Stickbow Target Archery Forums

so I'm hearing that, for long distance, fat is bad, skinny is good.

sounds like I'm also hearing that if the shaft is dense enough (say an 1816), it doesn't have to be totally skinny to fly well at distance.
I now have about 40 pounds on my fingers. Spine charts say 1816s are too weak for that. Are you shooting them out of a 40-lb bow? And if so, is there anything special about your setup?

This is the way the arrow spine business has worked for me for at least the last 40 years ...

For freestyle (hard sights), recurve/compound, fingers/release aid, shooting off a flip rest, w/plunger, and a vertically held bow, I seek alignment from head to eye to string to sight recticule. This equates to a critical arrow and spine, and it may take lots of testng to find the right combination for me (or for anyone).

For barebow off the shelf, or hand, and a canted bow, my aiming criteria is different and I seek to align my dominant aiming eye over the shaft, aiming the arrow via some mystical "trajectory/instinctive/voodoo" aiming process . This does not absolutely require a critically spined arrow. Period. I can make 290 grain 1716's with mylar vanes shoot like bottle rockets out of the 43# Saturn, with dart-like stable flight (though I must have my act together for form!). Likewise, I can shoot 550 grain 70/75# spined 11/32" woodies fly to short marks consistently, albeit slowly when holding 43#. Again, the reason is I'm aiming the shaft and can compensate with bow cant to get the arrow to shoot where I point it. Form definitely still counts! YMMV.