Troubleshooting Your Bow

In this episode of the Hunting Gear podcast, Dan Johnson speaks with Nate Sellers from Average Jack Archery about troubleshooting archery equipment. They discuss the mechanics of bows, the importance of proper measurements, and the significance of shooting through paper for accuracy. Nate shares insights on grip pressure, structural issues in bows, and the tuning of arrows and broadheads. The conversation also covers the impact of fletching and arrow weight on performance, the challenges of tuning different broadhead types, and the importance of understanding the third axis for accurate shooting. Finally, Nate offers practical tips for archers to improve their skills and confidence before the hunting season.

Takeaways:

• A bow is a simple machine that can be easily understood.
• Shooting through paper helps ensure arrows fly straight.
• Grip pressure can significantly affect shooting accuracy.
• Mechanical broadheads can be a reliable option for hunters.
• Parachuting occurs when an arrow slows down too much in flight.
• Proper measurements are essential for bow tuning.
• Structural issues in bows can lead to persistent tuning problems.
• The third axis is important for accurate shots at different angles.
• Fletching size and type can impact arrow flight.
• Understanding arrow spine and weight is crucial for tuning.
  

Dan Johnson (00:01.557)
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Hunting Gear podcast. I'm your host, Dan Johnson. And today we are joined by Nate Sellers of Average Jack Archery. And you do some other stuff too with Huntworth. Do you work for Huntworth or do you, what's your main gig?

Nate Sellers (00:22.473)
My main gig is Huntworth. Yeah, marketing. Marketing department of Huntworth.

Dan Johnson (00:23.795)
Okay. All right. Okay. And so average Jack archery is what?

Nate Sellers (00:30.012)
Average Jack Archery is a full pro shopping range in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, right in center of the state, right in the middle of the rectangle. And yeah, we just have a really, we have a really nice facility. It's just my wife and I that own the store and we haven't been in business since 2022, but I've been working on bows and for all everybody around shops around Pennsylvania for about 15 years now. So I've been around.

Dan Johnson (00:37.279)
Gotcha.

Dan Johnson (00:52.671)
Okay, good. And that's your qualification for today's episode because we're gonna talk into, we're gonna get into the details of troubleshooting your archery equipment. And before we get into the meat and potatoes of this episode though, I gotta ask you a question.

How many times a year is your patience tested with customers or people who bring their bow into you because they don't have the vocabulary or they are dumb?

Nate Sellers (01:28.267)
Yeah, I mean, so I would say it's about, you know, I'm open 365 days a year, right? Pretty much, you know, I'm a 12 month proposition. And I would say probably about 200 days out of the year, somebody said something asinine. But it but I don't hold it against him, because there's two different types of people. There are people that have had bad experiences in the past with their shop or with any shop.

and their shop didn't do anything. So they feel like they have to learn everything about their bow and then come in and then tell me the new shoppers and they're experiencing what their bow is all about. And because they don't know, they don't know what I know, or you know, or how informed I am. And then there are people that just have no clue. They think that the number on the arrow is how much the arrow weighs. They don't know that that's the spine of the arrow.

Dan Johnson (02:15.498)
Mm

Nate Sellers (02:15.596)
They'll be like why I've been shooting 90 grain broadheads and I'm like, I don't think I've ever even heard of a 90 grain broadhead outside of like 1987 So no, you're probably shooting a hundred great, you know So it's it's two sides one is very harmless and they're just trying to do the best they can and one is just complete ignorance But it is what it is

Dan Johnson (02:21.287)
Hahahaha

Dan Johnson (02:32.318)
Yeah. Yeah. OK. Well, you're getting ready to talk to one of the most ignorant archers that there is, and that's me. OK. So so that's funny. That's almost like the title of a show. That should be the title of a podcast. The ignorant archer. There you go. Yep. And I would host it like I do all the other nonsense that I host. So all right. Here's the background. Everybody has already heard this story, but I'm telling you.

Nate Sellers (02:50.304)
The ignorant archer. That's good.

Dan Johnson (03:02.014)
I'm upstairs in my office. working. I hear a basketball dribbling in my garage. My garage is underneath of my office and I hear a crash. I go down to investigate. My bow is on my garage floor. I look at it. I do a quick once over. I don't know. It looks okay. I take it out that evening to shoot and things are off. Okay. Start to adjust my sight. Things are off.

start to adjust my sight a little more, still shooting off to the left. Up and down, I feel like I'm good. However, the weird thing is that I'm shooting the same distance left at 40 yards that I am at 50 and 60 yards. So it's not.

It's not like, multiplied the further back I get, I start, I continue to adjust my site and I am at this point pegged out. cannot adjust my site any further left. All right. And so now I'm kind of in an, shit moment. I, I, and then I look at my site housing or that goes around my pins and it looks to be oblong and there's a scuff on it to the point where it looks like maybe my site, dropped on my site. Okay.

buy a new site, same exact thing starts happening there, okay? I take my bow in and they see that my rest is now off. My arrow is not equal with my riser, meaning the front end of my arrow is closer to the riser than the back end of my arrow. My string, my cams are off as well. And so now,

I am at kind of a, shit, I've never had to do any of this tuning myself type of moment. And now it's time to start troubleshooting. Okay. So the stage is set. All right. Nate Sellers, what should a person do when they are starting to have problems with their bow and they cannot figure out, it goes deeper than just making adjustments on your site.

Nate Sellers (05:26.138)
So first and foremost, let's make something very clear. It's not too complicated. Actually, I would say it's not complicated at all. A bow is a very simple machine. People get wigged out on their bows. They think it is this massively crazy, wild thing, and it's just not. It's just really not. So let's first, anybody listening, I want to make that very clear. Working on a bow is not that complicated. Otherwise, average people such as myself couldn't figure this out. But realistically, before anything goes amuck.

