I realise this is an old thread, but thought I'd throw my 2 cents in as others will undoubtedly have the same question and look here in future...
I recently destroyed the last of my old
Easton profields that I had been using since I first started field.
Looking for something to replace them that was cheap, light, and affordable I eventually settled on Victory VAPs.
These are fully carbon, made to similar tolerances* as the top
Easton arrows, and about £10 per shaft.
When I emailed my local shop to enquire the owner phoned me back specifically to tell me how great he had found these arrows and how keen he was for another VAP shooter!
Shooting has been limited recently but I have found them excellent, and shot similar scores in practice to the profields.
Of course, more testing is needed - including in competition - but so far I am pretty impressed and glad I tried them.
The ice coating makes them really easy to extract from 3D's and tight targets compared to my other arrows, and they also have the stiffest spine orientation marked on the arrow saving you having to test for it and nock turn yourself.
IMO they are the right balance of weight for nice stable flight whilst giving a reasonably short sight tape, though this is a personal opinion - if I were to make a set for target I'd probably go longer, stiffer, and heavier.
I realise that chunky arrows are all the rage for 3D, but personally I subscribe the Broadwater theory of shoot whatever works properly, you have faith in, and hits where you aim, rather than try and grab a line when you miss
.
I tend to shoot more spots than 3Ds and can't afford different setups for each, and, at the moment, feel that my shooting is stronger than my distance judging so thinner lighter arrows are in my interests.
As you may have gathered this is for a
compound, but they should work equally well for non-wheely bows, and there is also the VXT you can consider in this case. It also depends on your skill level and what you plan to do - if you think you'll miss a lot maybe you want the cheapest arrows possible
.
With reference to other questions raised in the thread:
- I have never had issues with all carbons in field, only target - indeed they seem to be more popular amongst the field crowd than A/C - and if I lose something behind a target in dense carpeted forest off a
compound I know from experience it's probably gone, metal detector or no (RIP that one protour
).
- I have found the
Beiter hunter nocks to give excellent protection against rear-end impact, especially when coupled with pins and collars.
* in making there was a 0.8 grn variation in the shaft weights (except one which was suspiciously 1grn heavier) compared to 0.9 grn in my set of protours (but no outliers). After making and matching points the weight tolerance of both sets was about the same - but the price wasn't!!