I was mostly hacking with ya but in part it be truth.
I my many years of shooting wood arrows, experimenting with “this is it” wisdom of others, I find that as long as your arrows are spined to match your bow, your release is clean and your nock is properly positioned in relation to your feathers, it’s preferential what fletchings you use for a “hunting” type bow and to most, at least mine, one’s skill.
I have arrows 4 fletched, 3 fletched, 4″, 5″, 3 1/2″, whatever, and I can see no difference in arrow flight. If I extended distances I might be able to discern a difference in speed making me shoot short on longer shots but out to 50 yards any differences I see I attribute to archer error and not a difference in arrow fletching.
Sure some styles of fletches are noisier than others but some bows are too.
Breaking it down to our preferred, I think the general consensus is that we attempt to do so anyway, get within 20 yards and under, that there has been many animals taken with as many or more types of fletching on many types or more of wood shafts than we can philosophize on here.
I shoot in the wind a lot, by choice cause if I choose not to I won’t get to shoot often:D, and it really matters not what fletch, unless of course without saying, big feathers gonna catch more wind. By big I refer to banana feathers and such.
In 20-50 mph winds, arrows are gonna wiggle, heck, a straight shaft without fletches is wind affected as is a bullet, so whether it zigs or zags first or when is totally unpredictable.
That leads into another point (pun intended) so I’ll not dawdle here .
In addition, my nocks are aligned differently in relation to the feathers on 3 fletch and 4 fletch in order for clearance on the shelf and side plate.
I can’t give any concrete info it’s just years of making it work that makes it work for me.
But if my arrows are under spined or over spined it don’t matter about tit for tat of feathers, it ain’t gonna work. And if I do a, on some days, R2 release, once again it ain’t gonna work.
To each his own, there is no one answer only a solution and that is for each to figure out for his own.
Have fun and there may be a reason that so many before us did as they did and we haven’t figured out their reasoning yet.
We are but youths in the world of archery and as youth does, questions all, we have yet to learn the reasons why it worked for the elders.
