[John Cholin]

in reply to: Treestands #49075

I gave-up looking for a commercially available tree-stand. I make my own from aluminum I get at Home Depot and Lowes. Mine have a 24 inch by 28 inch platform, hooks for hanging my pack and fold-up seat. I use 10 mm Dacron static line and a deck cleat to attach them to the tree. I spray paint them with several coats of flat primer and they weigh about 7 pounds when ready to use. Buy the time I’m done I have about $100 in the stand so I’m not saving money! But I think I’m saving weight.

Most of the time I use screw-in tree steps and select a multi-trunk tree to give me cover, usually ash or red maple.

I like the Muddy harness.

Best Regards,

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: 2 Good PA Bucks #25372

Congratulations! You’ve done better than I have. PA season ended a few days too early form me. I hate the way PA does the archery season!

JMC

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Hunting set-up for 2016-2017 #33943

Steve Graf wrote: [quote=Matt Steed]… Dog hunters are the bowhunters biggest obstacle…

If you get north of the Mason Dixon line, they shoot dogs that chase deer. 🙁 😳 😀

I’ve been hunting in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey for 40 years. In that time it has NEVER been legal to shoot a dog regardless of what its doing. If we see dogs running deer we are obligated, by law, to report it to the respective game commissions.

I’m hunting with my Bear Cheyenne recurve (I love that little bow!) 60# @ 28 but I’m drawing 30. I’m shooting the STOS 160 grain heads on 450 grain cedar shafts from 3Rivers.

I’ve seen a bunch of little ones but haven’t gotten a shot at a buck that meets my standards yet. But the rut is getting close!

Hunt safe, often and with pride.

JMC

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Broadheads For Wood Arrows #30743

Steve,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post.

My objective was ONLY to investigate the question ‘whether the single bevel head provides a demonstrable advantage over a double bevel head’. I know that Dr. Ashby showed in an article he wrote a deer pelvis split by a single bevel head. I don’t know why one would shoot a deer in the butt, but unless he also showed the same hit on the same bone made with a single bevel head of the same size we are left with a report of anecdotal evidence, only. Before one could make a valid comparison one would need multiple hits with both styles of head on the same target under the same circumstances to draw valid conclusions. This might have been done but it wasn’t reported.

My experimentation, though not perfect and certainly not exhaustive, was intended to focus on just one issue to give me a basis for deciding on an approach to maximize my tackle for the up-coming season. The OSB was intended to provide a penetration resistance similar to a bone. The hay bale behind the OSB gave me a relatively uniform resistance so I could measure residual penetration by measuring penetration depth. I do not draw any quantitative conclusions such as depth of penetration in an animal from a test using OSB and hay bales.

All I can tell you is from my limited experiment I could not demonstrate an advantage to using single bevel heads when all of the other variables are held constant. Maybe this is something I will research further.

Best Regards,

JMC

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Broadheads For Wood Arrows #33137

Brennan,

I have read them all. I am a professional engineer that has been conducting research, peer-reviewing research and using research for 30 years. If I want to evaluate the effectiveness of something like a broad-head I have to control ALL of the variables that affect the outcome of the experiment. If I am comparing broad-head A with broad-head B then I take 25 shots with each one from exactly the same range, at exactly the same target, at exactly the same angle, with arrows that weigh exactly the same. I even alternate arrow A and arrow B during the shooting to cancel out variations in draw length from shot to shot. It is only when all the relevant variables are controlled that one can make substantiated conclusions. While Dr. Ashby shot a lot of animals those animals varied, the shot angles varied, shot distances varied, etc. etc, etc. As an engineer I can’t rely on that kind of data.

I made squares of OSB and I alternated broad head A versus B for 25 shots and all the same distance, angle, arrow weight. For my 625 grain finished weight wood arrows the 160 gr STOS was top dog by a statistically valid margin.

I am scrounging around for any that are in vendor inventory when I have the time.

Best Regards,

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Broadheads For Wood Arrows #29912

I, too, like to shoot woods and of all the heads I tested the STOS 160 grain two-blade, glue-on head did best. I made up arrows all weighing the same – 625 grains – with various heads, including the single bevel hesds, and used 1/2 ” thick OSB to simulate bone. (OSB is a highly controlled, reproducible target material that has a structure (hard surface/porous center/hard surface) similar to bone. The STOS gave me the best penetration, consistently, from a 67 pound draw weight recurve bow. I know that single bevel heads are all the rage right now but I couldn’t substantiate the claims using controlled, single variable experimentation.

Sadly, I hear the STOS heads are going out of production. So I’ll have to start my search over.

Good luck

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Camo Face Paint #29642

I have gotten used to a real tight-fitting face net. It took a while but the ability to just pull-off the net made short hunts more doable for me. I can slip in watch what’s going on, check-up on things and slip out and still get someplace civilized without the hassle of face paint.

JMC

[John Cholin]

in reply to: String Silencers #63332

I’ve been a professional engineer for the past 4 decades and there are lot more factual errors in that article than Steve mentioned. For example: nothing you do to your bow will change the speed of sound through air! At constant density the speed of sound is constant – about 1100 feet per second at sea level.

Maybe I’ll get the time to correct some of the physics. I’ll try.

Best Regards,

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Watches #21110

I wear one. I am generally keeping track of when I finally have or loose shooting light so I can make sure I leave for my stand early enough, etc. I’m less concerned about the ticking than I am about the potential for game picking up the luminous dial during “prime time”. I make a point of keeping sleeves as long as possible.

