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in reply to: What ya got goin'? 2 #136203
David- Maybe you found a Nexus! Every now and again I’ve found a spot in the woods that the deer pass through for no explainable reason. No food, no terrain, no nutten’. Yet the deer are always passing through. The only way to find them is by accident. Nothing to attract the deer, or other hunters makes them great spots.
Robin- I’m glad you had fun in Paris! My wife, mom, and daughter went for 2 weeks last year. I begged and begged to go, but they said I had to stay home. I sat around for two weeks with nothing to do but drink beer and shoot bows and arrows undisturbed. Boy did I lose out (rolling eyes emoji)
Raccoons can be a little too friendly around here too. I’ve had many opportunities to shoot them with an arrow, but I’ve been reluctant to do it because of rabies. Raccoons are a rabies vector species. I don’t think I want to pick up an arrow covered with Raccoon blood.
That said, ground hogs are supposed to be a vector species too, and I’ve picked up many arrows covered in their blood with no ill effect. Oh well, gotta go. I keep drooling on the keyboard (crazy eyes emoji)
in reply to: Questions About Arrows #136038Robin is right! There is no better way to get it figured out than to read THE handbook. Before getting too far into your gear purchases, I would encourage you to read the book. It will answer most of your questions and give you a good basic understanding, which will help you evaluate all the free advice you are going to get. It is an investment that will save you much money in the future.
Your instinct about carbon arrows is correct. While they are strong, they are expensive. It is hard to shoot an expensive arrow as well as a cheap arrow. And if you have a creative (or crafty) bent, then wood arrows will scratch that itch way better than anything else.
in reply to: North Carolina/Virginia Bowhunter #135997I live in NC, but not in your neck of the woods. You might try finding folks through the North Carolina Bowhunters Association. They have a website: http://www.ncbowhunter.com/
in reply to: Straight Fletch Article #135975Scout,
All bows will eventually break. It’s just the nature of the thing.
As for grain orientation, about the only thing that should be avoided is grain run-off. If the grain runs down the length of the limb, then all is well. If the grain runs from side to side, that will lead to failure.
Self bows are generally made by “following a ring”. The layers of wood are oriented from back to belly, with the oldest wood on the belly side, and the youngest wood on the back side. That said, you can make a self bow with “edge grain” meaning the wood is turned so that the layers of wood run side-to-side. A backing for the edge grain design is recommended. Edge grain self-bows tend to be less reliable and less accurate.
Laminated bows are generally made with laminations of wood that are either edge-grain, or flat-grain. Flat-grain being the orientation that would be used in a self-bow. Because the laminations are thin and they are generally not put next to a sister lamination from the same tree in the same orientation in which they lay while in the tree, weak spots don’t line up. This is the strength of a laminated bow. The laminations of wood, glued together, makes a more homogenous and longer lasting bow. Add fiberglass to the back and belly and you have a bow of modern design.
A good bow is “90% broken” when drawn. This means that the elastic limits of the materials are approached every time the bow is shot. Getting this close to the limits of the materials is what guarantees a fast and efficient bow, but also guarantees its eventual failure. A gun stock is never exposed to such high forces and should never fail under normal use. That said, wood is sneaky. There is always the chance that some past ice storm or beetle left its unseen affects in the wood and the stock will fail. Or that the gun maker ran low on coffee one cold morning and didn’t notice how the grain was wandering as he made the stock.
Speaking of coffee…
in reply to: Numb fingers #135931Sounds to me like your glove or tab is not providing enough protection for your fingers. Numbness is a common symptom for beat-up fingers.
Get a thicker one 🙂
in reply to: Looking for advice on switching to trad #135787Well said Richard!
I would add that for a reader, traditional archery offers a LOT more meaningful reading than compound archery. Get yourself a copy of TJ’s book, and then start reading Don Thomas’s books. Branch out from there and you will never run out of good stuff.
Truly embracing traditional archery will change who you are, for the better I might add.
in reply to: Advice heavy arrow set up 38-42# #135747Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet is arrow speed. In my experience, if you want to kill a white tail deer, you need to cover the distance between you and it in a timely manner. Our southern white tails are pretty spooky critters, and I have found that arrow speeds of less than 160 fps (not really all that fast) for 20 yard (and under) shots yields a higher probability of success.
Shooting arrow weights on the order of 11, 12, 13, or more GPP can result in arrow speeds of less than 150 fps.
The next time you kill a deer (or find one on the side of the road), hold one of your broadhead arrows in your hand and press it slowly through the chest of a deer. You will be surprised at how very little effort it takes.
Some of us, myself included, have little energy to spare (literally and figuratively). I stand 6 foot 2 inches, but my draw length is just 26.5 inches as I shoot a swing draw style. My straight limbed american semi-longbow pulling 52 pounds at my draw length can’t shoot a 13 gpp arrow all that fast. But it zips the 9.5 gpp arrows I shoot at about 165 fps. Plenty to stick my bloody wood arrows 4 or 5 inches in the dirt on the other side of the deer.
What about a bone hit? you ask… My wood arrows and single bevel heads have no problem with our little southern deer bones. If we plan for the worst, and design our system around the worst, sometimes it no longer works well for the every day.
Here’s a good test for your deer arrows: Go squirrel hunting with them. If the squirrels constantly beat y0ur arrows by being somewhere else when your arrow gets there, then the deer will to. Can’t kill ’em if you can’t hit ’em.
in reply to: Keeping Trim during the Holidays… #135746Well my boy shot a deer last night (gun) and gut it, dragged it out, and skinned it. It’s hanging in the cooler now. All I had to do was hoist my beverage in salut! Definitely not a calorie burning operation for me.
in reply to: Arrow set up #135158I think Alaska Frontier Archery is Jack Harrison’s old company that tried to get the forgewood shafts going again. Jack has since retired and that website is being used to clear old inventory. I don’t think anyone is making the shafts anymore.
in reply to: Tuning / untuning decision. #135067Might be a case of hand torque… All the “rights” and “wrongs” have to add up to send the arrow somewhere. If you are torquing the bow to the right consistently, then having the arrow off to the left is working out to correct for it.
The bow-arrow-archer machine can be hard to get tuned just right.
We had a fellow last night that hit the bulls-eye 8 or 10 times in a row. But his arrow flight was crazy. The arrow would almost stand vertically before straightening out. His nock set was way low on the string causing his arrow to bounce off the shelf. Once that was fixed, his arrow flight was cleaned up, but he didn’t hit the target again all night.
in reply to: Tuning / untuning decision. #134998It sounds like your arrows are now under spined for your setup. As you move your arrow rest closer to “center shot” the spine of the arrow will need to be stiffer. Arrows that impact the target to the right tend to be under spined.
You can make the arrows stiffer by using a lighter point, by making them shorter, or by lowering the brace height on your bow. You can also move your string silencers closer to the limb tips.
in reply to: Cracked limbs #134983That’s a tough one…
Generally, a crack that runs axially down the limb will not cause any problems. But if the crack was caused by crushing the glass and core wood of the limb, then the cracks you see may not be the only failure.
If the glue and/or core wood have been compromised, then the limb will eventually fail.
If you want zero risk of bow failure and injury, its time to get a new limb, or set of limbs. If you are willing to tolerate some risk of failure, you could add a big washer under the limb bolt to spread the load out a bit, and keep shooting.
There is no need to tighten the limb bold down all the way, as you have now learned. Affixing a bow limb to a riser does not require the same bolt torque as sealing the head gasket in a car.
Good luck!
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