Tag Archives: instinctive archery

Bit dark, but purple shaft with bat wing fletching
Feb 19 2019

Equipment review – Batwing feather fletchings

Rob Shooting

Rob Shooting

Okay, so for the past several months I have been trying out a new flethching profile on my arrow set up. In the past I have always stuck with the shield profile, with Sharon preferring a parabolic profile on her arrows. I feel that a lot of the time it is personal preference, but I’ve found a 4 or 5 inch shield to work well on my flatbows and a 3 inch has always been my preferred choice on my recurves.

These new fletching are a completely different profile called Batwing and being produced by Gateway (https://www.gatewayfeathers.com/ ). So would they prove to be a Joker in the deck or a hidden ace? Sorry had to include some kind of Batman related joke. You can partly blame Sharon for the joke as she’s nicknamed this batch of arrows the Jokers due to the colour scheme resemblimg the colours of the Jokers suit from Batman. Then again it might be nothing to do with colours and more to do with how I shoot them.

So why those colours?  Well I went with bright yellow fletchings and green nocks in the hope I would be able to see them in the target against the purple cresting.

Batwing fletching

Batwing fletching

The purple was partly because of it being club colours and a follow on from testing out the paints Lee had provided me for the Goblin Snot paint review a few months back. If you haven’t seen the review I was quite impressed by the paints.

Back to this review, the fletschings come in three sizes, 2 inch, 3 ½ inch and 4 ½ inch. Though I have all three sizes I’ve only tried out the latter two sizes on my flatbow. Of these two, I found that for my flatbow setup the 4 ½ inch have proved best. I know a couple of compound archers have tried the smaller size on their arrows with some success too.

For reference I normally shoot a 5 inch shield fletching. Whilst the 3 ½ worked ok, I found that they weren’t as forgiving when I had a poor release.

I’ve found the 4 1/2 inch offer stability in flight which is comparable to the larger five inch fletchings.

As I know some of you will be wondering about arrows speed and having put the arrows through a chrono the arrows are coming in at 176-180 Feet Per Second. That may not sound very fast but remember I’m not shooting carbon arrows, but wood ones. For those interested the arrows weigh between 455 and 465 grains, with a 80 grain pile up front and measuring 29 ½ inches being made from port orford cedar.

I wanted to wait before writing up this review so I could test them in a variety of conditions, which I think I have now managed. For those of you who shoot field, you know what it can be like shooting in a wood with variable cross winds between trees. One thing I have noticed with shooting these over the last few months  is they don’t appear to be as adversely affected by wind as my previous choice of five inch shield.

Wet weather, yes it is something that we as field archers have to encounter and despite having one of the warmest and driest summers on record in the UK we did get some rainy days. Wet weather has a huge effect on feather fletchings, often resulting in the feathers profile flattening down and offering very little stability. I was curious to see how these would cope in wet weather and whether the shape would make a difference. I have to report they don’t appear to have the same problem as normal shield that collapse and flatten.

I was a bit worried that their shape might result in them not coping with the occasional foray into the undergrowth which can happen when I miss the target, but so far so good. They don’t seem to have a problem with returning

I bought mine from Merlin Archery in Loughborough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgYQlcB7yww

So overall I think they work pretty well and look quite cool too.

Thanks for reading.

 

Me trying to remember to shoot
Nov 5 2018

a quest for perfect form, couple of video views?

Just a quick note to say sorry there’s not been much from me recently. Long days at work sat in front of a computer screen means the last thing I want to do is boot up the computer when I get home. Added to this are shorter days which make it impossible to practice at night and weekends being spent with lots of work going on at the Briar Rose club’s new wood means I’m pretty busy.

Despite or maybe because of this I have had some time to review a couple of videos that have recently been posted on YouTube by a couple of archery channels, both talking about archery form,  Archery Adventures and NUSensei 

You can watch both below and make your own mind up about their perspectives. Both raise some interesting thoughts, accuracy and the concept of perfect form, in respect to the many different forms of archery from Olympic recurve shooters to the traditional archers.

 

 

Personally I’m not sure there is something which can be easily identified as perfect form. We do all shoot different bows, have different physical make up, etc. which can make the quest harder as you can’t just watch someone and be able to copy their style/ I know I don’t have anything near perfect form and I work on being able to be consistent with my shot execution. In contrast when I watch Sharon shoot she is incredibly consistent in draw technique and execution. Doing the basics right and repeating this in crucial.

Personally I think  everyone has the capability of developing good form, which will work for them. I know this is something that I try to encourage when I am coaching archers for improvements. But what works for one may not work for another, what works for me might or might not help you.

I think this is where we can spend some of the winter months reviewing material like these videos and thinking about developing ourselves.

I’ll leave you with one thought, maybe our quest should be for the execution of the perfect shot?

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.