Interesting Letter from Howard Hill in 1959

[Tom Leemans]

You said it Ron. Good arrow flight + sharp broadhead = good results!  

[Chris Surtees]

Pretty interesting article and reading.

[Caranthir]

Well put Ron, and I might add you just can't get that great smell from any other arrow material! Rich

[Falk]

I don't see Mr. Hill advocate for light  arrows in his letter        I read it more as the opposite of it. But maybe I don't understand    :confused:    

   

posted by Big Dog:
But I'm wondering when this heavy arrow hype came into its own??

I think my   bibliography  is not to bad and I have many pages in it dealing with arrows - scattered "through time". It would be difficult though to point a single one out and say, here it is.
However, it is interesting to note that "spine" as we understand it nowadays was unknown well into the beginning 20th century. But already ASCHAM (1545) knew that a stele which is hard to stand in a bow ... is best to make a shaft of. FORD (1880) and also LONGMAN & WALROD (1894) explained the need for so-and-so shilling weight arrows for a given draw weight bow. They knew what they would need and that all the certain qualities correlate positively with arrow weight in wooden shafts. However, all the above mentioned were "target shooters" in the first place and trajectory was of more concern to them then penetration was. We can assume that all prefered a lighter shaft, as long as it was stiff enough.

With the revival of bowhunting as described by THOMPSON (1879) or later POPE (1925) the heavier draw weights came back into use. Even though the ELB generally requires weak spined arrows because of it's rather thick handle, the use of a (heavy) broadhead asked for some good quality shafts. POPE used birch, which is quite heavy and his shafts had some good weight to them. A proper working hunting weight combo would thus always lead to a heavy shaft as well. There was hardly the danger to go out with a to light weight arrow at all. In the good old days, when men were still men and even a target bow had 60#      

Along others, there was a guy by the name of Fred B. BEAR, who wrote a nice article in Ye Sylvan Archer (1943: Vol.14, No. 10: 1-3) on Hunting Arrows. He tested shafts ranging from 300 to 800gr with bows of different weights and measured their striking force. The whole text would be worth quoting here but I will only give you  the introducing as well as the last paragraph:
"To few archers realize the importance of using a rather heavy arrow for hunting. The growing popularity of field shooting has created a demand for light weight, fast arrows and it is assumed by many archers that the same qualifications are proper for hunting."
On the following three pages he gives his explanations and what he found in his testings and closes with
"... there is definately no substitute for heavy bows and heavy arrows. A light weight arrow traveling faster will not bring the desired results. But let us not insist that moose tackle be used for deer and that nothing less will suffice."

Okay, that was that. Sorry for the lenghty text and the excursion in history etc.

BTW, Howard Hills elephant arrows were over 1700gr

Cheers,
Falk

[brettlandon]

Thank you Big Dog, for posting this letter by one of our traditional hero's.  Better still, is the wonderful comments posted by today's hero's (those of you who are still passionate about this sport).  I especially appreciated Ron's and Falk's comments.  Now I am going to take a deep breath and jump into this murky water myself.
       

While I have neither the experience of Ron, nor the knowledge of Falk, I've developed my own arrow hunting opinions over my last seven years of traditional bowhunting.  I shoot my own tackle, that is, I have made my own selfbows and arrows, strings, ect.; and I tend to shoot bows that are in the 50# and up range.  Coupled with these bows are arrows that tend to be heavier than most because I make them out of native wood (which is not POC).  I also use heavy broadheads (in the 190 gr. catagory) and rubber blunts (closer to 250 gr.).  I wind up with heavy tackle because I make it myself, AND because it is the oppisite of what the store-bought, mechanical, technologically encumbering, wheelbow shooters do.

This may not be reasonable, but I admit freely that I do not participate in this sport because I am reasonable.  Every compound bow hunter I talk bow hunting with is trying to create the lowest weight, least areodynamic disturbing (whoever coined windplaning should be rich), FASTEST arrow possible.  From the two inch vanes (even my kids shoot three inch fletchings), to the mechanical broadheads to the carbon shafts (read teflon coated, titanium core, turbo charged, buzz word, buzz word, buzz word), everything is being done to create an arrow shooting rifle.  Seldom to I meet one of our mechanical brothers who does not boast of his arrow speed or 60 yard plus range.  And as convinced as they are about the performance of their advanced arrow design, I am equally convinced of my primitave design performance (and I have a longer liteny to defend this performance).

All that said, I believe the most important thing any bowhunter does is shot placement.  My best friend took a doe at twelve yards with a 35# selfbow shooting heavy arrows (don't know the specs, but the broadheads were 190's) and she only made 20 yards before she fell dead.  A double lung shot speaks more to the efficiency of the arrow than it's weight, spine, FOC, ecetera.  If the bowhunter has confidence in his choice of arrow weight and backs it up with experience, then he has the right arrow.  After that...Aim small, miss small. IMHO

-Brett

[laddy]

I read a few comments about 90lb. longbows on this thread. i am one of the crazys that worked his butt off to be able to handle the heavy stuff.  I hunted with microflight 12s loaded with a birch dowel. I shot a 160 pound buck uphill 18 yards from my "lunch Log".   Hot knife through butter was an understatement. the arrow didn't seem to slow down. A couple years later from the same place I shot a similar sized doe, same shot. With a 36lb. longbow and about a 450grain arrow, my elbow had given out and that was all I could handle. The arrow went through the deer, but not out to the middle of the corn field.  The doe died within feet of where the previous buck went down. I have never used a heavy bow since that day. 64 is my max and low 50s is what I used the most. Hill said that combo would also work for elk and moose. I remember an article in Outdoor Life by Howard Gillean that talked of moose hunters using forty to fifty pounders for moose. I am not sure of that logic, all the moose I have ever seen are really big, black and scary up close. I would prefer a good pair of running shoes to boots for sneaking up close to a bull moose.