Arrows hitting on angle

Humble82

New member
Hello all.

Ive been shooting for a month now and gave my 252 rating for 30 and 40 yards. At 50 I am getting wildly inaccurate however but one constant is that at all distances, my arrows hit the target angled to the left (point in target, nock to the right of the point).

Im shooting left handed, 32 pound recurve bow with Easton Jazz 1816 arrows at 30.25 inches. The bow itself is an sf forged with elite foam limbs.

I also have some mybo flite arrows with same length but 600 spines with the same problem (other than the fact they are a truely terrible arrow sold by a worse company). Terrible aside, they also impact at the same angle.

Any hints or tips how to diagnose the problem?
 
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lbp121

Member
Ideally you need the help of an experienced archer to sort out how much is form and how much is equipment.
Personally I'd get the bow weighed accurately at your draw length since you can't really use the figures written on the limbs as a reference.

Even with that information arrow selection is only guided by the charts and you will often get the wrong stiffness (spine) for your set up. Even the string type can affect the choice up to around 5lb of draw weight. You haven't mentioned whether you are using a pressure button or a plain rest but areas you can experiment with are nocking point height, brace height altered by the number of twists in the string, and arrow centre position adjusted by pressure button position or packing behind arrow rest.

My feeling is the arrows are probably weak for the bow but the above adjustments could go a long way to straighten out the problem. It is probably best not to use a post asking for help to air your discontentment with a company or product since it really has no bearing on the question. Someone associated with that company could have been the one to help you.
 

sreynolds

New member
Is 32 pounds your actual draw weight or the nominal draw weight of the limbs at 28 inches draw?
If 32 is the weight marked on the limbs, your actual draw weight may be closer to 40 pounds at your draw length. Easton arrow charts then suggest that you should be using arrows around .500 spine. I would suggest that you borrow some stiffer arrows and see how they fly for you.
 
D

Deleted member 7654

Guest
IMO There is something suspicious here.
After 50 yards of travelling through the air, I can't imagine any arrow from any bow still travelling at an angle or being unstable (unless it is actually faulty).
I'd venture to suggest I could file a nock into the point of an arrow and shoot it backwards and it would possibly flip round and stabilise after 50 yards.
I don't have room to actually try it, but I'll put it on my list of novelty things to try.
Only reason I can see for an arrow being at an angle after 50 yards is crosswind. Other factors like bad fletchings can cause the back end to describe a circular path through the air, but that wouldn't give the consistent result described.
Del
 

sreynolds

New member
Del raises a good point. Even an arrow wobbling all over the place at launch should straighten up before it goes 50 yards. And, if it did continue to wobble, you shouldn't see a consistent lean at impact, but a random distribution, particularly over different distances. Very strange.

A few other things to try:
Have someone else watch your arrows fly so they can tell you what is happening in the air.
Shoot some bare shafts at a few feet to 20 yards to see how those behave.
Check that your plunger isn't way too stiff or way too weak and that your arrows aren't bouncing sideways off of the riser at release.
 

hot-shooter84

New member
First check your center shot, sight your string up and down the dead center of your riser , then with an arrow nocked on the rest, sight down the arrow, the point of the arrow should appear to sit slightly offset to the string, either sitting on the left of the string if your right handed, or to the right slightly if you left handed.
If this is not the case then adjust your pressure buttons collet to get the arrow point to do this, this is setting your centre shot, once set leave it, it should always be slightly off center for recurve bows.
Once you have done this set your sight ring to sit on the string.
Set your pressure button tension somewhere in the middle ie somewhere near the same tension as a click biro. then do a bare shaft test at 10 yards, that will tell you a lot about what's going on, don't worry about moving sights etc at the moment, just look at your groups.
Shoot 6 arrows with 2 unfletched, first check to see if the bare shafts are higher or lower than the main group of fletched arrows, if the bare shafts are higher then your nocking point is too low and likewise if they are lower than the fletched then your nocking is too high.
Adjust your nocking point first before making any spine adjustments etc.

Ideally you want the bare shafts to land within 4" of the fletched but the most forgiving set up is to have the bare shafts just low of the fletched about an inch or two.
Once you have done this you can check for spine.
The following is from the perspective of a right handed archer as there is not many lefties like myself about but if you are, then the following I'm about to tell you is just the opposite way around.
If you are right handed and the bare shafts are going further left than the fletched it means your arrows are stiff, ideally it is better to have slightly stiffer arrows eg the bare shafts are landing around 2"-4" to the left of the fletched, but if they are further out than this then either increase the poundage to bring them into check or get slightly weaker arrows. And likewise if the bare shafts are going right then it means they are too weak and you should seriously consider something different, I would say you probable wouldn't go far wrong with some Easton 3-18 ACCs.

Once you have got your bare and fletched to group as described (slightly low and left for a right handed archer or slightly low and right for a left handed archer) then move to 20 yards and repeat and tweak if needed. Having done this then you can worry about getting the group to move to where your sight is set, always move the group not the windage (unless obviously it's windy!) But to do this, shoot a couple of fletched arrows then adjust the pressure button tension to get the arrows to go where the sight is pointing.

You can only tune as well as you can shoot, but once you start to get better then you can play with your bracing height range and find a height that yields a quite shot and tight groups at a good range of distances.

I know it's a lot to take on but I hope it helps
Good luck and good shooting!
 

Mark31121

Member
Ironman
This might seem like a daft question but are you standing directly in front of the target and is it straight? I've noticed that a fair few archers seem to shoot way over to one side, which makes your arrows seem to be going in at an angle. With 50 yards of flight they should be level...
 

Humble82

New member
Thanks all. Ive taken the above advice and looked for a tuning guide for my pressure button. A little loosening and aligning of the arrow to where it should be has really helped eliminate the problem, both at long and short ranges.

For the record, I was shooting straight-on and in no wind when this was happening.
 
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