It is widely believed that arrows built with a lot of weight up front will produce better penetration on tough game. I am not just speaking of heavier arrows, which I am sure will penetrate better than light ones, but arrows with a high percentage of weight concentrated at the point (EFOC). Assuming that this is true, is it the heavy point itself that penetrates better, or is it the fact that you are using stiffer spined shafts with those heavy points, to get proper tune? The shaft will bend when it hits the animal, won't it? Wouldn't a stiffer shaft that bends less at impact penetrate better? Is that what would be producing better penetration?8

My 2 meager cents says that the weight forward allows penetration because shafts bending would only matter if your broadhead wasn't sharp. If the broadhead is sharp all kinetic energy is transferred at contact to cut. if it isn't sharp and you have a resistance force applied back to the arrow you would then have flex in the shaft as weight behind kinetic energy would need to go somewhere i.e. shaft flex. It's all physics on this one

Dr. Ashby showed that weight forward helped penetration. So did skinny shafts, single bevel and total arrow mass. I assume that all tested arrows were properly tuned.

I think the question is, does impact affect tuning, and therefor penetration?

Sharp broadhead and arrow hitting perfectly straight ( properly tuned) at time of contact is very important for good penetration. Carbon arrows with skinny shafts recover quicker from paradox , thus better penetration. There is many factors that equal good penetration but the parts above have worked good for me.

Most bow hunters use too much spine in their arrows ( I did myself) thus impeding penetration. After working on that with carbon shafts - with a lot of help on this board - heavy points help weaken the shaft thus tuning heavier spine arrows . Also in that equation it makes total arrow weight heavier and heavier FOC which are both factors in good penetration.

Now I'm no expert but this is what I have found to work great for me.Plus I didn't sleep at a holiday inn last night :)

A great bowhunter from Georgia named Dan Quillion once told me ( I didn't understand) that he would much rather see a archer get an inch more draw with a less poundage bow than a heavier bow not get to full draw, Think about that when you been motionless in a tree stand on a cold November morning. Remember you tuned to a 28" draw and you had to bend because deer is close to tree , it's 18 degrees and you only draw 26.5". You didn't get the penetration you think you should've because the arrow wasn't perfectly perpbut endicular to your target at time of impact.

Us male bowhunters have little bit of an ego, so you are going to hear some folks yell boo hoo at my post because they still shoot a gazillion pounds of draw.More power to them I know a bow shooting 45# and properly tuned will work just fine on deer and hogs if arrow if placed correctly and tuned setup.

My two cents and experimentation on the heavy point/stiff shaft says yes.

What animals are you going to hunt? Most of what I've read on elephant/rhino hunting with a stickbow has been a heavy arrow. And sometimes two shafts in one.

Arrow weight.....

My number 1 pet peeve is an arrow that doesn't shoot like a laser. I thinks its the largest robber of penetration

A straight flying arrow trumps all other factors. However, a straight flying arrow with sufficient FOC will be the best of both worlds.

What Shawn said. Momentum on the front end. And what he said about shafts.

This is a good thread. As I've opined before, we tend to talk about things in terms of bow weight which leaves much out of the equation with the wide variety of performance between types of bows. That being said, I am asking this because my rig is at the lower end of weight/performance, but it is what I can shoot accurately. Here's my question. Which arrow would be best of the two below. Pros/cons? Out of my 40# bow I get the following speeds.

Carbon Express Heritage 75 w 200 grains up front (total weight @ 480 grains) = 142fps Carbon Express Predator ii 800 spine w 160 grains up front (total weight @380 grains) =155fps Very sharp Grizzly single bevels on both arrows.

Both arrows are tuned to my bow, but I do find this bow likes the Predators a lot in terms of consistency and accuracy. (I spend much time bareshafting to get things flying right).

The Predators are much skinnier arrows than the Heritage. Because I am at the lower range am I better using the slower heavier arrow or the fast lighter arrow. Logic would seem to say heavier, but I am not getting much speed. I do only shoot out to 20 yards on deer.

