BH Tuning Process

[CodeMonkey]

Hi all,

It's that time of year again. I'm familiar with what to do during BH tuning in terms of rest movement, etc. I also ensure that (at a minimum) my bow is shooting bullet holes through paper. That said, I am wondering though what your process is for ensuring that every arrow in your quiver is good to go prior to hunting season.

Here's a list of questions:
1. Do you shoot each arrow that goes into your hunting quiver with a BH?
2. What's your process for building a hunting arrow? Do you index your vanes to the blades of the BH (say using an o ring) to ensure things line up? What's the maximum weight difference between hunting arrows that you are OK with (or do you even weight them)?
3. Do you "match" a broadhead to each arrow (say arrow 1 gets BH 1 and that combo gets shot/tested) or do you designate a "practice" head that gets moved from arrow to arrow?
4. What range do you shoot to? Is this a range where you can normally slap arrows together or do you shoot out to your maximum range? Reason I ask is because I tend to get into my head at my maximum range in terms of how close one arrow is to another. For example, at 60 recently I had my BH arrow and field point two inches apart (both off the dot a little) and my perfectionist came out and I started wondering why they weren't on top of one another inside the 3'' sticker I had placed on my BH target.

Thanks in advance. As usual, I'm probably overthinking everything.

 

[CodeMonkey]

Here's my 60 yard group (left arrow is BH).

 

[rtkbowhunter]

Here's a list of questions:
1. Do you shoot each arrow that goes into your hunting quiver with a BH?
Yes. Every Arrow, not only in the quiver but that I might use.
2. What's your process for building a hunting arrow? Do you index your vanes to the blades of the BH (say using an o ring) to ensure things line up? What's the maximum weight difference between hunting arrows that you are OK with (or do you even weight them)?
I don't line up vanes with blades. I do make sure the broadheads spin perfectly. No need to index. No I do not weigh them.
3. Do you "match" a broadhead to each arrow (say arrow 1 gets BH 1 and that combo gets shot/tested) or do you designate a "practice" head that gets moved from arrow to arrow?
Yes. I do number my broadheads to arrows. If everything spins true, I prolly shouldn't have to, but I'm weird.
4. What range do you shoot to? Is this a range where you can normally slap arrows together or do you shoot out to your maximum range? Reason I ask is because I tend to get into my head at my maximum range in terms of how close one arrow is to another. For example, at 60 recently I had my BH arrow and field point two inches apart (both off the dot a little) and my perfectionist came out and I started wondering why they weren't on top of one another inside the 3'' sticker I had placed on my BH target.
I can shoot to 50 maybe a touch more. I do walk back tune with my broadheads and for me that has worked really well. If I do my part, I cannot shoot broadheads in a group at 50. I just wish I could do my part better.

 

[5MilesBack]

I do all my BH tuning and hunting arrow testing and/or precision verification from 60 yards. I do not shoot every BH I put in my quiver. I have tuning and testing BH's that I use, and as long as all the arrows shoot those within my bullseye I count those arrows good. Then I put new BH's on and make sure they all spin perfectly true. I've never had an arrow/BH combo not shoot well after that.

But here's something that surprised me recently with my tuning. I'm a big proponent of adjusting and moving stuff until it works. But for whatever reason, this time around I was really stubborn. I kept getting a nock high bare shaft, and low BH. So I raised my rest to no avail. I lowered my d-loop to no avail. I adjusted my control cable by twisting and untwisting to no avail. Then I took my loop off and retied it making sure my arrow was perfectly level and through the top of my berger holes. When I was still nock high and BH's low THEN I finally LOWERED my rest..........and BINGO! All was well again. Ugg. I shot a BH at 60 yards then a FP and the FP hit the back end of the BH, breaking a blade off. Now just shooting BH's alone into my BH target and they're shooting very well.

 

[Mighty Mouse]

1. Yes
2. I've never bothered with aligning blades and vanes. I do weigh each finished arrow and they have always come out within a couple grains of each other, which is close enough for me.
3. I designate a single BH for tuning/practice purposes and don't hunt with it (because I don't want to have to resharpen it). Once my tuning is complete, I put BH's on all the arrows I'll be carrying in my quiver and shoot them a few times to confirm that they all hit where I aim. Those hunting BH's only get shot into a target a few times then touched up with a sharpener if needed.
4. I regularly shoot my designated practice BH at the same distances I shoot FP's (out to 100 yds). In hunting situations, I would limit myself to ≈75 yds in good conditions with a calm animal and plenty of time to get a good read with my rangefinder.

