Post by 2chucks2 on Feb 26, 2007 19:39:36 GMT -5
It was a real blast shooting at the 100 yard indoor range. This of course is not a practical hunting range but is was interesting none the less. a few of the observations that I made were that fletching makes a lot of noise. This was a very quiet environment but the metal walls amplified most sounds. The group listened intently to everyone's fletching as it made the 100 yard trip. The quietest (in my opinion) was the Blazer vane followed by 4 inch feathers with a modest helical. The loudest fletching was the ones with a heavy helical. It sounded like a tire with a large air leak. One shooter had a feather fletched arrow with with one of the 3 feather being damaged and distorted. That arrow made a God awful noise as it flew. Our ears are not so keen as a deer's so I can only imagine how it must sound to them. Another observation I made was about pin spacing. I went to the range with a target sight with a single pin that was easily adjusted to a wide range of distances. My sight was already marked for 0 to 60 yards so when I started at 70 yards I over estimated the drop and shot very high. The pin spacing from 60 to 70 was the same as it was from 90 to 100 yards. The distance I measured on the sight from the 20 yard mark to the 100 yard mark was slightly less than 2 inches with the gap between the 90 and 100 yard marks being only 1/4 inch. My BowTech was shooting a 27 inch, 400 grain arrow at 275 feet per second, not blazing fast by today's standards so a 300 plus speed bow would have seen even tighter pin spacing. Next I was surprised at the penetration of our arrows at this long range. Based on arrow penetration at 70 yards. We saw very little loss at 100 yards. It appeared that KE and momentum was still very high. My bow produces 67 foot pounds at point blank and I would estimate that I was only loosing about 15 foot pounds at 100 yards but even if I had lost half of the 67, that would still be ample for deer sized game. Based on this website's archery ballistic calculations. home.att.net/%7Esajackson/ballistics.html. I would agree that it took well over 1 second for the arrow to travel to the target. Next I noticed that you can not have a small enough pin for such a great distance. My fiber optic pin completely covered the 9 inch bull as well as the next larger red ring. It also taught me to hold, aim and follow through longer (something I need to do at 20 yards) I also noticed that I must have subtle differences in the half dozen arrows I was shooting as a group of 3 would impact consistently diff than the other group of three. I did not know if it was a weight, spine, F.O.C. or fletching difference and would most likely not be noticed at 20 and 30 yards but interesting just the same. We had a heck of a time at this distance I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend that everybody try it. This is coming from a guy who has never shot a deer with his bow at a distance greater than 18 yards but suddenly 20 or 25 yards does not seem as far as it once did.
