Jerry (Orion),
Every single thing you say has been a great benifit to me and to everyone that reads this. the knowledge on this forum and the people on it that are willing to offer thier insite and experience is a huge asset to everyone that is on here. You are at the top of that list with all of your great posts and the time you take to help anyone anytime you can.
Everyone that contributes to any thread with good info like we have seen on this thread is a major asset to us all. From this thread I have learn things that i did not think of, know, or understand. Many people reading this im sure, feel the same way.
I think talk about arrow weight, foc, efoc, standard arrows, etc is good becasue all sides give good honest genuine opinions. Those honest opinions are created by personal experiences. all of this helps anyone looking for new arrows, getting started with arrows, or wanting to understand arrows. Its like a "ford vs chevy" debate. as both sides point out the good, bad, etc everyone that is folloing along learns alot about both and can better make a decison for themselves based on pros and cons they read.
I have never been a FOC guy but always been a heavy arrow guy. I liked the quite bow, hard hitting, stable flight, and forgiveness of a heavy arrow. I started in 94 with cedars and made them as heavy as i could and loved them. Then we had our daughter in 2002 and were living in a rented house without a garage. my wife did not wnat me making cedars with the stains and dips in the house with a new baby so i switched to aluminums. Shot standard 2117s for 6 months and hated them. nosiey, light, loud bow, and the wind problem on the caribou hunt that same year (mentioned in first post). So i stuffed them with rope. walla! Perfect arrow! 740 grains, stable, flew great, hit hard, quite bow...all good.
Then in 2009 decided to try carbon. istantly decide i had to stuff them with rope and get the weight up, then added brass inserts etc, 740 grains. walla! perfect carbon arrow! been using them ever since.
Now i want to change to a non- rope stuffed arrow so decided to try double brass inserts. STarted testing bareshaft and cut to tune and got great flight. played with feather sizes from 5.5 to 2.75 liked a 4" high back best when combining all testing between dry, wet, wind, etc. walla! new perfect arrow!
so for 12 years i basically shot teh same arrow configuration. stuffed carbons normal foc, stuffed aluminum normal foc.
Now with the testing of the new arrows, the results i thought, are worth mentioning.
I never expected this much more productive of an arrow for my style and shooting. But the new arrows have proved it be.
Hopefully people that read this and are looking for an arrow like mine or wondering about my experince with EFOC will help them.
Anyone that is not interested in a EFOC arrow, i totally get it. I was not interested ever until a couple weeks ago. My other arrows always performed very well for me. Thats why i stayed with the same type of set up for all these years. I always raved about my arrows i used. I loved them. But now I like the new EFOC arrows better.
There is no right or wrong way to go with weight, foc, feathers, etc. And even though im raving about my new set up its not feild proven to me on game animals yet. my other arrows have taken alot of game with excellent results. my gut feeling is these will as well and probably better.
the key is to shoot tuned arrows that you have confidence in. as long as that happens the rest is matter of preference. But when it comes to that preference, I think these types of experiments, threads, debates, and chats are good for everyone that is interested.
People will take away what they want and throw out the rest. Its these kinds of threads here and other places that helped explain most of this stuff im learning. Even though I thought i knew it all....lol
Thank you to everyone posting and all the insite and info. Its greatly appreciated!