Reply To: Shoulder Shots 2

[Ed Ashby]

#32128

Michael, In the long run you’ll save a lot by just going to carbons for EFOC arrows. You are right about tapering – to a degree. You’ll never get enough weight forward on a self-wood arrow by using just tapering, but it can provide a significant boost to a footed wood shaft that already has a high mass footing and a low mass rear shaft.

Great photos! I knew David wouldn’t be afraid of shoulders – or shoulder bones. He’s been chunking ‘penetration enhanced EFOC arrows’ at game long enough to know. If you shoot enough game you ARE going to encounter heavy bone sooner or later. Once you see what such an arrow setup does to heavy bone you don’t need much more convincing!

Now, nothing is ever infallible (except the predictability of taxes and the Government’s inefficiency and waste thereof), and there will undoubtedly be times when Murphy will intervene to cause a failure of a ‘structurally secure, penetration enhanced EFOC arrow with a mass above the Heavy Bone Threshold’ to penetrate a heavy bone, but all the data shows that it will be a VERY, VERY RARE occurrence – far, far from the norm.

I think – no, there’s enough data now – I KNOW that using better arrow setups AND moving our aiming point onto the shoulder will reduce the wound-loss rate. It will reduce the number of hits too far back. With a ‘penetration enhanced EFOC arrow having a mass above the Heavy Bone Threshold’ and aiming ‘on the shoulder’ the penetration of any heavy bone encountered on a deer-sized animal is going to be a FAR, FAR rarer occurrence than is hitting an animal too far back when using a ‘back of the shoulder’ aiming point. The wound-loss with such arrows and such shots will be less than the wound-loss rate for animals hit too far back and not recovered – even if the too-far-back hit was with a meat cleaver sized broadhead with a zillion blades.

Ed