Ep. 534: Foundations - Building a Better Bow, Part 2

Last week I talked about sites and peep sites, which demands some thought if you want to shoot as well as possible in the woods, and I know you do. Today I'm sort of picking up the scraps to talk about arrow rests, quivers, and stabilizers. These accessories might not seem all that important, and honestly they aren't, except I don't know, sometimes they are. Sometimes the choices we make around these accessories can cost us dear. This is most relevant when we talk about rests, which is what I'm

gonna start with. Let's say you started bow hunting. I don't know, in the last decade, you probably only really know about two kinds of rest options drop away style or fall away style, I guess, and a whisker biscuit type of shoot through style. You probably really haven't seen a whole lot of plunge ar rests or any of the other variations of tight to the riser accuracy robbing rest that we had a few decades ago. That's a good thing, actually, unless you're interested in traditional archery, but

that's fodder for a different episode. To rest you're likely to see mounted on modern compounds really only fit into the two categories I mentioned. Now, if you start to break those categories down, you realize there are quite a few different variations of each, particularly when it comes to drop away or fall away rests, and these are my favorite for many reasons. But first off, the reason that this style has come to dominate the market in recent years and has won me over is because they are

the most accurate, commercially available models out there. The design of a fall away is one that it promotes the least amount of overall contact with your arrow while also guiding the arrow for as long as possible through the shot cycle. See I told you this could be a

snooze fest. These rests function mostly through a dropper that is attached to a cable on your bow or maybe your limbs, and when you draw it either raises the rest and sets it in place for the shot or engages the rest that you've already locked into place, so

it's ready to go. Now. If your arrest is timed correctly, you'll just take aim, shoot, and while it happens much too fast to see that rest, the part that holds the arrow is going to guide the arrow for much of its length while the string pushes it toward the target or the deer. As your veins get dangerously close to contacting the rest, it drops out of the path

and sends your arrow down range without any negative influence. Simple, right, Well, if you don't have it timed correctly, then you might see some wonky arrow flight. You don't want your veins contacting anything, and if they are, you're losing out on accuracy. I don't want to get into too much detail here because I can already envision listeners heads clunking against their work desks, or I don't know the steering wheel of

their trucks they spontaneously go to sleep. But I'll say this, try to at least understand what your rest needs to do in order to function properly. A basic understanding of that is important. If you see any tail whips or spiraling during your shot, likely culprit is your rest. Now. It might have something to do with the center shot issue or the timing of your rest, or it might

have something to do with your arrow choice. But the rest is a good place to start, and regardless, it's bad news if you have any wonkiness in aero flight, because you know you're sacrificing some accuracy and penetration. Now, all cautionary warnings aside. I love drop away rest and scratch that. I love a full contain at rest that falls away, which means when I'm hunting, my arrow can't go anywhere, even if I fall out of my tree or I decide, like Mark Kenyon occasionally does, to skip

or do cartwheels on the way to my stand. This kind of rest ensures that whether I'm shooting behind me from a stand at a weird angle, or I'm crawling through the grass to stock a prairie dwelling white tail, my arrow is always ready to go, and I don't have to worry about holding it with my index finger, even though I impulsively, compulsively do the launcher arms or the prongy looking thing that holds your arrow that should

be quiet. Too contained doesn't necessarily mean quiet, And if there is any way for your rest to bounce off a hard plastic arm or the little containment ring or the riser, it's no good. You might also see that these rests can be limb driven, which means the cable that activates the whole thing is not attached to your downward bus cable, but to the limb itself. Now, I've had people who are much smarter than me say that this is the most accurate option out there, and I

have no reason to not believe them. And I've used these rests and they were fantastic. But there's one thing I didn't like. I didn't like them when I took my white tail bow on a mule deer antelope hunt, because in a situation where I'm guaranteed to crawl around a lot, I don't like having that much cable on the side of my boat. It's ripe to get caught on brush and just creates the potential for an infield issue. I don't like that. Now, keep in mind that never

actually happened to me, but it is possible. It's also possible if you hunt out a stands and blinds exclusively, that that might not ever be a concern of yours. With whatever style you choose, keep in mind that over time things can change. If the cables of your bow stretch a little over the years, the timing of your rest could change, and that's bad. The springs and internal workings of arrest can wear out as well, which is something I had to happened to me a few years ago.

It really wasn't all that noticeable in my backyard when I was shooting in August, but became pretty obvious later in the season when it got really cold. These drop away follow eight style rests. They have moving parts, and we all know moving parts can fail. Those moving parts can also cause noise, which is something to think about. Your rest Slamming into your bowshelf when you shoot will make some noise if that's how you have it set up.