Can you consistently shoot a 3" group at 60 yds with field points (I can't)? If not, why would you expect to shoot a group that tight with a BH on?

 

[406unltd]

Make sure all arrows are numbered and paired with a specific head, and spins good. I don’t align vanes/head a specific way. I bs tune using top hats/ bows adjustments. Then bh tune with my rest. Use nock indexing if needed to get a problem arrow to fly if I need that arrow for some reason. I shoot them as far as I can to fine tune. Then I’ll just confirm what I got the last few times I shoot before season.

 

[sndmn11]

Hi all,

It's that time of year again. I'm familiar with what to do during BH tuning in terms of rest movement, etc. I also ensure that (at a minimum) my bow is shooting bullet holes through paper. That said, I am wondering though what your process is for ensuring that every arrow in your quiver is good to go prior to hunting season.

Here's a list of questions:
1. Do you shoot each arrow that goes into your hunting quiver with a BH?
2. What's your process for building a hunting arrow? Do you index your vanes to the blades of the BH (say using an o ring) to ensure things line up? What's the maximum weight difference between hunting arrows that you are OK with (or do you even weight them)?
3. Do you "match" a broadhead to each arrow (say arrow 1 gets BH 1 and that combo gets shot/tested) or do you designate a "practice" head that gets moved from arrow to arrow?
4. What range do you shoot to? Is this a range where you can normally slap arrows together or do you shoot out to your maximum range? Reason I ask is because I tend to get into my head at my maximum range in terms of how close one arrow is to another. For example, at 60 recently I had my BH arrow and field point two inches apart (both off the dot a little) and my perfectionist came out and I started wondering why they weren't on top of one another inside the 3'' sticker I had placed on my BH target.

Thanks in advance. As usual, I'm probably overthinking everything.

If I remember right, you are in Denver-ish...there are broadhead tuning days at Golden this month.

 

[N2TRKYS]

1). No
2). No
3). No
4). 50 yards

Never found that any of that stuff mattered, so I don’t do it.

 

[dtrkyman]

Never indexed heads to vanes, though is something to be said for a fixed blade broadhead leaving the bow in the same orientation on each arrow. I would always have a 2 blade head vertical at launch.

Whatever distance is the furthest you can shoot well is where I would test heads for accuracy.

A good bare shaft tune to 30 yards works wonders!

 

[Mwhite4224]

1. Yes, but just for my own confidence
2. No indexing or weighting
3. I spin test each BH and arrow setup, and change one or the other until they spin true.
4. Been shooting at 50 ,but will probably scoot back to 60 next week.

 

[CodeMonkey]

Appreciate all the feedback. As a fairly novice archer and someone with a very analytical mind I'm still trying to sort out what matters and what doesn't in terms of arrow flight. As I've also learned, once I start going down these rabbit holes (especially close to season opening!) my groups tend to open up exponentially, so it helps hearing from more experienced hunters/archers on what actually matters in terms of getting great BH flight.

I think I'm going to nock tune all my arrows to 50 and shoot at least one to 75 to ensure there isn't some weird drop off there. The good news is that from my initial tuning so far everything seems to be dead on in terms of BHs flying with field points. I'm not sure if I'm lucky or just a shitty shot (that can't tell the difference between a tuned and untuned bow), because for four years now I haven't had to do any rest movement following a really solid paper tune.

My one OCD thing that's rattling around in my head is the fact I have BHs that have replacement blades vs. ones you sharpen. As a result, I think I'm going to have one "practice head" and then ensure all the hunting head/arrow combos spin perfect and are as close to the practice set up as possible. This is where I can get extremely OCD about things like blade alignment. In my head, replacing the blades on my BH basically means rebuilding the whole head, so its the same as just screwing on a different head entirely (assuming it spins/indexes the same).

In the future, I think I'll look for a BH I can easily touch up. That way, I can shoot the exact arrow set up (BH and arrow matched) that will be in my quiver and just re-sharpen as needed.