KPC- very glad I read your entries. New to me, common sense concept.

I always thought that an arrow would straighten its flight out at a certain distance after It left the string. Much energy is wasted in the arrow while it is straightening out in flight. The better tuned arrow will leave he bow straighter, therefore wasting less energy in the process. Just 1 more factor in the equation.

If your arrow is hitting target at any type of angle, you have bigger problems than FOC or shaft weight/diameter to worry about. IMHO

It's more of a concern for people hunting Cape Buffalo, or game with skin over an inch and a half thick. Nothing in our continent like that so it's a non player in any of my hunting games. It's great for making 200 post threads where people argue about meaningless things though. In real life, the best indicator of future performance, is past performance. We have a history to show what works....maybe take some time and do some reading in that regard. If it's just about playing with tuning, then there are lots of things you can try to sate your curiosity. Enjoy.

Point heavy arrows don't "pull" arrows anywhere, in any direction. The force of a bowstring is applied to the rear of the arrow, not the front. The back pushes the front. For the heavy head to "pull" the arrow shaft. the point would have to have a motor on it.

Folks were killing all the same game that Ashby killed, long bevore Ashby. FOC is apart of his formula, but it isn't all of it and folks forget that.

What Jack Whitmire said about adding sraw length is on the money. Earl Howy said exactly the same. Lower your brace height and extend your draw length. Easiest way there is to gain performance.

Depends on animals skin but nothing is to be sacrificed with sharp broad head. Take a butter knife for example then your steak knife and try to cut the steak. No amount of pressure is enough with butter knife if meats tougher. Some meat is tender on good cuts but wild animals are generally tougher.

Savoy

Don't think anyone should be quoted unless you have 1rst hand experienced what they have then ya know it might not be fakes news and just talk.LOL.

Ryman, not sure who you're talking about regarding the quotes, But as for Quillian and Hoyt, I've spent lots of time talking to them both as has Jack. No fake news there.

Rifleman, Couple of reactions to your question of what arrow.

First one can look at the grains of arrow weight per pound of draw weight of your bow. You say the bow is 40# at your draw length. So the first arrow is 480/40 or 12 grains per pound (GPP). The second arrow is 380/40 or 9.5 GPP. For deer, I think any arrow that’s 8.0-10.0 GPP is fine. Going to 12 GPP won’t give much of an advantage on thin skinned deer and will rob some speed.

Second, you mention the lighter weight arrow is the one you shoot best. Best accuracy/consistency trumps almost everything else. Penetration matters not with a miss.

Everyone with an internet connection and a keyboard is an expert these days.

If Fred Bear has been successful in getting the Poison Pod legalized than all of this would be moot conversation.

Thanks George V!

From my years of shooting with decked out bows with sights on them. When taking maximum length hunting shots, say 45 to 70 yards, I was always surprised when target shooting when the arrow did NOT drift in the wind as far as I would first guess. Make no mistake, the wind will kick an arrow around, but with my bow sights I was never aiming as far over on long shots after I honed things in as far as would have guessed. I have had wide two blade heads that in a normal 10 to 15 mph cross wind would fly perfectly straight, but the wide broadhead would move them over a few more inches than the same arrow with a target point. In swirling quartering tail winds those same wide broadhead arrows did different things. Swirling high wind can suck the relative air speed dynamics out an arrow, causing a variety of surprise reactions. A ufoc carbon arrow has most of its weight up front, in a no wind situation that will penetrate better with the same broadhead. However, in a severe cross wind or severe quartering tail wind that same arrow is going be flying with more varied wind tacking. The broadhead will not be striking at its functional best angle and if it is a wide two blade it can be hitting more like a shovel slap than a spear if the blades are vertical. A heavier shaft with a narrow broadhead will not push all that far with the wind, but it can maintain a better alignment to its flight direction. I made some ufoc carbons with big feathers, no wind beautiful perfect fliers, add a higher variable cross wind, and they looked like a butterfly in a thunderstorm. No amount of tuning could change those aerodynamics. The common saying that a tuned arrow won't wind drift is baloney when the wind is cranked up and variable. Uefoc means a high percentage point weight, but a weather vane is also uefoc.