The very first thing is when something gets set up and it feels right and it's shooting right, you've got it sited in, the group is good. I'd say the first thing ever, and I do this with every single bow, whether it's a target bow, a hunting bow, you can feel points, broadheads, whatever. I take a measuring tape and I just measure everything. Axle to axle length, measure the rest. Like you described with the arrow, right? Measure your center shot. How is it from the front of the arrow, you know, back of the arrow, depending on the shelf or whatever. Measure the distance between the peep and the D loop, the kisser button, the nose button, whatever.

take all those measurements and write it down and put it on a piece of paper. Then I keep that piece of paper in my bow case. And at any point, my bow falls over. My buddy says he accidentally dropped it. It made a weird noise on a shot. Maybe a knock was broken or something like that. I pull out a measuring tape and I check everything. And I look at that piece of paper and say, okay, when this was set up three months ago, four months ago in the spring, in the summer, whatever, and I compare, is everything okay? If everything is the same and something is off, now I gotta take it to a shop.

If something is off though, I have a reference mark. And you can do something as easy as take a silver Sharpie or a pencil and start to make marks on where your rest lines up. You know, exactly where your site sits, where your cam leads. You get me, there's no wrong measurement. And if you do that, then you have at least a reference point, right? You're like, I think my site looks oblong. I think my site's broken. Well, if you don't know what the distance of this to this or whatever, then you don't have a before and after. So that's a first thing to do.

But let's say, so you've got it, your shop, you got a problem and your shop is taking care of it and it looks like you're back to doing normal. And now you're like, crap, I'm starting at square one in September, the whatever. OK, the first thing I recommend is if you can shoot through paper, if you can. But sometimes that's even intimidating to people. So then the next easier thing is to do group tuning. So what you were having was a classic example of you have two ways. You're either always left or

Dan Johnson (07:32.872)
Mm

Nate Sellers (07:50.355)
It makes what I call the Christmas tree. So at 20 yards, maybe you'll be a little bit to the left or right. And then at 30 yards, it keeps going at 40 and 50. And it just keeps it actually just keeps getting worse and worse. If at the first one, it's just staying in a line, but it's always left. We can play with the site on that one, in particular, if it's a new site or we can bump the rest. It's counterintuitive, believe it or not, it's counterintuitive to think, OK, if I'm shooting to the left.

Dan Johnson (07:52.26)
Mm -hmm.

Nate Sellers (08:16.316)
I should probably move my rest where the arrow is actually making contact. I need to move that to the right to kick the arrow. It's actually the opposite. You actually need to chase where your arrow is going with the rest. So if you're hitting to the left, you're going to move your rest to the left. It sounds super weird. It's super counterintuitive, but it's actually what you need to do. And if you have that straight line and everything's left, you can try that as well. But in particular, if you've got that Christmas tree look and it just keeps getting further and further to the right or further and further to the left as you go back.

That's called a group tuning issue. And so you know that the arrow is not coming off the bow consistently like you would if you were, they were all just straight left or straight, right. And so now you definitely need to move your rest a little bit. And again, you're going to, it's counterintuitive. You're actually going to move it in the direction that the arrows already going. There's no need to explain that. That's the non -simple machine part of the bow. But that little simple thing, even if it, even if you're not shooting through paper, you're not bear shaft tuning that little simple, it's called a French tune or a walk back tune.

Dan Johnson (08:55.389)
Mm

Nate Sellers (09:16.277)
It's kind of, it's not as popular as it used to be, but that even if it wouldn't shoot perfectly clean through paper or wouldn't shoot a perfect, you know, exact perfect group that you usually shoot, that will get you 90 % of the way there. And that could totally save your season because you could drop it out of the middle of the tree in November. You're up here somewhere on a three day, you know, Iowa rut hunt or an Illinois rut hunt or an Indiana rut hunt. You don't have time to be shooting it through paper. Don't have time to get to a shop. You're just taking it out in the yard of the Airbnb with your target.

and you've got to make those rest movements again to get that arrow to fly straight. And so that French tune, that walk back tune could really be a bacon saver. And particularly if you don't feel confident messing with anything else but the rest and the sight.

Dan Johnson (09:50.365)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (10:00.305)
Yeah, so up until recently, I have never shot through paper. And when I say recent, I mean as far as three years ago. Okay, three years ago was the first time I ever shot through paper. And talk to us a little bit about the importance of shooting through paper.

Nate Sellers (10:10.953)
Mm -hmm.

Nate Sellers (10:21.515)
So when an arrow comes out of a bow, the ideal situation is that arrow is flying exactly straight out of the bow and the fletchings, which are on the back end, don't have to do any extra correcting. That's the whole point of the fletchings on an arrow. I describe it a lot when we were kids, know, guys of our age group who would play with the old Nerf balls or was a football, then it had the arrow coming out the back and usually whistled through the air, right? So that allowed it to go for miles. It had really good accuracy. You always could throw a perfect spiral.

an arrow is the exact same way. You have the weight on the front end and that back end is just spinning and controlling the whole tube. If your arrow is coming out straight, then those, those fletchings or feathers, whatever can automatically start turning and controlling that arrow immediately. But if the arrow is coming out at an angle, any way, or form, up, down, left, right, doesn't matter. Then the fletchings are like, let's get the, let's get the end back to center. And so now you have a little bit extra. And when you are changing again, try not to get too much into the weeds, but when you take the energy from

straight to sideways, you're actually losing energy, which then loses speed, loses penetration, kinetic energy, momentum, all that sort of stuff. So if we can, when we shoot through paper, see what we describe as a bullet hole. You have a perfect circle from where the shaft goes through, and then whatever fletching configuration you have, a three or a four. So let's say it's a three. You got a perfect circle in the middle, one fletching, two fletching, three fletching. If you have that through paper, and I'm just talking, you're standing about eight feet away from the paper.

Nice taut piece of any kind of thicker paper, copier paper, butcher paper, whatever. You see that through that paper. Now you know that arrow is coming out perfectly straight. Those fletchings are going to take over immediately. They're going to start spinning that arrow and controlling that arrow and therefore being able to easily control broadheads and other big things on the front, which are also mini fletchings. So if you can give the bigger fletchings on the back end more control of those little mini fletchings on the front, you're have a much more accurate set up, a much more forgiving set up.

And overall, increase your speed a little bit and your penetration is well downright.

Dan Johnson (12:18.62)
Okay, all right. Okay, so I did that. Let's say a guy does that. He goes, shoots through paper, okay? And now maybe the range that, I'm just talking about my experience. The range is 10 yards where I get my bow. They don't have anything longer than that where I get my bow tuned. And so they go, okay, well, it's coming off straight here.

The measurements are good on our end here. Now it's time to go home and shoot again. So the rest is equal now. The measurements are equal now. The paper, I'm shooting bullet holes through paper, okay? I get home, still shooting left at this point, okay?

And so I call the bow shop and they tell me I have something, I shoot a bow tech solution and so it has that deadlock technology where it allows me to move the cams back and forth on the axle. Is that something that I had to do to get my broad head shooting straight or is that?

Nate Sellers (13:19.96)
Mm

Dan Johnson (13:31.591)
Is there something, is there another underlying issue before you start messing with where the cams, the cams on the bow?

Nate Sellers (13:39.707)
So you can get a bullet hole through paper with a bow that is, there's something wrong with it. So a bullet hole through paper just lets us know that arrow is coming out straight. It does not mean that what we are doing is perfect. So for example, if you have a bow that's out in front of you and you're torquing it, let's just say you're adding some sort of torque. And when you add torque, that causes the arrow to fly left or right off the bow, depending on which way you're torquing it, thumb side or your pinky side, whichever one.

You do that, you can still get a bullet hole through paper, but what you've done is you might have moved the rest way too far to the left. Maybe you have pushed the cams too far to the right or whatever direction it may be. So you might have a good bullet hole through paper, but you actually are not still set up for success. So now you have to kind of look at the Indian, not the boat, right? I know it's probably not politically correct, but you know, we were raised in the eighties and nineties. That's just what, that's what I was taught. So there's so many.

different variables with the archer. So a lot of things then at that point, if I'm getting a bullet hole through paper and I'm still left, usually it's enough to do with the sight and then I can work with the archer on that grip a little bit. You'd be amazed, absolutely amazed. I know it's close to the beginning of season. You don't want to change anything up, but you would be amazed how a little bit of grip pressure could totally affect the size and the shape of your group's down range. You'd be very, very surprised.

And that's something in my own personal shop I deal with, I would say, arguably eight to 10 customers a week I'm dealing with in terms of grip pressure, how that works on the tuning. Because usually that affects the tune first, but then it desperately, devastatingly rather, has an effect on your group's shape and your group size.

Dan Johnson (15:23.611)
Gotcha, okay. And so that's kind of what I did. I went and I started messing with the cams. Now, what happens when you start to adjust one thing and now you're starting to get a different result? How do you find balance in adjusting a rest and a sight and cams and cam timing and your grip? How do you...

Nate Sellers (15:32.55)
Mm

Dan Johnson (15:52.759)
How do you, I'll take one step back. In an equation, in a mathematical equation, even if you change one little thing, the outcome of that equation changes, right? So how do you find the variable in that equation and how do you keep it the variable so that the rest of the other parts of the equation aren't changing so that the outcome is Dart's downrange?

Nate Sellers (16:20.296)
So that's a great question. And again, I explain this to people weekly in my shop. There are four variables to a bow, to a shooting situation. The archer, the bow, the arrow, and then the release and rest combination, depending on how you do, which one you want to look at, right? So those are the four things that have to move. They are the four things that have to do something for an arrow to go down range.

Three of them are simple machines and one of them is a pile of redundant protoplasm, aka the person. Okay. The three things that are simple machines are made out of metal and super stable and everything else. The person can be changed moment to moment. So the big thing for me is when engineers design arrows and they design bows and design releases and design all that sort of stuff.

They're specifically designing with, we're going to do this with it. And we want it to be set up like this. We want the draw stops to be hitting at the exact same time. We the cams to be here with the rest at 13, 16, whatever. They're making that machine with that in mind with very high tolerance. You as an individual are not a very high tolerance. You're very floppy for lack of a better term. So what I do with the bow is I'm going to set up that bow the way that engineer designed that simple machine to be. And I'm going to see what I, as the human can do to change myself because I can't change the bow. I can't.

machine off parts of the riser. can't make the width limbs wider. I can't make the arrow a different diameter of carbon. I have zero control over any of that. I only have control of this. So if I can set up those simple machines to be the engineering way they were supposed to be and then play with my, you know, with my grip and my face pressure, my release and the rest in terms of, you know, what type of rest I'm using, a whisker biscuit or a drop away, whatever's going to work best with me is the yard shirt.

Those are things I look at first because the bow can only do the same thing. Just sends an arrow down range. That's all it does. It doesn't do anything different. You are the person that bends it and twists it and torques it and tweaks and twitches and everything. focusing more at me at 10 yards and seeing what kind of little effects that I have on the bow drastically affect how I'm going to then tune the bow after I figured out me, which is behind it.

Dan Johnson (18:15.779)
Mm

Dan Johnson (18:36.415)
All right, so at what point then, like what are some examples of, hey, maybe this is a little bit bigger of a issue than just making sure that you're shooting dots through paper, your measurements are right. When should we start being concerned that we have a bigger problem like a bent riser or bent cams or what are some key indicators there?

Nate Sellers (19:05.718)
So that's really good question because sometimes even as a shop owner it's not physically obvious. Sometimes you have an issue and it's not obvious. For example, a big thing is like cam bearings or cam bushings. They can crack, the covers can go, the lubricant that you put in could leak out. You would never know, never know. And so what that's actually doing is sometimes one cam is moving faster than the other.

and you'll get some weird tears or maybe the bow make weird noises, it'll click and stuff like that. And you're like, yeah, it doesn't sound right. That's something that needs to dress that you can't over tune that you can't outdo something that is broken or breaking. There's nothing you can do about that. When it comes to things like bent risers, we don't see that as much. Definitely limbs. We have seen sometimes where out of the factory, a bow will have, you know, accidentally obviously there's tolerances on limbs.

They'll put two weak limbs together and two strong limbs together because most boats have four limbs nowadays. And so now you're like one cam will be really twisted this way and the other can't really twist it this way. And like, you can't overdo that. There's the, the, the, the, the boss be broken down and put weak with lit strong and strong with leak or whatever, and make that happen. When you start to tune or you start to have groups and you're working with it and you just can't get it to move, right? You're trying to shoot through paper. It won't move.

you're moving the cams with that deadlock situation and the terror won't move, or the groups won't move. It's always, always, always, always left. Then you might actually have a structural issue that you've tried everything and the normal things, rest movement, site movement, cam movement, nothing is changing. You might have a structural, deformation that you can't see. You can't hear, you can't feel, but it's present. It could be a limb, could be a cam, could be a bearing, could be a roller guard.

and you don't necessarily know until you start playing with it some more.

Dan Johnson (20:57.964)
Gotcha, okay. Okay, before we move on to my next question, what are some other things that we need to be aware of when tuning our bows if we're not getting the groupings that we want or some things that we should maybe be observant of on the bow specifically?

Nate Sellers (21:21.892)
So group size has everything to do with the accuracy of what you're seeing. So I strongly recommend three things, making sure you have a pin size that suits your eyeball. So I have crap vision, well I shouldn't say crap vision, my vision is not great compared to what it used to be. So I can't see like a 10 ,000s pin anymore. I can kind of see a 15, 19 is a good sweet spot for me. But now I can't see orange like I used to.

so I predominantly stick to red and green. So making sure you have a pin color you can see, that greatly affects your accuracy. Also shooting at dots that are a little bit smaller than you think they should be. When you shoot a nice big six inch dot, you're like, that's good enough for me. But if you're not forcing yourself to stick to a three inch circle, a two inch circle, a one inch circle, you'd be surprised how nonchalant you will be with your accuracy. The biggest thing though, what affects accuracy is a lot of guys think I need a big peep.

so I can let in all this light so that way in a low light situation I can see my pins. Well that's all well and good but what you'll actually have is you'll have a peat that's so big that around your site housing there's so much air. Okay. So when you have a ring on a ring your site housing can then fill in that space incorrectly so it can be really far on the left side really far on the right side really high really low. It's inside your peat but it is

too inside of your peep. There's too much wiggle room. There's too much variance. So now you get some weird left and right misses and weird up and down misses because your peep can't be better lined up with the site housing. I see it all the time. Guys love shooting quarter inch peeps. Quarter inch peeps for most guys are too big. You really should be down to a 316th because if you have too much air around your site housing, then you have too much variance of where you could put that pin on left, right, up, down. And you'd be amazed at 25, 30 yards how your groups will start to open up.

and at 40, 45 in particular. So think about maybe necking down your peep side.

Dan Johnson (23:17.398)
Okay, all right. How do I know whether my bow is the issue or my arrow is the issue?

Nate Sellers (23:29.319)
The arrow question. That's a great one. The old arrow, man. Yeah, I've lost sleep over this one. If you are shooting what I call a bell curve style arrow. So when I say a bell curve, I'll go back to statistics class in senior high school, right? Where everybody falls into a bell curve, you and you have like 75 % of people live inside the bell curve.

Dan Johnson (23:31.582)
The ol' arrow.

Nate Sellers (23:52.455)
When arrows are designed, arrows are designed, you look at a spine chart, you go, here's my draw length, here's my draw weight, I'm shooting 100 or 125 grain point. And this is the arrow spine I should be shooting. So for me, 3160, 3170, something like that, 125 grain point, I should be shooting a 300 spine. If I take that arrow and I cut it into 31 inches and I put 125 grain, normal insert, blah, blah, blah, and I shoot it and I can get that arrow to tune, I know any problems are my problem.

the bow can clearly handle that. Everything is going okay there. All right. If I built something that was outside the bell curve, let's say I wanted to make a 900 grain arrow and I put 400 grains into a front end of a 150 spine and I can't get it to tune. Who knows what it is? Is that the arrow? Is that the bow? I don't know. You have to have a baseline and the baseline is what a manufacturer expects you to shoot first, which is what I call that bell curve style arrow. Most guys

I'm shooting anywhere between 28 to 29 and a half inches of draw are shooting a 340, 350 spine arrow. 330 maybe if they want to shoot like an older one, right? If you can take that, whatever that spine chart says for you at 50, 60, 70 pounds, your draw length, weight, and you can get that arrow to tune, then you know it's not the bow. The bow is doing exactly what manufacturers had in mind for that bow.

And then you can go and do other things with other arrows. You want to build something super light, you want to go build something super heavy. If you can't get that bell curve style arrow to tune, and you've moved your rest, and you've moved your cams, and you've done this, you've done that, now it's become the Indian, it's not the bow. But if you can get that normal arrow to tune, with the bow set up the way the manufacturer recommends, it's definitely, then you're free to go do whatever you want, and try whatever you want. But if you can do everything with the bow and nothing changes,

most of the time, I 99 times out of 100 before we think structural deformation of the bow, it's the Indian, not the bow.

Dan Johnson (25:51.871)
All right, so everybody, we already know if your arrow's too light, it can cause problems. You know, coming out at a rocket launcher, know, bending the arrow, all this stuff, whatever. Can an arrow be too heavy?

Nate Sellers (25:59.996)
Yo, yeah.

Nate Sellers (26:11.93)
I would say yes. There are others that disagree, but I would say yes.

Dan Johnson (26:13.374)
Okay.

And why is that?

Nate Sellers (26:18.734)
because that's there, there are points of diminishing returns, both directions, right? Again, the bell curve. All right. So if you build something really heavy, that's all well and good, but now you've lost a lot of velocity. Also, you'll start to get to a point where you lose so much velocity, but don't gain anything in terms of kinetic energy or momentum. You know, you there's a, there's that, you know, the laws of supply and demand is the, it's that intersecting graph. You want to be right in that sweet spot.

Same thing is true of the other way. You can have an arrow that gets super light and super fast, super fast, but eventually you start losing kinetic energy and momentum. You start losing it quicker than you start gaining speed. So again, there's a sweet spot for a light arrow. yeah, and a lot of people have spent a lot of time debating that one way or other, that's just the laws of nature. There's nothing you can do to refute it.

Dan Johnson (27:01.267)
Okay.

Dan Johnson (27:10.581)
Okay. I'm going to tell you my setup right now. 30 inch draw, okay? 70 pounds. I have a drop away rest. I have a four -fletch arrow. My total arrow weight is depending on what head I decide to go with, right? I'm still debating that. I still think my broadhead might be part of this issue as far as tuning it. Okay. I'm a hundred grain.

Nate Sellers (27:14.71)
boy.

Dan Johnson (27:39.444)
versus a 125 grain. My total arrow weight is going to be 550 or 575 by the end of this. Is my arrow, in your opinion, too heavy for my draw and poundage? No, okay, all right. Okay.

Nate Sellers (27:56.029)
No, no, that's totally normal. That's totally normal. It's definitely on the heavier side. Now what, you know, what tube are you shooting? It sounds like you would have to have a decently high GPI tube. Like the actual arrow itself.

Dan Johnson (28:08.453)
see, yeah. So I'm, shooting a day six arrow.

Nate Sellers (28:14.399)
yeah, so it's going to be heavier. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So that makes sense, right? That makes sense.

Dan Johnson (28:16.242)
Yeah, yeah. So.

Yeah, so when it comes to shooting heavier arrows, when would you run into tuning issues on a heavier arrow?

Nate Sellers (28:32.076)
So you start running into tuning issues on a heavier arrow when you start jumping bell curve spines. So for example, I live in a bell curve arrow and I see this every day in my store, right? People think, you know, I blow smoke when I say this sort of stuff, but I do this for a living. You know, so I live in a 300 spine. That's where I'm at. That's where you're at, right? That we know 300 spine arrows, but let's say I want to build something that makes me, I'm going to put a whole bunch of weight into the front end of the arrow.

You're not going to add weight to the back end, that's stupid. You're going to add weight to the front end. So therefore I need to go into a 250 spine. Well, in order for me to get into a 250 spine, I'm now building an arrow that's outside of that bell curve. I'm now pushing myself towards the heavy end. That's not what, you know, when bow and arrow manufacturers made my bow and arrow setup, they weren't intending me to add this whole bunch of weight and jump up in spine. Okay, they weren't intending me. And vice versa. Let's say I was going to try to shoot a very light arrow very quickly.

Well, I can't do that with a 300 spine arrow. They're pretty heavy. So I need to jump down to a 340 or a 400 spine. Again, I'm shooting very light. I'm shooting very fast, but my bow is not designed to be shooting with that light of a spine. So now I'm getting erratic flight and erratic tuning. So as soon as you start jumping one direction or the other with your spine outside of what is expected, you may or may not experience tuning issues. And then of course you really start going.

you know, let's say I go from a 250 to a 200, or I go from a 350 to a 400 to a 450, the further you get away from where your home base, if you will, the harder and harder it becomes to have a consistent bow and arrow setup that can tune well.

Dan Johnson (30:13.3)
Yeah. Is there any documents out there that say, okay, if I'm shooting 30 inch draw and I'm shooting a 70 pound bow, this is the ideal bow hunting. And what I mean by that is North American animals. Obviously, elk is bigger than a whitetail.

Right? Is there any documentation up there to where a guy who has extreme knowledge of archery could say, this is what you need. Here are the specs. You should have this total arrow weight with this number of fletchings and this spine and things like that.

Nate Sellers (30:57.784)
So I don't know if anybody actually has it documented. I've often been tempted to write it down, you know, like my thoughts and what I've done in my experience on setting up arrows for people and building stuff. you know, I just had somebody text me the other day, I said, father son combo up and they went to Colorado. They both shot elk with normal bell curve style arrows that I set up for them in the shop. So what I, what my mentality is, is I pick an arrow.

or I pick, let's say for example, I have a guy who's our size and I say, okay, here are the most common arrows that you might find in a bow shop. Okay, because that's where most guys are going to buy their arrows. They're to go into a local shop or Lancaster, Bass Pro, whatever. Here's your lightest GPI or grains per inch arrow. And here's your heaviest GPI grains per inch arrow. And then I put a hundred grain point up to 125 grain point on. I just assume based on that. let's say we have a 30 inch draw, 70 pounds or a 300 spine.

The lightest arrow I know of is 7 .7 GPI. Multiply that by 30. Add your inserts, knocks, fletchings, whatever. That's the lightest arrow I expect Dan Johnson to be shooting. Then I go over here. Here's the heaviest GPI arrow, like your day six. And I add all the components there together with 125 grain point. And I say, this is the heaviest arrow I expect you to be shooting. That's your bell curve. Right? So that's the bell curve base. And it changes per person, right? Because sometimes I have gals who are like six foot, but they can only pull 40 pounds.

Dan Johnson (32:17.969)
Gotcha.

Nate Sellers (32:26.034)
So now they're 40 pounds at like a 30 inch draw, right? That changes the dynamic of their spine a little bit based on the length of the air. So there's so many variables with it, but predominantly I say, what are the arrows that are most readily available at the lowest GPI that's safe and the highest GPI that's safe? And I build an arrow, belt curve style arrow based off of that. I say, okay, this is the range. And if you come into my shop and I build you an arrow that's in that range, whether it's on the high end, the middle, or the low end, I feel very confident and comfortable at,

you can go take a whitetail down. I mean, that's what we're hunting here. Whitetail and elk, I'm setting up guys for elk, I'm setting up guys for pronghorn and mule deer, any kind of North American big game like that. If you stick within that method that I kind of mentally run through every time a person comes into the shop, I feel very confident in your abilities.

Dan Johnson (33:12.966)
Does that bell curve change by species?

Nate Sellers (33:17.075)
No, no, I just know, I know. Here's the heavy end. Here's the low end. So for example, you your arrow would be on the heavy end of a GPI with 125 grain point 575 at 3070. I'm gonna say in both on 3170. My arrow right now is 517. That's it. And I like to say it's without us even trying. We're not doing anything special. You're not putting a 200 grain broadhead up there. You're not throwing weight tubes in the shaft. You just took an arrow, cut it, insert it.

Dan Johnson (33:17.925)
No, okay.

Nate Sellers (33:46.546)
knock point fletches. That's all you did. Nothing, nothing crazy. and when you do that, that's what era manufacturers expect. So you're on the heavy end, but you could have also taken, let's say like a gold tip Hunter at like 9 .3 GPI with a 12 grade insert and a hundred grain point. That era would weigh around 450. So that's our yours and my light end, right? 430 to 450 high in 575. So if I'm thinking whitetail be anywhere elk.

you might want to, we might want to try to think about going to an arrow that's a little bit heavier. That day six is I think what it's a five mil. It's, it's a little bit smaller in diameter as well. Or is it a stand? Yeah. So you're increasing penetration there. within that bell curve, I'm like, I know we can get this to tune cause it's a normally built arrow. I know we can get this lighter arrow to tune cause it's normally built arrow. But if we're going to go towards elk, maybe we want to do go a little bit heavier, but we're still saying within that bell curve overall.

Dan Johnson (34:23.292)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (34:42.034)
Gotcha. Okay. The next portion of this conversation then becomes about broadheads. I have seen, right? Anybody, let's say we figured it out with our field tips. All right. We're shooting really good groups all the way back to 60 yards, whatever the case is. You know, we're starting to feel confident. Now we put our broadheads on and my buddy from, my buddy Fred from WASP,

I love the guy. He says to me, and this is something that I have taken with me the like of all the years of talking to people, he goes, a mechanical, they may say it, it flies just like a field point, but it is not a field point and all, all broadheads mechanical or fixed need to be tuned separately. Okay. So I've always, I've always taken that and I've always tuned, you know,

tune my broadheads. Are there broadheads though out there that maybe they're a three blade or a four blade or maybe there is a four blade with a four blade fletch or a three blade with a three blade fletch or whatever combination. Are there combinations out there that are harder to tune and have an arrow flying straight than others?

Nate Sellers (36:05.085)
yeah. And there's, there are certain ones that are way easy to tune. So for example, so WASP broadheads, great broadheads right here out of Harrisburg, made up in Connecticut. you know, great product. I sell a pile of WASP drones, WASP jackhammers. I don't have people come back and complain that they can't get their stuff to fly like a field point. Right. But most people, to be fair in the general white tail woods, East, the Mississippi river are not that in tune with their normal accuracy.

If they can hold a snuff can sized group of 20 yards, they're over the moon. Six inches at 40 and it's it's heaven. So if their broadhead's close enough to that, then it flew like a field point. But I 100 % agree that actual field point like accuracy is not usually achievable right out of the package. Something you have to do a little bit of tweaking. It's gonna be pretty dang close if you do it right to start. But yeah, there are certain broadheads. If you take a big four blade, a big four blade fixed blade.

I think of something like the Magnus Black Hornet, which is an inch and a quarter by 7 eighths, or like the Slick Trick Grizz Trick or Slick Trick Magnum, which are inch and eighth by inch and eighth. That's a lot of resistance out on the front end. Now, I'm not an aerospace engineer, so I don't know all the terminology of it, but that's a lot of initial air cutting it's doing. And it can push itself in one direction or the other. And if you don't have enough fletching on the back end,

It won't have enough to correct it like we were talking about earlier if you don't have enough fletching on the back end that air is not coming out straight The fletchings are actually gonna lose the battle to the broadhead I actually saw this just the other week and a guy wouldn't shoot black Hornets and he was shooting little tiny X -Vanes little x3 veins They're like inch and three -quarter. He was using three of them is like well last year. They flew my mechanicals just fine I said yeah, cuz your mechanicals almost like a field point now. You're putting a big cut fixed blade

or like I said, the Slick Trick Magnum or something like that, the big cutting ones. But if you stick to a normal style broadhead, and I really think a lot of people are starting to gravitate away from the three blades, you still have a fair amount of guys that shoot Q80 Exodus, that's a great head. The G5 Striker, the G5 Montag, those great head, the Wasp Drones, a great head. That's a three blade, the original style. And there, if you stick to a smaller cut, I think you'll get away with an inch and an eighth, inch and a sixteenth.

Nate Sellers (38:21.41)
When you start getting to inch and three sixteens, you start getting to inch and a quarter, you start getting to inch and a half, you better buckle up and be along for the ride because unless you got enough fletching on the back end or your bow is really well tuned, you may or may not have a hair pulling contest to see if you can get those broadheads to fly right.

Dan Johnson (38:36.845)
Yeah. So you're saying that you're, are you saying that the more blades up front are better or harder to tune?

Nate Sellers (38:49.272)
They are harder if they start getting bigger. If you start getting bigger. So like the SlipTrick standard, it's an inch by an inch. The Wasp, I think it's the Dart, which is inch and an eighth by inch and an eighth. You would think that extra eighth of an inch is not that big of a deal. I have maybe almost like a 99 % success rate with Flight out of crossbows, compounds, recurves with that inch by an inch, but that Wasp Dart is not that same level. And that's something against the Dart. It's a great broadhead.

Dan Johnson (38:50.723)
Okay. Okay.

Nate Sellers (39:18.316)
but that little bit of extra size with the four blade, I like to stick it down. So, you I want to see like that.

Dan Johnson (39:23.711)
you mean the boss, the boss four blade, right?

Nate Sellers (39:26.905)
or whatever's an inch and an eighth by an inch and an eighth. There's a broadhead that Woss makes, Grim Reaper makes one too in the Hades, an inch and an eighth by an inch and an eighth, four blade Hades. That's another one that can be difficult to tune. Just because there's just, just add a lot of surface area. So if you're shoot a three blade, a four blade, or a two blade, I strongly recommend inch and a quarter if it's gonna be at the most, but then small bleeders, because if you start putting,

Dan Johnson (39:29.306)
Yeah.

Nate Sellers (39:54.966)
all that extra up there. don't care. You can have six veins on the back end. Something could potentially be a muck. I just don't want to deal with that. And I know my customers don't want to deal with that either. You never want to have that, that little thing living in the back of your head. Well, man, I spent a lot of time tuning this. hope nothing went awry because I left my bow in the truck accidentally overnight or something and the strings did something weird. Now my broadhead is going to fall out like a corkscrew. You never want that. And you'll set yourself up for success if you just

stick to a little bit of a smaller cut or go with a mechanical, which there are lot of great mechanicals out there too.

Dan Johnson (40:28.282)
Yeah. And so I shoot a four blade, like I've been trying, I've been messing around with a four blade, a four blade fixed. Here today, after we get done recording, I'm gonna try a three blade fixed and I'm basically just gonna, I'm testing out to see what I wanna, what direction I wanna go in. Is there such thing as having too much

Fletch for your arrow on the back end.

Nate Sellers (40:59.59)
So you'll get in effect what's called parachuting. And what that basically means is if you have so much drag or spin on the back end of the arrow, eventually the arrow slows down so much that it's spinning harder on the back end than it's traveling forward. And so the arrow will start to actually kind of corkscrew the point and the fletching will start to go what looks like opposite, but it's going in the same direction itself. And that's called parachuting. You won't really experience parachuting though

up to 40 yards. don't care how much fletching you put on the back end. The arrow is still on a normal compound. You're talking 200 some odd feet a second, where up to 300 some odd feet a second. You're not going to get parachuting out to 40 yards. after 40 yards, 45, 50, 55, 60, because the arrow is going to start to slow down and you might have too much drag on the back end, you might start seeing that parachuting. And that does that. That opens up your groups drastically because now you've lost.

The arrow has lost its trajectory control and now it's just trying to slow down and fight gravity.

Dan Johnson (42:01.306)
How do you identify parachuting?

Nate Sellers (42:04.718)
you'll see it. Like if you if you if you're on the backyard, you're out at the local range and you're shooting long distance again, you won't see parachuting under 40 yards. I've never seen it in my lifetime. And I've been around thousands of archers for over 20 years. It's after 45, 45, 50, 55, 60. You'll shoot, you'll watch your arrow and then all of a sudden your arrow will look like it just like hangs in the balance for a second. And that's because it's it's kind of losing velocity faster than it's than it's picking it up again.

Right? Because it's really quick coming out of the bow and it doesn't lose velocity very quickly until it hits about 35, 40 yards. And then it starts to slow down. But then the fletchings will be so aggressive. Your arrow will get there and all of sudden it'll do start doing this. It will literally start corkscrewing. It'll make a big oval looking shape through the air at the back end. It'll go from this nice flying, you know, you can see the colors of the fletchings and all of a sudden it'll just like it hangs in the air and then it has a big wobble and hits the target kind of weird. And that's how you know you're getting parachute.

Also your group's down range. If you get parachuting, your group could be amazing at 45, and then at 50 it goes from like five inches to a foot. You're like, what the heck's going on? That felt like a good shot. Well, that's how you know the arrow is no longer in control of its flight path back to the ground. Gravity has won.

Dan Johnson (43:17.997)
Okay, and that has more to do with spin. Does the amount of helical on that matter?

Nate Sellers (43:24.337)
Yes. Yeah. So if you put like four blazers back there or four really high long feathers, someone's got a lot of drag, a lot of grip in the air. You'll have that issue. But I would, I would argue that the vast majority of people running an AAE vein, a normal AAE vein, blazer, a boning, anything, attack vein, I see very little parachuting with a three style fletch. I don't care how much helical you put on there. I see very little parachuting.

Dan Johnson (43:31.023)
Mm -hmm.

Nate Sellers (43:53.952)
normal 40, 45, 50 yard hunting distances. It's when people start putting four fletch on there of a really high profile or really grabby feather. You know, really have three inch feather or four inch feather or something like that. You put that in a four fletch out there and yes, it's a good chance that you're gonna have parachuting after 40 yards.

Dan Johnson (44:10.191)
you

losing confidence in myself as we speak.

Nate Sellers (44:16.223)
I'm not saying it's a guarantee, but you will notice like it like parachuting and other things like that where the arrow, you know starts to slow down more aggressively than it launched. You'll notice downrange. It's not something you have to fix. You just have to be aware of. You know, because it could very well be that it doesn't parachute till 60 yards. Well, I don't know about you. I can't shoot at an animal at 60 yards.

Dan Johnson (44:20.367)
I Yeah.

Dan Johnson (44:36.217)
Gotcha.

Nate Sellers (44:43.999)
So if it's gonna parachute at 60, big whoopee -doo, I'll kill an animal at 45, and that's the end of that. It's very rare that I see people have a parachuting problem, because eventually all boats will eventually parachute. You go watch guys at tack events, and eventually that arrow gets about 70 yards out, 80 yards out, and eventually just, woo, there it goes, because that's physics. You can't stop the physics.

Dan Johnson (45:07.043)
Yeah, okay. All right. Broadheads, arrows, fletchings. third access. I wanna talk a little bit about the third access on sites. Was it two years ago, before I got my new site, something happened and a bolt came loose and I didn't identify it. And I was shooting high right,

at close range, 40 yards I was dead on. But high right on my 30 and 20 and low left on my 50 and 60. And so why, I'm curious, why do company, why do they manufacture third access when you attach it to your bow, that should be rock solid. Why would a person need to adjust that?

Nate Sellers (46:07.307)
So yeah, so there's three accesses that come, right? You have first, second, and third access, which that's anything in a three -dimensional space. Second access and third access are what archers really should be worried about. Second access is how that site looks in front of you, pitched like a circle. That's a huge one. What you're describing actually is almost a second access issue where it's again doing that walking thing, where it's high one direction, low one direction. It kind of looks like the further you go out, the more it goes to the left or to the right. That could actually be your second access.

with how that bubble is shifted left and right in your side housing. But third axis is elevated for elevated shots. So third axis is when I am pointing my bow up, I'm pointing my bow down, you've now taken the site out of level. What I mean by that is now the site is no longer perpendicular to the ground. So now the earth, when you're perpendicular to the ground, you're just dealing with the left and right of the earth.

That's in the Earth's level, your level, everything's fine. But as soon as you point up and you point down, now you have vertical travel of the bubble and the left and right travel of the bubble. So as a tree stand hunter, predominantly we're pointing down. Sometimes the guys out West need to worry about pointing up, but we're pointing down here in the Whitetail woods. So when you point down, if that housing, that housing actually, the third axis is if it's pitched towards you or if it's pitched away from you.

And that is huge because that has to change based on the archer. We all grip the bow different. Our draw links are all different. How far away the sight is from our face and from our eye is different. We have to mess with that third axis because as soon as we tip out of the hips and we point the bow down, if we don't have that worked on how our grip torques the riser and how it pushes that sight in and out away from our face.

Now we've changed the bubble, so now the bubble looks different. Now we tip this way or we tip the other way. We throw off second and third axis and we hit the deer in the butt while it runs off. So that second and third axis is just as important as actually tuning the rest and doing all those things. Because when you actually are in a situation where those levels need to actually be level to the earth, if you put them out of level, the arrow is not going to fly straight and you're not going to have a successful shot at that range.

Dan Johnson (48:17.891)
Yeah. Yeah. Lots to think about. Lots to think about. And this is what I always tell somebody. Maybe maybe you have a different view, but like I always question my ability to tune my bow and and make adjustments. So that is why I have always taken my bow to someone who knows what the hell they're doing and or gets paid.

Nate Sellers (48:25.696)
Lots.

Dan Johnson (48:47.522)
to do those things. Now, not all BOTEX are created equal, as you probably know. Yeah, so any other tips or tricks or advice that you would give to someone right now who might be struggling with their accuracy or struggling with tuning their setup this close to opening day.

Nate Sellers (48:53.583)
painfully.

Nate Sellers (49:14.543)
There is no shame, and I say this to everybody, there is no shame in getting close, but not being there and putting a mechanical broadhead on. There is no shame. I want to make this very clear. Guys were like, I want to shoot a fixed blade. I want to make it work. see, you you Nate on, on YouTube. I see other people on YouTube. I hear about my buddies and I don't think a mechanical work. And I'll hear it and tell you mechanical broadhead will work just dang fine. If you can't get it.

You're just like, my fixed blade just aren't flying with my field points. There is no shame in getting it close and then putting on a mechanical broadhead. I want to make that very clear to people that go ahead, go do it. It's not that big of deal. You will be just fine. But let's say you're just having an overall accuracy issue. