Elk Hunting Arrows - Two builds This Year

Elk season this year is fast approaching for me.  My brother and I will be hunting in Northern Idaho again this year.  This year will be a little different as my brother plans on driving out his camper, while I fly in to meet him.  He also promises to bring his Chesapeake Bay retriever, which will be interesting for him to deal with. I am packing in preparation for a solo hunt should something happen, or if I need to bivy out away from his camper.  Being Prepared is always good but the area we are in is crisscrossed with roads, trails, and accesses.  This will be no wilderness hunt, and we will need to contend with the ATV hunting crowd. 

In preparation I began building some hunting arrows.  My first plan was to use a group of very straight bamboo I had culled from a lot of 100 shafts.  These were the straightest and all spined around 65 pounds.  I had mostly white fletching and already had some white rustoleum so my color scheme will pretty mush guarantee some snow on the ground!  The finished arrows with ace broadheads weighed about 600 grains.

Meanwhile, I was eying up 2 dozen old lodgepole pine shafts I had in the corner from a ways back.  These were 23/64th diameter and spined 70-75.  With both of my 60-pound hunting bows I have been drawing about 28 1/4 inches and liked to touch my finger at full draw with the back of the broadhead.  This meant a 29 BOP arrow was most comfortable currently.  That length was requiring a stiffer arrow so I decided to make up some of the pine shafts and see how they performed.

I used my angle iron jig to tail taper them down to 11/32 diameter from about 8 inches, then I point tapered them similarly forabout4 inches, ending in a barrel tapered arrow retaining as much spine as I could preserve.  These shot superbly and I even decided to splice some yellow into the cock feather. Pointed with Ace standards the finished weight is around 650 grains.  More importantly, the feel was appealing.  They seemed to have a little more "life" in them than the bamboo.  

The knife in the photo was also a little gift Nate Steen sent me.  He found some old stock case yellow knives like Mr. Hill used to use.  I told him I would use it to butcher an elk should I be lucky enough to get one this year.  I am hoping that will be the case. 

I took a little trip the last week of summer to Hershey Park, and spent some time ogling a huge bull and cow they had.  More importantly I tried to imprint the smell.  The season is upon us and soon the arrow will lie beside the bow in anticipation of our quarry.