I agree with dean.

And I'm not real sure why folks would assume that an arrow that isn't EFOC would hit a target "wagging around".

Even in EFOC arrows the largest percentage of the weight is behind the center of the shaft.

In either configuration the arrow is being pushed. When the front of what's being pushed comes in contact with any kind of medium that impedes it's forward movement, is going to encounter resistnace, which is going to cause the shaft, or whatever it is, behind it to bend.

It's the opposite of the reaction of the arrow as it is shot from the bow. The arrow doesn't bend when we release the string because it's bending around anything. It bends because itis at rest, and the mass of the arrow is resisting the application of the force from the bow string.

efoc has the same reaction as tapered arrow shafts.

"no animal was ever because the arrow penetrated too far"

-Dr. Ed Ashby

There is a place for you to show off all your opinions.

Don't talk about it. Strut your stuff, and "Show" it. 8^)

http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/tf/lw/thread2.cfm?forum=23&threadid=293308&messages=3&CATEGORY=9

Rick

heavy wood shafts and sharp heads 125-145 and a well tuned arrow has passed threw for years

Just use the arrows that give you the best flight. With a sharp broadhead on the end, they will do the job.

MP

Good points Dean! The wind is almost always a factor in the flat areas i hunt. I was amazed at how much a light wind pushed even bareshafts around.

Great food for thought on a winter day. Fantastic diagrams where motion, direction,and weight can not be denied. I have been guilty of saying a heavy head tends to pull the shaft in. It is not entirely wrong but perhaps an over simplification. A heavier object in motion is harder to stop than a light object. It keeps chugging along (pulling) the shaft behind it, which hopefully is stiff enough to avoid wagging too much. Watch an olympic target in slow motion. It seems like the shaft never stops flexing. Not much penetration,lightweight head and as light a shaft as they can tune.Tie a rock on a string. Use the string to fling the rock. Is the string pushing from behind or the rock pulling? No argument here just stating some ideas.>>>----> Ken

I do get tired of the efoc stuff, and seeing the charts Ashby and Grizzly Stik uses showing 512 grain arrows and 900 grain arrows shot from a 36# Elite, Study the charts and see how much arrow speed is lost to obtain less them .3 momentum. Guys on Facebook are really pushing the Valkerie system, with interviews from the Grizzly Stick people. Who would use a 900 grain arrow from a 36# bow??

One thing I've noticed is why do the guys arguing the efoc stuff using small 3:1 heads? If they have that much momentum like they claim, wouldn't it be better to push a wider head to do more damage? The Muzzy heads were designed by a trad man wanting a better head then what was on the market, and designed a tip that breaks bone, from traditional bows!

Let us not forget about that 7/8" broadhead that Ashby liked. What got me is why was the trimmed Grizzly so much better than the standard Grizzly, when the Pearson Deadhead came in second in his initial testing. I got a pass through on a very large doe with a 37@26 Hill longbows with a 5/16 cedar shaft, uphill about 9 feet and out about 18 yards with rib contact. It was not the bow that did that or the arrow weight or balance so much. I believe it was the perfect arrow flight in a 10 to 15 mph cross wind and that Dremel sharpened 140 grain Hill broadhead. Not arguing about those tiny fletch efoc arrows, but a cedar arrow with enough fletching to get it going straight sooner than later still gets it done well enough for the girls on this end of town. I am going out this week with some original Hunter's Heads on cedar arrows, if hit a deer I would be very surprised if the arrow does not go sailing through any deer out there. I have never had a deer that could stop those things and I have had no problems finding the deer that hit either. Nice and short wood arrows that are moderately balanced are easy to hunt with. Some folks get all wrap up in theory and seem to think that they must always for the max on everything and then shoot whitetail at only 10 to 15 yards out. At that range quick recovery and straight flight, as in shaft behind the broadhead are priority.

