Neither are plausible. The only thing that'll give you a fighting chance is getting the shot in at the right time. If the deer is going to move at release or just after he's on alert and you shouldn't have let the shot go. I know we all do it, we're human beings not robots. I'm just saying your arrow is never going to be faster than any animals reflexes and it will always hear the shot. Some may be spooked by it other not but they're all going to hear it. Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
My take: I shoot 450-580 grain arrows, from bows 60 or 70#. I have no clue how fast my arrows are going. I don't care. My heavy arrow hits where I aim and goes through every time.......well the first 30+ bucks I shot so far. FWIW the last arrow I chrono'd was about 1981. It was a screaming fast for the day at 187fps. AND I killed deer with pass throughs from heavy arrows with it.
To each is own, I get where you're coming from, but I'm also like many others here and I value kinetic energy and momentum far more than speed. I shoot a 495 grain complete arrow with 165 grains upfront giving me a 13% FOC and although it is not a speed set up it certainly is a hard hitter and gets the job done with ease! Speed is for gun hunters IMO. I feel comfortable shooting any game with my current set up and am confident in it. I would pick an arrow to build that meets what your looking for half way and just stick to one choice. Good luck.
I'm still not convinced it's the bow they hear, arrows are pretty loud cutting through the air. A slower arrow is also easier to tune a fixed blade on.
If you want two different arrow weights I'd go with 400 for deer/target and 525 for elk. However I don't really think you're going to see that huge of a difference in deer not ducking,25 fps at 20 yards is only about 1/10 of second,now I know deer move a lot faster than we do but IMO it's just not worth it. But then again maybe I'm wrong and if you want to build a fast arrow and prove me wrong then by all means do it,it's a free world. Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums