The Romance of Wood

Catching a glimpse of my quarry through a tangle of deadfall, I moved slowly and deliberately taking care to make as little noise and movement as possible. Easing around the trunk of a large tulip poplar, and within the safety zone of my quarry, I ease the string back to anchor while fixating on the spot I intended to hit. Twenty yards away and completely unaware of my activities stood a rotten stump. In my peripheral vision I caught the perfect spiral of spinning feathers on a direct line to that spot. CRACK! …an unseen overhanging twig deflected the arrow and I watched as my arrow dead centered a granite rock half buried in the hillside. This sent the white shaft bouncing back several feet towards me. Walking up I examine the shaft and again I find that my steel blunt had become dislodged from the taper yet the wood shaft is otherwise unharmed. I found this scenario repeated time and again. I am just amazed at these wood arrows! The arrow wood was Douglas Fir. I enjoy the practice of roving during the off-seasons but the rocky terrain around my mountain home in Frederick County is tough on arrows. I had grown up shooting wood kids arrows later graduating to aluminum and finally carbon. My journey deeper in traditional archery and the desire to craft my own tackle led me back to wood. I found aluminums shafts to be too easily bent, so when I went to Port Orford Cedar (POC), I immediately struggled with the pain of seeing my painstakingly handcrafted works of art disintegrating on hard hits. I went back to aluminum footed carbons and stayed there for some time. Eventually I started reading more about Howard Hill and his exploits with wood shafts, I wanted to delve back in the “woodpile” so to speak. Mr. Hill by the way reportedly preferred wood because they “Had some life to them”. I found several suppliers that now provided the archer an alternative to the brittle and often poor quality POC shafts. The old growth POC trees have predominantly been harvested and getting good quality and straight POC is a chore. Common wood choices now available include hickory, ash, purple heart, douglas fir, and laminated birch. I found hickory to have great mass weight but hard to keep straight. Then, I discovered Douglas Fir. Douglas fir has several attributes that I find superior to POC and hickory for me. First, they have a little more mass weight than POC which aids in penetration during hunting. Another side benefit here is the extra mass makes the bow just a little quieter. Old growth fir is still widely available and I find very few in a dozen premium quality shafts require straightening, and once straightened (unlike hickory) they tend to behave. This combined with their toughness makes them pretty hard to beat in my book. Shooting these shafts more and more only reinforces my feeling of trust and confidence I have in this, “the most important component of my equipment”. Shooting wood has many added benefits. I have found more and more that simple is better. My wood arrows have 4 components; nock, shaft, fletchings, and points. My old stumping carbons had nock, nock adapter, aluminum nock footing, wrap, fletches, shaft, insert, aluminum footing, and screw in points. Now I carry a lighter, taper tool, and a glue stick and I can field repair as needed. Wood is also a lot quieter to carry in a back quiver. Clanking aluminum shafts in a back quiver is just not conducive to quiet sneaking. Even the best fitting back quiver will get some metal on metal noise when you withdraw an aluminum arrow. Finally building sharp looking wood arrows is fun and relatively easy. Cresting and capping with krylon or rustoleum spray paint can get you some pretty good looking sticks! Also a bit of stain can really pull the grain of the wood out. So if you have not tried wood in a while, it might be worth a second try. You may be pleasantly surprised! A new dozen ready to hunt. Retro looking white shafts ready to stump!