100% agree.. I just know my limits and 40 yds is too far me. And I am seeing a whole lot of 40-60 yd shots on TV these days.. may explain the poor penetration and lack of story about the recovery
Need to clear up my miscommunication here... I should be shooting a 600 gr. arrow at roughly 170 fps, not 270. Was not a typo, it was a misread of the spreadsheet I created. My apologies.
I don't know how a thread about bow noise turned into another arrow/broadhead/penetration conversation, but I will say I have zero problems with 14" of my 28" arrow stuck into the side of a broadside deer, behind the shoulder. That's a double-lung shot all day, every day. I think I got less than that on the deer seen in my avatar. I cut his heart in half and watched him pile up 5o yards from my stand. He didn't seem to realize my arrow didn't pass through him and that he should have lived. Crazy. Deer aren't 4 feet wide and once my broadhead has put a hole in both lungs or the heart, I couldn't care less how much further it goes. Unpopular opinion: Beyond making holes in both lungs, everything else is just optics that make people feel cool.
People have a habit of always assuming the worst because most of us inherently have a negative bias. We're simply more attracted to bad things than good things. In this case there may be lack of story about recovery because there simply is no story. The deer ran 100 yards or less and piled up. But if that isn't explicitly shown or told to the viewer, we tend to assume it was the opposite.
I seem to recall that also (don't remember specifically being Infalt but I'll take your word for it.) Crimeny! Lucky you weren't hurt.
I also had a bearing go out at full draw and the bow completely totaled it self. I was selling the bow to a buddy, he pulled it back and it exploded! I was only 3 feet from him and I got hit with parts! And he punched himself in his face. I felt so bad. I just let him have the bow and said I don't want to see that thing ever again. If he didn't want it, going in trash. That thing was a time bomb. Haven't picked up another Bowtech since because of that. But that bow was my favorite of all time shooting bow. Love/hate relationship, only reason I keep getting it fixed. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
My biggest concern is what shooting an arrow that is 5.3 gr per pound is or will do to my bow.. Mathews and several others have said the bow will be fine as long as it's a 360 gr arrow for 72 pounds..
5 grains per pound has been the minimum standard for as long as I can remember, so you're completely fine at 5.3, IMO. It shouldn't do any harm to your bow. I understand you have a short draw and that costs you some speed, but I see zero reasons to shoot an arrow that light. Pushing that up to something in the low-mid 400's is going to help with bow noise and penetration, and at logical distances of 30-35 yards and under, the point of impact difference isn't going to be enough to cause any concerns. I shot my first few deer with a 600 grain arrow shooting 40 lbs and pulling maybe 26-27 inches. You'll be much better off going a little heavier than you are right now.
False. Raise your hand if you have a draw barely over 28 inches, shoot only 62lb draw and have an arrow over 600grains..... (raises hand) In short to answer the title of the thread: IMO No.
Also since folks are wondering what kind of "kills" various arrows are causing. My TOO HEAVY AND SLOW arrows have been slaughtering deer since I built them a few years back. Most have seen but here's the two short videos from this year, not the whole hunts: This year buck: Yes, his leg did not release forward like I would have preferred, but released it anyways aiming for exit and the entrance shoulder was zipped through like butter. Now to be fair I hit more center of the shoulder than I intended here. I would have preferred a slightly lower entrance a touch personally. This year antlerless
And as I've learned, often times with incredibly sharp broadheads...they sometimes don't even know what happened truly.
Back in the 80's and 90's that's what we had. XX75 2315 arrows with 5" fletchings tipped with a 160 grain Zwickey Eskimo broadhead. They didn't fly fast, but they sure put a hurting on them.
@Holt I've had multiple Alpine bows and now two Bowtech bows (Carbon Knight, Solution). For years I have used lighter 3d arrows around 370-380 grains and hunting arrows around 420 grains. I should say that I probably don't have more than 600-800 arrows through the Solution so far though, and those have all been arrows around 425 grains since I got it so late and haven't used "3d" weight arrows as of yet. I've never had a bow failure of any kind. I couldn't even guess how many thousands of shots I've taken at 70 lbs with 370-380 grain arrows. All of my bows' shots were mostly with sub 400 grain arrows, as that's what I use 9 months out of the year for practice and 3d. Where am I going with this? I don't say all this to try to convince you to go back to lighter arrows by any means, I just say it because it is my opinion that your limb issues weren't from a 400 grain arrow at 70 lbs. You simply got a flawed product. They failed, and then they replaced them with the same flawed product. Round and round you went. I bet it was a split limb model bow you had? Split limb models seemed to do it much more than solid limb models (my Carbon Knight is a solid limb bow, no issues even though it is from that time frame). I bet you can't put into words the frustration of having 3 sets of limbs fail on the same bow! Not specifically to Holt: The more of these arrow weight threads I read the more I feel the same about the whole topic. I will say I have altered my opinion some on it over the last year or so though. I have watched multiple 400 to 420 grain arrows with fixed BH's (regular 3 blade Muzzy and 3 blade Thunderheads) launched by a 70 lbs bow go through ELK like warm butter. The only time they don't is when the scapula is hit or the far side leg, so they definitely don't have any "oh s**t" safety net for hitting the near side scapula. Notice I said fixed BH, Idaho doesn't allow mechanicals and I have absolutely ZERO experience with how much momentum is impacted by an expandable. But...and this is my main point...elk just stand there 98% of the time when the bow goes off and the arrow hisses towards them. If you do your part that arrow is going to hit within a couple of inches of where you aimed a high majority of the time because they don't turn inside out like a whitetail does when a gnat sneezes. Whitetail tend to move a majority of the time. I've seen so many videos where they freeze the scene, put a line at the deer's back and belly, and then roll it in slow motion and it shows that the deer drops a good half its body width before the arrow arrives. I just saw one on Tik Tok yesterday, it was a 40 yard shot. They put a line on the top of it's back and bottom of its belly and then showed the shot in slow motion. The arrow arrived at the same height as the bottom of the belly line, but hit the buck halfway up right behind the shoulder because he dropped into it. Of course that was followed up with "Didn't go 20!". I'd recommend a heavier arrow for whitetail than I would for elk in all honesty. Whitetail are freaking jumpy. Most hunt them ambush style and are shooting a known yardage. Why not use a decently heavy arrow that gives both a quieter shot and a better "oh s**t" safety net? "Decently heavy" to me being in the 450-500 range when using a fixed BH.
Not accusing you of anything, I have had to explain to my wife and 2 kids when they both had cars and the wife was pulling horse trailers bearings and breaks do not fail in one day, if you hear something say something.
