Reply To: Wood and FOC

[David Petersen]

#35774

Kirk — Yes, you are right. The shaft is 29.5″ Sitka spruce, with 4×2″ fletching and a 300grn Tuffhead glue-on. Best I recall it came in about 21.5% FOC. I don’t think it can get much higher due to spine restrictions. I’m shooting a 53# longbow and the shafts are 85# spine. I believe I can shoot through elk just fine with that setup and plan to try and prove it this Sept. But a heavier bow would push the spine requirements beyond the limits of all but the heaviest wood species, and you also want the lightest wood you can find, so that’s the pinch. My personal bottom line is that yes, if you try hard enough you can get just barely into the EFOC category with woods, but for serious EFOC and UEFOC carbon is the only way to go. I shoot both, depending on mood. Also remember that 650 grains “minimum heavy bone threshhold” has priority over FOC. Get that and a good two-blade head and a bow with respectable poundage and speed and you’ll do fine. Years ago when I first started down the Ashby road of personal experimentation, I shot completely through a bull and the next year a cow, using the exact same arrow both times: 740+ grains of hickory with a wimpy 125 double-bevel Wolverine head. The next year I hit a bull in the shoulder with the same set-up and the head broke in half about halfway from the point and bounced out of the elk. Of course the Wolverine at that time was a single leaf of steel all the way to the tip and should never have been on the market for dummies like me to try and use on elk. That’s another advantage of the current generation of heavier single-bevel heads: they are thick and the steel is hard and they’re darn near industructable. Sorry to get long-winded …