Broadhead Tuning

[5MilesBack]

I've always said we should all get together and do some shooting some time........I'm available most weekdays here in Colorado Springs. But nobody ever shows up. I've shot with a few guys from here or AT, but whenever I throw out the invites.......nobody shows........even locals. But I can understand why out of state guys don't want to travel just to shoot. I have no interest in driving to CA or any other state just to shoot either.

I'm still willing to shoot most anytime, but discovered just today at the shop that my bow has a bent bottom axle and is tweaking the cam. So BH shooting would be a crapshoot right now.

 

[renagde]

These topics are always difficult to for the majority to be completely honest.

For a new person trying to understand FP/BH accuracy issues, honesty will help them more than anything. And I am not calling people liars or dishonest, but most talk about their best groups as their average group, and the new person thinks how is everyone else so good except me.

If you want to know your group size, shoot 50 arrows at the given distance you want to shoot, say 60 yards. Measure the group, that’s it. Not your ten best, but from edge to edge. Then try it with50 fixed blade BH’s and measure again. That’s what grouping is. You could also plot them on paper or shoot a clean target so you can see where you most often miss to help figure out how to be more accurate. 90% of archers miss low to 4 or 8 o’clock. There are ways to improve that so your missed actually catch the spot more often than not. You just have to be honest with your self assessment.

Absolutely I agree. My 3-4" "group" is 5 arrows after a few opening shots at 20 or 30 yards. Everyone's definition of grouping will be different. My point is, I can cold shoot 2 arrows, a FP and BH and get them right up against each other. It proves my point that for me, I can get FP and BH to shoot the same.

 

[TravisIN]

So just going to chime in with this; I can get several brands of broadheads to group with FPs at 40. I can get a handful to do it at 60. 1 or two have been pretty damn close past that but aerodynamics just won’t let it happen bc of wind drag. So past 60 I just want my BHs to group LIKE my FPs, not necessarily with them. The brands that group at 60 can do that at long range. I know that I have to have a different tape on my sight for broadheads. I shot a five pin Hogg father so I know that my five fixed pins are the same for FPs and BHs and only my tape for past 60 has to be adjusted. And just in case anyone is wondering, the heads that I have used that have been the best at long range are ramcats and trophy taker ATACS. If I could get that atac even kind of sharp I’d use it. But I can’t get that main blade sharp enough for the life of me. Most accurate/forgiving head I personally have shot.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Billy Goat]

I think I made this offer before, but if you are that confident in your set up, I would love to see it.

You come out to sunny California and shoot it for me. Then we will put it on the hooter shooter, if your fixed blade BH’s and FP’s hit the same from 20 - 80 yards, I will pay for your flight to and from. If they don’t, all you have to do in return is start a post that details your trip and how your set up performed.

I know many think their set ups are dialed in, but I respectively disagree the are the same through the range of yardages. Maybe their dispersion or acceptable groups is larger than mine, but I don’t think it’s possible with fixed blade BH’s.

I have shot with Gillingham and would venture to say he shoots better than 99% of us, knows more about this topic than 99% of us and is as good a bow tuner as any of us. If he can’t make it happen, I doubt the average person is going to miraculously find the missing link and make it all come together.

I agree with most if your points. I wish you were another east coast guy so we could meet up. I would enjoy spending the time with someone who is messing with this stuff as much as I do. I'm not flying to California to see if for some reason your hooter shooter shoots different than mine. In your definition what constitutes not grouping together? I'll admit that a field point arrow will normally return to the exact same impact each time through the machine. I can unscrew the field point and put a broadhead on and have it put the arrow within an inch of where the field point was. For me this is tuned. I have spent weeks working with bows in the evenings to try to get everything to come together. The process takes forever as it's a shoot one arrow at 75 yards and then write down what happened so I have the notes to fall back on. Then make adjustments.

I think most people think they have have broadheads shooting with field points when in actuality if put in a shooting machine it would show slight to even significant differences. A broadhead does create different resistance in the air versus a field point. However in consideration of the overall surface area of an arrow I think with the proper broadhead it can become insignificant.

So yes technically I agree a broadhead will not fly exactly the same as a field point. I do think we can get some broadheads to fly close enough to a field point that it's within the accuracy of 99% of archers.

 

[RosinBag]

For me, I consider it grouping when it’s tight enough to be a shot in mark on my sight. At 80 yards, my arrows have to not have more than a 4” vertical dispersion, 2” high or 2” low. At 25 yards it’s 1” vertical dispersion, ½” high and ½” low. That’s as good as I can shoot them. And that only takes into account the ones I know I shot well. No one shoots them all well, but I shoot well enough to know when the arrow hits behind the pin.

 

[5MilesBack]

No one shoots them all well, but I shoot well enough to know when the arrow hits behind the pin.

Yep. Being able to call your shot is key to knowing what's really happening downrange. Otherwise one could have BH's to the left of FP's one shot, and to the right the next, and at that point......tuning is impossible. That's like trying to tune in the wind.

And there is no doubt that all BH's are not created equal in flight characteristics. There may even be a variation between heads out of the same package. And I've also found that in general 4-blade heads drop more than 3-blade heads at distance.

 

[nphunter]

I like to get them flying close enough that I can’t tell the difference on what I am shooting. When I’m worried about ruining my Broadhead by hitting it with a field tip from behind I feel I’m close.

I always expect Broadheads to be slightly lower at long range due to more drag and surface areas. Typically for me that is a couple inches at 70 yards. I could get them up but I feel I would be taking my bow out of tune to do so. I am looking at good average groups, ones where I feel like i did my part on shot execution and follow through. If I pull a shot I go pull the arrows and shoot them all again before making adjustments. When Broadhead tuning I probably make 1 adjustment for every 10 arrows.

Here is a good representation of one of my 40 yard field tip groups. This was shot while seeing which vanes I wanted to shoot. The 6 is where I ended up because they were almost always touching.




This was the repeatable result of where my fixed broads landed compared to my field tip at 40 yards. Those PM2.0 vanes are just over 1/4” tall for a reference.

 

[tumble]

I have observed that a solid bare shaft out to 20-30 yards is a good indication of how your broad heads will fly and adjustments here will save you having to shoot broad heads too much. One other thing I have noticed over time is the impact that 6-12 months of shooting will have on this tune due to your string lengthening over time. This will cause your draw weight to decrease and arrow to be over spined relative to the bow and can be fixed by increasing bow poundage if not already maxed out. Its a good excuse to set your poundage a little low to begin with so you have adjust ability on your side.