OK....

KPC’s ball-bearing pic shows what happens when a shaft impacts at an angle, and 100% agreement that that is Bad and that is why spine selection is important.

But that was not the question in the OP; he was asking about a STIFFER SHAFT (not a Too Stiff, out-of-tune shaft).

Arrows flex at launch AND upon impact; how much they flex upon impact depends on how much resistance they encounter at the pointy end and the mass of the back end of the arrow (it’s this mass, which keeps moving as the head gets slowed down, which causes the flexion).

And the lighter and stiffer the shaft, the less mass there is available to cause that flex AND the greater the resistance to flexion.

Also: there is no pushing or pulling; there is simply the center of mass (which is exactly where the FOC point is), and its velocity is dictated by 3 things: 1) how much mass is there to begin with; 2) how much resistance is in front of it and 3) how much drag there is behind it.

We all pretty much agree on a sharp COC (and being lighter or heavier has nothing whatsoever to do with creating resistance, so not much debate on that, I’d hope) and its pretty obvious that the more the nock end strays off-line, the more drag will be created. And a shaft that is stiff enough to flex just the right amount for a heavy head is stiff enough to resist flexion due to coves applied by a much lighter nock-end.

IOW, it’s not one or t’other, but BOTH, working together, so-to-speak.

I'd use a 900 grain fish arrow from a #36 bow anyday.

Atladl’s are cool Bob.

How much head weight would be required to get a 900 grain fishing arrow to be 20% foc or better. Out of a 36 pound bow, it would fly so slow that you could run out and nudge it back on course if it was off target. I actually made a couple of fish arrow deer hunting arrows when i read how Monty Browning used them. I got them to fly out of one of my bows. i thought that i could shoot a deer in the butt and it would blow his antlers off. That did not happen. I took a 25 yard shot at a small buck, the arrow flew terrible, I think it bounced off of the bow and it hit the ground by the bucks feet. I even practiced where to put the point at a 25 yard shot. Something went haywire with the shot.

I agree with Jack. I see so many hunters that shoot at a different draw length on each shot which changes your spine each time. How can you tune an arrow if you draw different each time? I have seen some shooters that claim they have a 28 inch draw with a foot or more arrow hanging over their bows.

Ball bearings roll crooked.Draw lengths vary. Bows are not marked correctly. Arrows are not spined the same all the way around. The earth is tilted on its axis,The wind blows. I give up it is impossible to hit anything from here.;^) >>>----> Ken

Nobody and Nuthin’ are Perfect; the rest of us Make Do.

But usually when something goes wrong, it wasn’t just One Thing; missing the length on a cut by 1/4” is not ordinarily a big deal, but if you do it a bunch, it’s a hell of a way to build a house.

So I’m sympathetic to those who measure twice or a third time.

My thanks to all who commented on my original post. A lot of good information there.

Rifleman.....according to your weights given....hopefully they are total weight of COMPLETE arrow and your FPS speeds... The 480 gr @ 142 fps= 21.49 Kinetic Energy foot lbs. The 380 gr @ 155 fps= 20.29 Kinetic Energy foot lbs.

The higher the more "powerful" better penetrating arrow with ALL things being equal.

Sorry about the blank post...the theory is "total weight" of your arrow or projectile absorbing the energy from your bow traveling at a certain speed. The head weight would have no bearing by itself...but it adds to the total weight which is important.

The idea of the arrow "wobbling" at impact is true. Your broadhead style is what will create more or less of this. The best is a cut on contact....then chisel...then conical. Also there will be slightly less with a stiffer arrow. This is why some choose the Carbons as there spine is usually stiff enough to cover wider ranges and still shoot good. Where as a Aluminum might require tighter tolerances for your "good shot" and also why there are/were so many different sizes.

