It’s hotter than heck out, tags are arriving in the mail, and I’ve been shooting my bow as often as I can. We are knee-deep in the pre-season of hunting, otherwise known as, at least to me, the refining season. Along with shooting my bow, I’ve been trying to refine not only my shooting skills but my equipment, and arrows are a massive part of that. I do believe I have found my best arrow build to date and I’m gonna share it with you.
Finding the best arrow setup for you all comes down to what works best for your style and what your goals are. I think it’s important to be honest with yourself here and not feed into what arrow trend is currently cool or not cool for that matter.
My goals for an arrow setup are forgiveness, accuracy, penetration, and structural integrity. It needs to be versatile because I encounter all sorts of scenarios in the field. And when these situations arise, the amount of variables at play is off the charts. So, I need something to reflect that. For instance, a super-heavy arrow might out-penetrate one that is lighter, but it for dang sure isn’t as forgiving in arrow flight. There is a happy medium I like to achieve. I want an arrow that I can confidently group at 80 yards with and is not going to be massively influenced by any minor inconsistency.
This brings me to the Evolution Outdoors HQ in Phoenix, AZ. Dale Perry is the owner and brilliance behind Evolution Outdoors from the badass broadheads to the unparalleled Ibex hinge release. What most don’t know is that Evolution offers custom arrow builds to their customers. By entering your specs on the website, Evolution will build custom arrows for you and your setup. This sounds all fine and dandy on paper, but I got to see it all go down in person and have a new appreciation for what Dale is doing over there. The details are many, and Dale cares about the details, which in the end gives you a damn fine arrow build.
The best way to convey what exactly Evolution Outdoors is doing in terms of custom arrow builds, is for me to just show you. In the video down below, I document the whole process that Dale takes when building arrows for their customers. I have never seen this done this way and the results speak volumes.
I haven’t been this excited about an arrow I think ever. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some new freshies, but these are next level. I say this on camera, but the results at the end were without any manipulation of the sight, tune, etc. These arrows were shot fresh out of the shop and in the wind. And what I didn’t show in the video was the bit of testing before that point.
Before we built these arrows, we shot an almost identical configuration with a fixed blade broadhead out to 70 yards. Going off of the results, we spined down, going from a 300 spine to a 350, doing 4-fletch vs. 3-fletch, and we used the glue-in-system Evolution offers. The 350 arrows flew better and grouped better much more consistently than that of the 300 spine.
The end result is a 350-spined 4-fletch arrow coming in at 460 grains. My old arrow, a 300 spine was coming in at 476 grains. Another difference is the slightly increased point weight. I went from 175 total weight up front to 185 grains. That puts the FOC at 17.4%. This is what I would consider a perfect happy medium that strikes on all fronts. Of course, I’ll keep you all up to date with how this performs throughout the season, but from where I’m sitting things are looking bright.
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