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Mountain Cuisine? #19232

All of these posts have been very informative.

I’ve been doing the historical trekking thing for over 20 years. I carry a sack of pearled barley, a slab of triple smoked bacon, dried apples and raisins which are the makings for the evening stew meal. I just cut a thick slice of bacon into cubes and put it in with the barley and fruits and then boil the whole thing as a one-pot meal. The fat in the bacon is a great energy source, the barley gives you twice as much food value for the same volume as rice and cooks in about 1/2 hour. The apples and raisins go in for flavor.

In the morning we make “journey cakes” from a mixture of corn meal, flour, sugar, wood ash and water, cooked in a tiny 6″ fry-pan, 2 for breakfast and one stashed for lunch.

Salt and water are an important issue. When I was doing a lot of backpacking I often had to take salt tablets to deal with muscle cramps at night from getting dehydrated and then salt depleted when I finally got enough to drink. During hunting trips I have to do the same.

Have a great hunt! I envy you.

JMC

[John Cholin]

in reply to: This may be a dumb question but.. #15270

arthurw wrote: Thanks everybody. Wasn’t too sure about the term heterodyning, but it sure worked. Yesterday I had the twang even when I only drew the string an inch and let go. I put the fur at the 1/4 positions and wrapped down to the sixths, or very close to it. Now I draw back about an inch and get a dull thunk, the twang is gone. I won’t be playing banjo anymore.

Good for you! If I was any help I am pleased.

Now let’s go shoot, turkey season will be here before we know it!

Best Regards,

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: This may be a dumb question but.. #60615

arthurw,

As an EE I had to research the term “heterodyning” as used in this context. Its a little different than in electrical engineering.

I think my otter fur silencer are doing the same thing, although by accident.

The twang of a bow string is due to the fact that a bow is a mechanical oscillator which has a bunch of frequencies associated with it. The dominant frequency is defined by the length of the string and its mass. Adding mass to the arrow will tend to dampen the dominant frequency because the center of the string is where the peak amplitude occurs.

The string also has harmonic frequencies associated with it. The first harmonic is associated with each half off the string vibrating with the center of the string as a node (no motion) and the peak amplitude at one half of the half, or 1/4th, of the string length. Putting a dampening feature at the 1/4th points on the string will attenuate the first harmonic.

The second harmonic occurs due to vibrations of 1/3rd of the string. The peak amplitude locations are at the string center and at 1/2 of each one third string length, or 1/6th point. The arrow, again, dampens the center but the 1/6th string-length points top and bottom can use damping.

By using an elongated fur silencer both the 1/4th and the 1/6th locations are damped by the same silencer. As I understand it, the added mass of string silencers will subtract from the energy delivered to the arrow so fewer/lighter silencers would be better.

Disclaimer: I’m new here, certainly no expert on archery, just an about-to-retire engineer. Free advice is worth what you paid for it.

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: New to the sport #41553

Lungcutter,

Welcome home!

You will come to love that bow. It will set you free!

John Cholin

[John Cholin]

in reply to: Personal conservation #41521

I have been using personal standards for years. If a deer doesn’t meet my standards then God has other plans for it.

I like the QDM concept but like everything else there are some who will pervert it for their own purposes. I hunt New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. In NJ you can take one deer per day from late September to January but all but 3 must be does. In New York you get 3 tags (rifle, ML and bow) and a 75% chance on at least one doe tag. The ML and bow tags are either sex. In PA its one and done for bucks. The deer herd seems healthiest in southern NY. Still, there are years when I don’t take a buck because one that met my standards (16 inches wide, 3.5 years old) didn’t stand still within my 22 yard range limit. If I take a buck, I then hunt only for a doe until I’ve gotten one, then I will start after a “good” buck again.

Pennsylvania is the worst. Every farm has a shack at the edge of a field with a bunch of fat guys with 270’s or 300 Win Mags in it taking 300 yard shots. But the antler restrictions have improved the heard substantially in the past 5 years. But PA ends the archery season too soon, around the 15th of November. From November 15th to December 3rd or 4th you can’t hunt deer at all. It stinks if you hunt trad.

John

[John Cholin]

in reply to: This may be a dumb question but.. #25776

arthurw

I am shooting a Bear Cheyenne which is a 55 inch (AMO) recurve that is 52 inches tip-to-tip. Initially it was quite noisy. I started with the Bear-Puff wooly silencers but that wasn’t enough so I added silencers. Pretty soon my bow-sting looked like a string of beads. Finally, I tried just one set of otter fur strip silencers sold by 3Rivers. I placed them with their centers half way between the nock set and the contact point where the string contacts the limb, top and bottom. I installed them by separating the string strands and threading through one end and then wrapping the fur strip around the sting, fur side out, in a helix until all I had was just a little bit left and threaded that little bit through the string strands. This makes the fur silencer about 3 inches long, along the string, and about 3/4″ in diameter due to the length of the fur. This set-up quieted my bow right down.

It seems from other posts that arrow weight, bow weight and arrow spine might also be issues. My bow is 60# at 28″, but I’m drawing 29.5″ My arrows are between 580 and 600 grains, spine 75 to 80 pounds.

I hope this info helps. I’m delighted with my Bear Cheyenne!

John Cholin

[Author]

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