These are just things I know of in my archery career....not the "Ten Commandments" or anything...lol

Numbers and guesswork interpreting the formulas mean nothing to me. Take your #55 bow and shoot 550 grain arrows and 850 grain arrows at a piece of 2x and see which bury deeper in the wood, and take pliers to extract.

I am starting to believe in a rough filed edge, which no one seems to talk about in regards to penetration. Using Bob Rowlands' 2x theory, take a super sharp knife and run it across a 2x4. Then take a saw with an aggressive tooth design and run it across the 2x4.

I use cross cut files in a v block and get a raggity sharp edge on my Ace Standards. Last 2 deer have died in sight -- one a pass thru that blew thru the deer like he wasn't even there at 7 yards with a selfbow. The other a steeper angle through the heart and stopped on the off leg/shoulder. First one dropped in 20 yards (didn't even know it was hit) the second dropped in 60 yards. B 50 strings on both bows, cedar arrows and both just below #50.

I am thinking the raggity edge creates a lot less resistance going through and does not get dull. Louie Armbruster showed me how he sharpened his Hill Heads (rough with a file) and said the heads do not get dull going through hair and/or bone.

I think its hard to make any real scientific absolutes.

While you may be able to calculate momentum, kinetic energy , speed and all the other physic humbo jumbo in the classroom.

There are just to many variables out in the field. You also cannot shoot one or three or even six animals and decide you've found the secret to penetration.

But there ARE a few things that you can count on. There is a point of diminishing returns in regards to arrow weight in both ends of the scale...light and fast, and heavy and slow.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that for deer hunting your better off with the age old theory of 9-11 GPP. I guess its human nature for folks to try and re-invent the wheel. But bowhunters figured that out long before leatherwall and the internet.

Another thing you can count on is the benefit of a sharp broadhead.

Ryman I think mentioned cutting a steak with a butter knife vs a sharp knife. I tend to go with good old fashioned common sense logic like that.

And as far as skinny, stiff carbon vs wood ect?... Truthfully I've had to look for just as many blood covered cedar, Sitka and douglas fir arrows as I have carbons.....after they passed completely through a deer, So I can't really say.

I just built my own 61# bow. I'll be drawing close to 58 or 59 lbs. Anyhow, I ordered gold tip arrows and 100 grain brass inserts but this thread is making me 2nd guess myself. I shot wood arrows for years until lat year i went to carbon. Carbon shot faster but didn't have great penetration as I hoped. Of course as many of you saw on my shots this past fall the were all quartering so that didn't help matters with pass throughs. Maybe I should return the carbon shafts and order good old wood shafting again.

In regard to the original question... all else equal, I think arrows with heavy heads penetrate better for a combination of reasons. A greater percentage of the mass weight of the arrow has been moved to the head, so upon impact, there is less weight toward the back to cause flexing of the arrow upon impact. Less flexing of the arrow means less drag going in, and more energy and momentum directed in a straight line to aid penetration.

That said, I don't use extra weight out front. 125 grain heads on my hickory arrows blows right through the critters I hunt.

Thanks, Jeff Durnell, for returning to the questuon in my original post.

Thanks Franklin!

Shadehaven...I wouldn't give up on carbons. My whole point was over the years I simply haven't been able to tell enough of a noticeable difference in just about anything I used.

I might be way off base here but to my way of thinking If you want to tune your arrows properly then the spine is going to end up relatively the same regardless of FOC.

You could take a carbon arrow to stiff for your bow and load the point till it fly's correctly. What you have done is weaken its spine.

It may be stiffer to start out with than say a cedar or aluminum..but till you add point weight the spine is the same.

So to answer the original question there really can't be a "stiffer" arrow if your bow is tuned properly. What you can have though Is arrows with different FOC. It is possible to shoot a carbon arrow with a heavy point and a wood or aluminum with a 125 gr point and they all will have the same spine. But their weight will be different as well as FOC.

I can't really get my mind into believing it is really going to make a big difference how stiff the arrow was before you added weight to weaken the spine.

What I do believe makes a difference is Bow draw weight...overall arrow weight...being tuned properly, and a very sharp, like shaving sharp broadhead.

The reason Easton and wood shaft suppliers have had so many different spines is because they could. You want a 29" bop for any given bow with any given broadhead, they will have the spine for you. With carbon shafts, they cover a wide spine and they tend to be stiff, so it is one of those 'you figure it out' situations.

"A great bowhunter from Georgia named Dan Quillion once told me ( I didn't understand) that he would much rather see a archer get an inch more draw with a less poundage bow than a heavier bow not get to full draw"

My recollection is he pulled heavy bows. I was only in his store once, but I remember trying out quite a few heavy bows also.

It is an interesting thought as to whether there is a minor trade off between more draw weight and more draw length. Of course not getting to full draw is bad for a ton of reasons, but it may even be a wash to get a slightly lighter bow all the way back, because of the extra power stroke. However that would kick in with relatively little compromise in draw weight. But if you could drop from 72 to 68, get it all the way back, and still have the same velocity, that would be a no-brainer. If you have to drop to 45, well that is what you would have to do, but it wouldn't be a wash.

"In my opinion, and Jack Whitmrie Jr stated, the most important factor in penetration is the angle of the arrow at impact."

And this could be why the head weight theory is right because if all the weight was in the head, it wouldn't matter whether the energy in the shaft was aligned or not.

So one weird thing is if you look at high speed photography of arrows that are perfectly tuned and released by Olympic champions they wiggle all the way to the target, like a fish swimming. Which raises the question of how they shoot straight into the target given that they are never aligned with a laser as we see them in our minds.

The arrow will cause the BH to track, much the way it does in the air. The arrow isn't going to do a Magic Bullet deal as in the JFK assassination.

"Regardless of the weight or stiffness of the nail, which one do think will penetrate further? The one where the direction of the hammer and the nail are both going in the same direction, or the one where the direction of the hammer is different than the direction of the nail?"

The problem with this question is it assumes that while in flight the shaft is pushing the head, while in most cases the head is pulling the shaft. At the point of release, the head gets all it's energy through the arrow, but try shooting a head at 200 fps, and a shaft at 200 fps, obviously the standard 2 blade head will go farther due to roughly similar drag, and far heavier weight. If we up the drag of the feathers, you get a flu flu, actually pulling the head to a stop.

So in terminal ballistic, if you hit a bone the shaft, if it has sufficient weight and alignment will act as a nail to push the head along, though the majority of the energy can be in the head. Either way both will be necessary. But as has been said, if the material is closer to a giant lump of butter the head will not slow down initially, but eventually the shaft will catch up, unless it drags in the medium.

Anyway, the nail analogy does not seem obvious to me. If the shaft is doing most of the work, and it is pushing in the wrong direction, fair enough. But it doesn't have to be that way. You could have a ceramic head that weighed little, and the shaft would be doing the work, or you could have a super heavy BH and a very light shaft, with small feather, and the results would be as in Ashby's report. There are several things that bias in favor of a BH lead arrow, not least of which is we need a BH. If we could get away with 1.5" inch fletchings and a nano tube arrow that weighed nothing, that would be fine. But a head has to cut a path, so it is necessary one way or another.

If 2 objects are going the same speed the heavier one will be harder to stop. Both going the same speed is the part of physics people tend to leave out. The best pass thru I've ever had was with 62lbs and a 480gn total weight arrow. The point was 125gns of that 480. I was shooting uphill and the arrow came out the other side rising so I got to watch it go across a field about 80 yards before it came down. I found the deer about 60 yards out and the arrow 20 yards farther. I would swear the arrow did not slow down enough to be able to see with the naked eye. The shot was about 23 yards. btw, I've shot low foc all of 52 years, 53 this summer. I shoot a 160 head but no inserts at all. Its a swagged aluminum shaft. I only shot that low weight arrow 1 year tho to prove a bet. If any arrow that tunes to your bow doesn't get the penetration you need then put your 25lb bow away n buy a 45.

I think some may have misinterpreted the "scientific mumbo jumbo" We use this formula when we are going after specific game...mostly dangerous game. If you go after a very large game animal it`s YOUR DUTY to make sure you have the proper set up to kill the animal efficiently.

If you want to bowhunt Cape Buffalo and they tell you your rig must be 85 Ft lbs of KE shooting into a 2x4 is not going to help you. Not trying to be wise guy just explaining the importance of KE.

"I am starting to believe in a rough filed edge, which no one seems to talk about in regards to penetration. Using Bob Rowlands' 2x theory, take a super sharp knife and run it across a 2x4. Then take a saw with an aggressive tooth design and run it across the 2x4."

I think there is a lot to be said for the rough filed edge also. However, from the woodworking perspective the analysis is questionable. Saws cut wood for sure, but it isn't true that larger teeth are always the answer. There are many ways to skin that cat. One extremely effective alternative are the Japanese traditional saws. In crosscut format they use unusually small teeth, but large gullets. They are now found on saws made by manufacturers all over the world. The problem wasn't the small teeth, it was storing the dust from the cut so it wouldn't bog the saw down. In truth saws are carefully matched to very specific tasks, and one can have dozens of them in a cabinet shop.

All cutting edges are serrated at some magnification. "Smooth" razor sharp edges are just serrated at a finer level. The key is matching the level of serration to the task. There isn't a lot of evidence that on weapons like knives, swords, or archery gear, that razor sharp edges are holding us back.

"So to answer the original question there really can't be a "stiffer" arrow if your bow is tuned properly. What you can have though Is arrows with different FOC. It is possible to shoot a carbon arrow with a heavy point and a wood or aluminum with a 125 gr point and they all will have the same spine. But their weight will be different as well as FOC."

All the arrows will have to be selected to behave out of the same bow, but they could have completely different spines. If you have two arrows, one tuned for a 300 gr head, and the other for a 150 gr head, the one tuned for the 300gr head will have to be stiffer. And all else equal it will be heavier.

My default opinion was we needed heavy arrows. Partly because when I started out, that is what we had. I guess my model was the shaft pushing the head through, like a javelin. But when someone like Ashby comes out and says the exact opposite, I can't afford to start out assuming he is wrong.

Bowlim...

I agree the arrow shooting the 300 gr point will have to be stiffer initially, but once you screw the 300 gr point into the arrow and shoot it then the spine is the same.

I shoot all three types of arrows wood, carbon, aluminum.

My bows generally need a 65-70# spine... I could take a 28" 65# cedar put a 125 gr point on it, and it will roughly have a 65# spine...I could also take a carbon spined for 80# and load the point weight or leave it longer until I lower its spine to 65#..regardless of weight, length ect...ect they both still are 65# when shot out of my bow.

That's what is confusing me about the whole "stiffer" arrow thinking. For a bow to be tuned properly it needs a particular spine range. It matters not what spine the arrow was laying in the box....it matters what it is when shot out of my bow.

what kind of bow are you shooting? draw weight? center shot makes more of a difference than bow weight IMO I use a 600 spine carbon shaft for 90% of my bows add add or subtract point weight some of the best arrow flight I've ever obtained was with 200 grain plus points

Actually after reading the original question numerous times, I think what the OP is wanting to know is, does the heavier point or the fact that the arrow was "initially stiffer" BEFORE you added the point the reason for better penetration.

As I said I cant believe the initial stiffness of the shaft has anything to do with it simply because once you start adding the weight in the front it is no longer as stiff.

I think the fact that It has more over all weight is the key factor to penetration...nothing more...nothing less.

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