How Much Weight?

[UMLarcher]

Hi All,

I'm looking for some guidance and I'm sure this is the right place to get it.

Here's my problem: For whatever reason, my dad taught me to shoot with full-length arrows. He just never got into tuning or cutting to length, so I never bothered with it either until I got on this forum. I shoot a Bear Montana 50# @28 with a 29.5" draw. My current arrows are GT 400s at 32" with factory aluminum inserts and 125-135 points/broadheads. I've been target/stump shooting with that setup for 10+ years without a problem, but I finally got into bowhunting and want more weight up front. Also, I realize that I'm probably doing myself a disservice by not tuning as much as possible. I can take 1.5-2" off my existing arrows, but I'm not sure how much weight I can get away with while maintaining spine. Can someone give me a ballpark weight that I could start with for heavier inserts? I know I could just buy sets of different inserts and try them, but since they already shoot pretty well I don't want to put too much money into this endeavor. (Read: the wife thinks I already spend too much on archery stuff.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone's enjoying their offseason.

Matt

[BWallace10327]

I bet you can cut them to 30" and screw in a 200 grain point.

Only tuning (either paper tuning or bare shaft tuning) will tell you for sure what you need to do, and when you have everything just right. I would go with a 100gr brass insert and heavier points/broadheads and tune till you have everything just right.

Also, as far as total arrow weight for hunting, try to get around 10gpp of draw weight. You should be at around 54-55#, so shoot for a total hunting arrow weight of at least 550gr.

Bisch

[Caughtandhobble]

My son shoots the exact same setup with 175 grain field points with factory inserts on full length 400 GT's. The only thing different is the factory string was replaced with a good string.

[Biathlonman]

My experience has been that every inch that comes off you have to add about 100 grains back to stay in tune, but that assumes it was tuned to start out with.

[katman]

Pick the point weight that gets you to the total weight desired then tune, not sure how you tune but this works well.
 http://www.acsbows.com/bareshaftplaning.html

[Pat B]

If you shoot well with your present set up why change?

[AZ_Longbow]

Grab a  point weight test kit. 100gr all the way to 300gr from 3rivers archery. then experiment.

[UMLarcher]

Thanks for the input guys! I don't post much here, but I get a ton of great information just reading what everyone here has to say.