Sorry buddy... been hectic couple days for me. My son shot his first buck (with a rifle) and I've been processing and getting the skull to a friend for a euro mount. haha. My specs are 62lbs 29" draw length. I'm shooting a Victory RIP TKO arrow with the stainless insert and nocturnal lighted nock, and Rage Trypan 100gr heads. Total arrow weight is 440 grains. Arrow speed is 270-272 based on my chrono.
so after many posts, I am not sure what to think... no arrow is faster than the speed of sound, and every bow will make noise, some more than others. a deer can duck an arrow no matter the speed. so a fast bow does not help with that. however, if a deer is hearing the arrow then a quiet bow is not helping either.. I guess we need quiet arrows more so than bows?
Of the two, an arrow that flies more quietly is the more important thing to me. No, no arrow flies at the speed of sound of course, but my current set-up is shooting 284 FPS. That’s 94.33 yards per second. On a 30 yard shot the deer has just a tad less than 1/3 second to react. If the deer I’m shooting at is relaxed and totally unaware anything is wrong it most likely isn’t going to be able to drop enough to make a difference. By the time it hears the arrow sizzling in, processes the auditory input and its brain signals the alarm and sends nerve impulses to its muscles to react it’s too late. If the deer is on high alert then that changes everything. A quiet bow will help, but not as much as a quiet arrow.
I can show you countless videos of people shooting relaxed and unaware deer that drop a foot before the arrow arrives. Whether you think they are on edge or not, you're always better off to aim at the lower third of the vitals. Deer are faster than you think. Vabowman - you're overanalyzing things way too much. Try to find yourself an arrow in the 400-450 grain range with your Rage broadheads, aim for the lower 1/3rd of the lungs and call it a day. Spend your time in the field scouting and finding ways to get close enough for a shot. That's far more important than what you're shooting them with.
I think you are 100% correct. I will likely either stay with what I have or bump up to a 425 gr arrow and call it day.
can you imagine being his waiter at a restaurant…”No, wait can I change that again to the special but try the other soup…..no no special with the potatoes not the soup.” “wait what did you say you’re favorite dish was again?” LOL I have enjoyed the conversations tho
I think it has everything to do with how much pressure the deer get and how "educated" they are. At Wattensaw WMA if you stop a deer you'd better shoot low regardless of how close it is. If it's a longer shot (30+) you'd better shoot low anyway because they WILL drop. Those deer are jumpy. On the other end of the spectrum are the deer on private land I hunt in Kentucky. They don't flinch at anything. I've shot the lead doe in a group of five with a muzzleloader at 40 yards and the other four deer with her just watched her run through the picked corn field and pile up just short of the woods. They kept on eating. I managed to reload with four does 40 yards away and was going to shoot another one when an 8 point ran out, checked out the dead doe and then came to chase the other four does. He died, of course. Who really knows what the actual answer is? I sure don't. I just kill deer.
This is it, the heavier the arrow, the quieter in flight as physics tells us that a heavier arrow with have better flight, encounter less air resistance, and thereby be quieter in flight. Is this a guarantee that a deer will never move? No, but does mean that the arrow will be closer to the animal when it begins to move, resulting in less time for the animal's movement to result in bad shot placement? My experience tells me, yes, this is what happens and the advantage more than makes up for any loss in arrow speed during flight. Not to mention that heavier arrows will hold up better and penetrate better when encountering solid bone.
I have decided that an Axis 340 dut to 27" with 50 gr insert for a TAW of 440 ish gr will give me decent trajectory and good MO and KE along with a bit quieter arrow and bow. it will be about 50 gr increase.
That is exactly my setup. We are the same draw and weight. Only difference is bow. I shoot a 2019 Vertix
I haven’t read though all the responses in this thread. So excuse me if this answer is redundant. In the last 15 years or so I haven’t seen, tuned or owned a bow that wasn’t quite enough to hunt with without any issues. For the most part all the manufacturers are putting out solid bows. Noise really isn’t an issue at this point
Justin summed it up. Bottom 1/3 of deer is money in my book. if they don't drop, its taking it all out, if they do a little... either top of lungs or worst case a spine shot (not that we want that of course). There was a very fascinating video I found not long ago where the situation of deer completely ducking an arrow was tested. It goes on to talk about how a deer can only drop as fast as gravity allows them to. They don't have muscles to "pull" themselves downward any faster. So they went about taking a weighted target that was approximate to the weight of a live deer and dropping it the instant the bow was shot. What they found was that at typical whitetail distances of 20-40 yards.. a deer really can't drop fast enough to get completely out of the way of the arrow. I can't recall arrow speed, etc in the test. Their hypothesis is that if you're shooting over a deer, its more likely to be yardage estimation errors you simply shot a bit hight or a combination of the two. Both of these variables get more pronounced the further the shot is. Todays bows, even the ones we consider loud are far quieter than the bows of old. I remember my very first compound was an old Golden Eagle with the steel teardrop cables... all 41" of it.. that sucker had a TWANG to it when shot. haha. But, I killed several deer with it no problems.
