Well I bit the bullet tonight and bought some carbons. Easton Epic 500's and I had some 3 gpi plastic sleeves added, brass ferrules too. These things are a little heavier than the old 2217 Aluminums!! Anyway I've been thinking about this for along time but haven't because I thought they would take a dive sooner than the lighter arrows...wrong!! They recover a lot faster, I knew that would happen and they penetrate about 20% more and I knew that would happen too. I'll be damned but my "depth of kill" actually increased by about a yard or so. Out at 40 yards I'm shooting a lot better too.

Mr moose better watch out this fall, cause I'm gonna get 'im!!

the chef

You did very good. A heavier arrow does not give up anything with flight but sure adds killing power.
I have tried light arrows for target and just to see how much speed I could get (never for hunting.) After tuning for perfect flight, I was able to use my same sight settings as I do with very heavy arrows.

Chef - I've been hunting with carbons for 5 years now. They are just simply superior in every way.

As a material, carbon arrows are the way to go. I'm just happy that some of the manufacturers are finally making heavier carbons. That has been my only gripe with them, too light.

I just got finished tuning some for my recurve. Final weight is 540gr out of a 60lb recurve. Just a little more tweaking and I will be dialed in for this fall.

I used up my last wood hunting arrows this spring on the turkey I shot.

Time constraints have me switching to arrows that are much more consistent. And easier to produce in a much shorter timeframe.

It used to take me about a month start to finish to get good quality matched wooden arrows. Starting with a 100 shafts and ending with 1-2 dozen high quality arrows.

Now I can make a dozen carbons up in 24 hours.
If I factor in the time saved, the carbons are cheaper.

I will never totally give up wood arrows, there is just something about them, but at least for the next couple years I will hunting with carbons.

I ran the new arrows through the crony last night. Even though they are um... maybe 150 grains heavier or so the speed didn't change at all. They both fly 165 fps.

the chef

Chef - That's because the Carbons don't waste as much energy as wood or aluminum arrows straighting out in flight.

Further as they are heavier they can absorb more energy from the string.

They are simply just a better arrow.

I still have some wood arrows. I keep them for the elitist longbow 3-D shoots. Something I've always felt was silly guys that shoot fiberglass laminated bows complaining about carbon arrows

Wood arrows are a lot of trouble, I shoot HARDwood arrows....which are way to much trouble.

I agree about the elitist thingy. I had to order wood arrows with my bow just so I could shoot with the longbow dudes. All that carbon fiber, fiberglass, fast flite strings just doesn't seem traditional to me. But what the hell I don't make the rules so I gotta live by them.

I don't see it as an elitist thing. It's a traditional thing.

Wooden arrows and longbows go together like salt and pepper. The problem I always ran into was finding good quality arrow shafts. By the time I bought a hundred. Spined, weighed, straighted, culled out the ones that wouldn't stay straight and didn't have good grain. Cut, tapered, sanded, stained, dipped, sealed. Used natural turkey feathers, dyed, fletched and installed nocks and points. I would be fortunate to get 18-24 that were in the weight range I prefered to use.
Of those 18-24 probably about 1/3 of them were good enough to be hunting arrows. That whole process usually took me an average of a month. Normally done in Jan, Feb or March when the relative humidity is really low for this area.

Of course I could just pay someone to make my wooden arrows, but that isn't what the whole traditional thing is about to me. A lot of it is the making of your own stuff.

I would rather shoot carbons that I make myself than to pay for wooden arrows.

The nice thing I have found about carbons is the consistency, I can order them a dozen at a time and they will be spined and weigh the same every time.

I learned the hard way that consistent high quality arrows are a huge benefit to shooting instinctively. Getting that in wooden arrows takes a tremendous amount of time, couple that with the fact that the actual quality of the wooden shafts has been slowly decreasing since I started getting into this traditional thing.

Just when I would find a good supplier, they would sell their equipment or stop making arrows shafts. The so called premium shafts today would have been classified as stumpers 20-30 years ago.

I actually floored a friend of mine when I took some of my wooden arrows and shot them through his compound and actually shot a really good group. He didn't think that you could shoot wooden arrows out of compound.

So wooden arrows are nostalgic. Carbons arrows are easier. But I can shoot just as good of groups with my matched sets of woods, as I can with carbons.

I shoot carbons primarily when I hunt, but love to make and shoot wooden shafts. I too have found that the harder woods give the best performance and are less susceptible to weakening over time. I have had some cedars reduce in spine from 50-60 pound shafts to 40 pound shafts after having been shot repeatedly. My only recommendation with carbons would be to flex each shaft before and after being shot and run over them with a nylon stocking to check for splinters that might not be vsible to a quick visual exam. Any evidence of splintering or cracking should immediately be treated as a shaft failure and the shaft should be broken and discarded.

for real good wood arrows see here

http://www.arrowwoods.com/index.htm