Maybe this sounds familiar: some arrows you’ve had from day one, and others barely survive their first target session. This blog looks at ways to get more of the first and fewer of the second.
Your scores are only as good as your arrows
First, let’s face some facts. You can be a modern-day William Tell, with the best bit of kit (by Steambow, naturally) but your results will still suck if you don’t use good arrows. It’s like driving a performance car, fitted with budget, “ditch-finder” tires: it’s a false economy.
So, get the arrows that are suited to the tool, and in the case of the AR-Series of repeating crossbows, there’s really little sense in looking anywhere other than Steambow’s own lineup: they were literally designed hand-in-hand with the AR-Series crossbows that fire them.
If cost is a concern, choose the aluminum shaft arrows but if you do that, understand that what follows in this post is even more relevant to you as the metal arrows are not as resilient as the carbon arrows—it’s all part of the cost-performance balance.
Change how you do things
So now on to how to maximize arrow life. There are different ways to do this: some require an initial investment that will pay for itself over time, and others will simply be kinder through technique.
Let’s look first at what you can do differently. One of the most common ways of ending an arrow prematurely is shooting it with another one. In fact, the odds are both will be out of commission if you do that. The solution is not to shoot at the same spot.
You don’t need to aim at the same location to verify accuracy and consistency. Steambow’s own targets have one side with multiple aiming points. If you aim at each one, and you hit each one, then you’re both accurate and consistent. If you aim at each and hit low and to the right on each, you know something needs adjusting. Either way, aiming at the same point is not necessary.
Arrows have their highest velocity when they leave the crossbow. Velocity means kinetic energy, and that means energy to be transferred on impact. The further you are from your target, the more velocity an arrow sheds and the lower the impact. The net result is the arrow will need to transfer less energy to the target before coming to a standstill. The trick is to find that sweet spot between “far away”, but not “so far that you miss the target” which will trash an arrow and is precisely what you’re trying to avoid.
Clean your arrows and your crossbow. Seems trivial, but dirt or grime on an arrow can affect its trajectory, and therefore may cause you to miss the target (see above) or may cause the arrow to veer and, if there’s one thing that puts strain on a shaft (apart from shooting it with another one), it’s an impact that is not head-on. Also, that dirt sits between the shaft and the barrel as the arrow travels at some 50m/s, which will damage the shaft unnecessarily.
Check the vanes and the tip. If either is damaged, or loose, you risk your arrow getting damaged beyond repair: a vane can be reglued, but not if the arrow has veered off into the bushes.
Invest in your arrows
It might seem like a crazy idea, but spending money might save you more in the long run. First there are the Steambow targets on offer. Both the standard and the premium targets are especially designed to stop the vanes reaching the target surface, even the arrows with the most kinetic energy (think the heavy warbolt or bodkin arrows with the 150-lb Hunting limb).
The Premium target has the added bonus that the arrow requires virtually no effort to pull out, meaning the vanes are protected on the way out of the target too. Other targets are most likely no designed for arrows this short, and overpenetration will peel the vanes off the shaft.
The other solution is to not shoot hardest all the time. In a competition? Fine, shoot your 75-lb Advanced, or 90-lb Pro limb. Hunting in the brush? OK, use the 120-lb Magnum or the Hunting limb mentioned above. But if you are just plinking, or putting in trigger time to keep up your form, then just use the standard limb, or even drop it down to the 35-lb CQ you get with the Compact.
These latter options do require an outlay upfront, but if they mean your arrows don’t need replacing as often, that saving will offset the initial costs of limbs or targets, and eventually it will save you money. Or, at least, let you shoot more with the same investment in consumables. Have a look at what’s on offer for any of the bits above.
