'Tuning Your Broadheads' refers to making all the fine adjustments to your bow set-up so you can achieve the best possible arrow flight and to be sure that your broadheads actually impact at your aiming point for that particular distance down range. It is a must that you check your bow and arrow set-up to be absolutely sure that your broadheads and your field points have the same point of impact downrange. If possible, this should be done well before bow-hunting season opens.
1. First and foremost you should tune your bow with a field point of the same weight of the broadhead that you anticipate using in your hunting situation. For example, if you are going to shoot a 125 grain broadhead, you should obviously tune your bow with a 125 grain field point.
2. Next you should be sure that your broadhead is in perfect alignment with your arrow shaft ferrule and arrow shaft. If this is not done, you can not achieve consistent arrow flight as your arrow will be subject to alternating proposing and fish tailing. The best way to assure proper ferrule shaft alignment is to spin your arrow loaded with a broadhead on an arrow straighter or a similar device. Your can spend $125 on a commercial arrow straightner such as an Arizona Arrow straightner, or you can use a simple device designed for such purposes or I even constructed a practical functional device from a board and nails to support my arrow as I roll the palm of my hand across the arrow and observe the tip of my broad head to be sure there is no observable wobble at the tip of my broadhead.
If it wobbles, you must continue to adjust the broadhead and arrow shaft junction to correct this wobble. Sometimes this can be alleviated by placing a sialastic or plastic washer over the broadhead screw in and then place it back on your arrow. Try spinning the arrow until you have alleviated all wobble. After this step has been addressed and corrected we are ready to move on to step 3.
3. To achieve good consistent arrow flight with a broadhead, you must have enough fletching surface area to prevent the broadhead from overpowering the shaft and causing a "rutter" effect. For example if you are using three 4 inch fletching and shooting a large 4-5 or 6 bladed broadhead, you may need to either go to 5 inch fletching or a 4 fletching configuration instead of a 3 fletching configuration. The other alternative is to stay with the same fletching configuration and switch to a more aerodynamic broadhead with less blades or a broadhead with a smaller cutting diameter to achieve acceptable arrow flight. Once this area has been addressed and resolved, we need to move on to the next item of concern.
4. Sometimes our arrow spine is not proper for the broadhead that we have selected. The proper arrow spine for our bow setup is a function of the poundage that we are shooting as well as the Front of Center (F.O.C.) factor and the broadhead weight. We won't go into the dynamics of that in this discussion, but you need to be aware of the weight of your broadhead in relation to your arrow F.O. C. If you have an "overspined" arrow, you won't be able to group your arrows with any consistency. If your arrow is too "stiff" or overspined, you can correct this by either increasing the poundage of your bow or you can shoot a heavier broadhead.
5. Finally, the last item that I would like to address is arrow rest clearance. If you have any contact of your fletching with your arrow rest, you will not be able to achieve acceptable and consistent arrow flight. The most commonly used method to check this is to spray or coat your vane fletchings with foot powder. This will coat your vanes with a thin film of the foot powder so that you can see the contact pattern that you arrow rest makes on your coated vanes. Once you see evidence of vane contact you must then make further adjustments to your arrow rest to alleviate this contact. Once this adjustment has been made, you can then proceed with your tuning process.
The above five factor should be addressed each and every time you switch from your field point tuning to broadhead tuning. Let me encourage you to tune your bow with the actual broadhead that you will be using in your hunting situation. Then and only then can you be assured of the best consistent arrow flight possible with your own personal setup for your broadhead of choice.
Good luck with your broadhead tuning process and may the upcoming season be safe and productive for your hunting adventures. If you tune your broadheads and do your scouting, your arrow and broadhead may just end up like the one below.