A little mole skin or a rubber pad will help you there, but also make sure that you're not getting any bounce back with your launcher arm. If you are, it'll interfere with your veins and cause yep, you guessed it a bit of wonkiness in your arrow flight. Now I'm focusing mostly on what can go wrong. Modern rests are amazing and will mostly fun action amazingly well, provided you set them up correctly and you keep tabs on them.

Over the years, I really think as far as helping most folks level up their accuracy, drop away rests have been a silent hero for years now. Of course, not everyone wants moving parts and the price tag that often comes with a drop away rest. This leaves the static shoot through style, which is usually called a whisker biscuit. Even though that's a brand name, it's also the most popular in the category by far, so the brand name has become ubiquitous for the category, kind of like band aid. Now.

I don't like this style, but that's just me. I think they are a great option for a lot of people, particularly for white tail hunters. Not only are these rests super easy to tune, they're genuinely very quiet and extremely unlikely to fail. They're also usually pretty cheap, so it's not to love. Well. You're guaranteed to have vain contact on every shot as your aero pass us through the whiskers for the I don't know, sub forty yard crowd.

It's probably not really much of an issue. You can shoot tight groups with these rests, but that contact comes with some potential for less than perfect aeroflight and also the continual degradation of vain integrity if you shoot enough. Now, this can come into play in years and years and years of practice, especially if you're not shooting new arrows every year. Now you're also over enough shots wearing out the integrity of the whiskers as well. I don't like

that personally, but you might, and that's perfectly fine. If you don't shoot thousands of practice shots a year, or you're just a minimalist at heart, A biscuit style rest could be just what the doctor ordered. It also, i might add, is an excellent option for new shooters now. I bought my daughters their first compound bowl last Christmas, and you can bet your ass it has a whisker biscuit on it. I want them to think about their

form and how they aim, and that's it. I don't want them to have to think about anything else, so that rest style is an excellent option for them. Now. I don't even want to say this, but I will. If you're going rest shopping. Understand that price is roughly correlated to quality. Those whisker biscuit style rests are cheap ish, and that's great, But if you're looking at drop away or fallaway rests, a forty version is not going to be the same thing as a hundred and fifty dollar model.

There will be a sacrifice there in materials and build quality most likely. And one thing you do not want to have fail is your rest because that sucks a lot. Now you might think, well, shoot, how am I supposed to afford a high end rest and all the other accessories I need in my boat? Now this is gonna be wildly unpopular, but you could save money by not

buying something like I don't know a stabilizer. If you pay attention to my hunting rigs, and I highly doubt you do, you see that I rarely run a stabilizer on my hunting bows. And here's why. A stabilizer, in its truest form, it's designed to help you stabilize the bow. Consistency from shot to shot is what makes great archers. And one way to encourage that is to hang a bunch of weight off the front of your riser to

counter the weight behind it and on the sides. When you turn on the Olympics or some other high level archery contests, you can see how seriously pro shooters take their stabilizers. They'll have front mounted stabilizers of very specific weights and rear mounted stabilizers of very specific weights. You occasionally also see a Western bow hunter with smaller versions of each, but most whitetail hunters have a short light

stabilizer that looks nothing like the PROS version. It also functions nothing like the PROS version because it's not long enough or not heavy enough. Both Our hunting versions of stabilizers are almost entirely meant to damp and shot vibration. This is worth it for some folks because who doesn't want to whisper quiet bow? If you hunt kg white tails,

shot noises a factor. A foeign stabilizer that weighs six ounces isn't really going to help you balance your bow a whole lot and make you a better shooter, but it could definitely soak up some of the vibration during your shot and keep the sound down. That's a benefit,

and it's not nothing. But as far as accuracy, I don't know, man And if you don't believe that it's pretty easy to test out shoot some groups with a stabilizer on shoot some groups to the stabilizer off shoot as far as you'd like, if possible, well beyond your normal white tail shooting ranges. Maybe you'll see a difference in the tightness of your groups, but you probably won't. In fact, if it's windy, you might actually see a little bit better groups without the stabilizer at twenty or

thirty yards. I bet good money that almost every white tail hunter on the planet won't notice a bit of difference in accuracy after having removed a hunting stabilizer. Now, I know you're thinking that stabilizers have to make a difference because everyone uses them. I know Mark thinks that because I had this conversation with him once and he looked at me like I just told him that I thought maybe I might give up bow hunting to try a new career in cage fighting. But you can test

this out and see for yourself. So look at hunting stabilizers this way. They probably really aren't doing you much good for accuracy, but that's okay. If you want the benefits of a quieter bow, they are here for you, and they might just offer a psychological boost, which is good enough for some folks. Now, this last category of accessories is one worth thinking about. Quivers. This one is kind of an afterthought for most white tail hunters, but

it really shouldn't be. There are quite a few considerations with quivers, and that starts with how many arrows they can hold. Now, I'll never forget hunting elk. With my buddy Jayson Bosserman, who happens to be a fellow outdoor writer, we were taking a coffee break on the side of a mountain in southern Colorado, waiting for divine intervention to make the elk do something. Besides how I did not bugle. When I looked down at his bow, he had three

arrows in a three arrow quiver. That was it. I looked at my bow and I had twice as many arrows. If that tells you anything about his confidence versus mine, Oh, there you go. I've had some colossal meltdowns in the woods, and I've emptied full quivers without much to show for it but a bunch of embarrassment. While it has been a while since that has happened, those situations leave a mark on you. You You don't forget him. Most of mine involves some level of fall turkeys and deer, or just

spring turkeys. But either way, emptying your magazine, so to speak, isn't a great feeling, so I opt for being able to carry a decent amount of AMMO. Three arrows would probably cover me for seven percent of every hunt I'll ever go on for the rest of my life. But that little sliver of a chance that it won't doesn't make me feel so good, so I go a little

bigger just in case. This also allows for more options if for some reason you want to have an arrow with you that is fitted with a field point or a small game head, or if for some reason, which some people do, you wanted to carry both fixed and

mechanical broadheads. But here's the thing. The more arrows you hang on the side of your bow, and the more materials needed to create a quiver that can hold them, it means more weight, and more weight on the side of your bow means the chance to can't your rig ever so slightly if you shoot with your quiver on. And if you do, consider that, and consider opting for either a one or a two piece option that mounts

tight to your riser to help preserve some balance. Now, on that note, I personally always choose a one piece quiver for a simple reason. I like taking it off my boat. When I started out, this wasn't an option, and we didn't even think about it. We just always shot with a quiver on our bows. When it finally became an option, I couldn't believe how much more I

like target shooting and hunting without a quiver on my bow. Now, if this doesn't seem like a big deal a again, go back outside, put a fully loaded quiver on your bow, and go shoot when the wind is blowing like I don't know, thirty mile, shoot around at whatever distance you want, and then take your quiver off. Shoot another round. You'll notice a difference in accuracy, I bet, and you'll notice how much different it is to hold your bow steady

quiver on versus quiver off. In a white tailed woods. You might not experience those conditions very often, not like you will I don't know stalking mule deer on the planes, for example, but they do happen. They often happen during pre and post frontal conditions, like the kind of weather that sometimes gets deer out and really moving. How easily and silently a quiver can be removed is an important consideration.

How tight the arrow grippers are is as well. This is a hard one to test in the store when you're looking at a whole bunch of quivers, but it's important, particularly if you shoot micro diameter arrows. Most quivers can handle them, but not all of him handle them very well. And believe me, you don't want to quiver where your arrows will slip out and fall only to be caught

by the broadhead. This is not good. You also don't want your arrows grips so tight that they are pain to get out, because when you miss or hit a deer poorly and you have an opportunity for a follow up shot, you don't want to have to wrestle with your quiver, which will be loosely hanging off a gear hook. Most likely, you want to quiver that holds an arrow tight enough so it don't come loose while you're hunting, but not so tight that you have to get two

hands fully involved to free your next arrow. Also, as a parting thought that pertains to every accessory choice in modern bows in general, it's a good idea to understand, at least at a base level, how these things function. This way, if you need to do an infield fix on something, you might be able to do that. I carry a set of Alan wrenches in my truck all season long, just in case something comes loose or I need to swap an accessory out one of the primary spots.

Will you experience some shot noise when you least expect it is with loose bolts and screws. This can also lead to bigger issues like busted draw stops when you're aiming at a nice buck, slurping some pond water on public land in South Dakota, and for a totally random example, tighten up those bolts have a chance to work on your bow if you need to in the field. Just a little bit, just those simple fixes and understand your accessory choice, and you'll be way better off. Okay, that's

what I got for you this week. We ate our vegetables the last two weeks and we were responsible bow hunters. Next week, I'm going to start talking about putting those accessories to good use throughout the summer and mixing a little bit of good stuff for the gun hunters in the audience as always thank you so much for listening to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson.

If you want to read some of my articles or articles from quite a few really talented white tail hunters, head on over to them eater dot com, slash wired, and if that's not enough, go to our wire to Hunt YouTube channel and check out the how to videos we drop every single week. M