but still is information I felt important to pass along.
For myself, I cannot get over how quiet the fletching I described above is out of MY setup.
In an attempt to “cover all the bases” you can imagine which of these fletching combinations I will be hunting with this year!!!
I thought I would pass this along as food for thought for any of you thinking it worth a “shot” testing your own arrows for flight noise.
God Bless
Steve -
Now that is alot of information to think about Steve, your post brought me back to a bowhunt 2 years ago. I remember shooting at a nice buck and I completely misjudged my distance, the buck was about 45 yards away and I put him at 30-35 yards. Shooting between an alley of spruce trees really mislead my range. Anyhow, as the arrow flew towards the deer, let me tell you the deer was out and gone before the arrow got relatively close to him. I was shooting with 3 large banana style feathers and they indeed made alot of noise. Your post brought me back to that particular time which is why today I shoot 3 low 5 inch shields feathers.
Feather Noise has to be considered when we are shooting heavier arrows that travel at a lower speed, good point.
Great post Steve !!
SB
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Steve. awesome post. while i do not know the %foc of my arras, I am shooting a heavy tip (175), one thing I hate is buzzing, makes me check if the glue is good, the answer is the same each time i check. I am at this moment inclined to go down to my (indoor range) ha ha the basment, and trim some plastic vanes and see what happens. I have been tinkering around with some old acc’s I used to use with the compound at 55# with a 125 tip (they have plastic vanes). I have been trying to see if the arra’ll fly with a 175tip, all I can say is that..well, it does kick out, but it sure is quiet. Ill just take like some scissors and giver a low cut. Ill tell you what happens. BobRay
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Thanks for the input, fellas!
I know I’ve had a lot of deer “jump the string” or just not be there when the arrow was. 😆 If it was due to the sound of the bow or the sound of the arrow in flight…..I’ll never know but do feel BOTH are something to consider and glad a few agree or at least are giving it consideration.
IMO, no arrow speed is “enough” to beat a whitetail’s speed yet I know some wheelie shooters that disagree. 🙂
In my fairly simple thought processes even comparing 150 fps to 300 fps, the difference in the time each arrow travels 20 yards is 2 tenths of a second. The difference in flight time between a fast trad bow and a slow trad bow is pretty minute. Just how much a “faster arrow” helps as far as animal movement is probably a subject best held in store for another thread and I have no real facts as to how fast a deer CAN move in .1 of a second so can’t help. I just flat dont want them to move AT ALL, lol.
A quiet shot and quiet arrow flight, or at least as close as I can get to quiet, is therefore on my list of things mandatory for my own use.
I have put more effort here later in my life in a quieter, lighter (that I shoot better), better penetrating (EVEN THOUGH it’s lighter) set up and the more I pick it apart, the better I like it and the more confidence I have in it.
I cannot imagine ever eliminating ALL the issues of noise and penetration but I do think a lot of the information on the Ashby report and on the feathers needed for such are a big step……..at least for me.
AS ALWAYS, even though I often forget to mention it, none of my posts are meant as any kind of cure all or even meant as “advice” (unless I mention it as advice to not do as I did in the past!! :shock:. My posts are only my thoughts, on my hunting equipment and only food FOR thought, for anyone who wishes to consider anything discussed.
Naturally, when I feel I am good to go with three different arrow weights I feel are going to be great but wish to compare…….I cant find squat to shoot at!! grrrrrrr
While I touch base on the subject of arrow weight for whitetail elsewhere and my own testing on it, one thing is in common between the three. Low fletching height and EFOC, with single bevel heads. (although I have on arrowhead I might “just have to” shoot something with just ’cause I’ve wanted to for over 40 years and one long, heavy three blade added for some sound comparisons as well.lol)
After the testing a friend and I did, while amateurish in nature and only US listening with our back turned as the arrow went by) it was least a step in the right direction for me and my set ups to cut the height down on my fletching.
As I mentioned before, the difference is astounding IMHO.
Not one willing to push and lose ANY stability mine are a bit longer than some recommend but I have some down to less than 4 inches and less than a half inch high that seem to give me all I could expect in stability but I also have to wonder what, if anything, I could “gain” making them any shorter for hunting conditions.
Sooner or later some deer will mosey through one of my areas as the pre rut gets going. Like it or not, I could easily get some longer shots in this one area. While I have it to hunt alone, it is pretty wide open and doesn’t “hold” deer but is more of a “road” they use moving from one property to another. They can do so out of sight of homes and roads but there isnt a lot of cover so longer shots are fairly likely.
I’d agree that NOW is not the time to switch fletching on your set up, or probably anything else.
NOW is the time to “make meat”!
Good luck to all!
Steve Sr. -
Hi Steve, as I was sitting in the corner of a large field and calling moose, I had the time to ponder that question once again. Every little thing you do to make your shot better is a plus in getting a good hit, broadhead choice, arrow weight and feather types. I remember in the early 80’s, those banana fletching were considered the top cat out there simply because they could stabilize the arrow quicker but at no time did anyone ever mention, as far as I can remember, the effects of noise they had on game. Question? Was it because bows were a bit slower in speed and people were shooting heavy arrows back then? These questions were coming back to me every single time I thought I had heard something.
Hunting Instinct ( two weeks ago in Alberta bowhunting for moose ): It happens and you have to trust it!? Right. Well, at the same time I was trying to find answers to my questions, my instinct told me there was something out to my left, past the corner of the field. This actually bugged me to the point I was constantly looking that way. Nothing, until I had to walk out to my truck………guess what was right behind that corner in the adjacent field…6 moose, one extremely large cow with two calves, another smaller cow, a large bull and a smaller bull. The light was getting too low for me to think about doing a stalk. The next day, they were gone and not a sound out of any of them. Just thought I would share with you how and why my bowhunt was so successful this year even if I didn;t get a shot off at a moose, they are a majestic animal.
Back to the fletching, I will be trying new thing this fall in terms of really quieting my arrows down, thank you for making me aware of this.
SB
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SB, Wow. I have enough trouble attempting to understand CURRENT things without trying to figure out circumstances from “back then”. 😀
I have, however, seen some things change in my own hunting area over a few decades.
Once, it was common to hear that treestands were more effective because “deer don’t look up”. Well HA HA HA.
Whenever anyone feels that there is ANY constant a wild animal will or will not do, mother nature has this habit of altering the rules.
While only MY GUESS, I would not be afraid to assume that hunting pressure has changed MANY things that now spook wild game compared to even 10 years ago.
On my one and only trip to NE Montana bowhunting whitetail and muleys I got a first hand lesson in how hunting pressure and even TYPE of hunting pressure alters game animals in time.
Accustomed to Indiana whitetail standing and looking at you at 100 yards or less if they spotted you, I was NOT prepared for an entirely and differently conditioned whitetail population that, used to high power rifle hunting, each and every whitetail that even had a slight glimpse of me at 250 yards appeared to be about 10 inches tall stretched out going about 50 mph away from me!!
Another example is that some time ago, gun hunters here in Indiana couldnt take does, then could take one or two, and now have 8 “bonus county” antlerless permits if they want to buy them.
While BUCKS used to go to a mainly nocturnal life years back after the start of firearm season, it now seems that ALL deer follow suite once the guns start hammering them.
So, perhaps???, the increase of hunting pressure for game has Darwinized a good many and “survival of the fittest” now includes those that DO look up (and Ive seen this dozens of times) and those that spook a little bit faster than those of years back hunted less heartedly.
Again, only a guess. Without years and tons of detailed records of all factors that can or do spook wild game and when, if or how it changed game, all we can do is continue our own personalized quest for continued improvement of ourselves and use of our chosen equipment.
Happily, not all of us will ever agree that “one size fits all”. The continued discussions, comparisons, disagreements and shared thoughts, if nothing else, allows us each to take a critial look at ourselves, as well as meet others that share the same love of our chosen passion as well as the game we pursue.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.:)
God Bless,
Steve Sr.
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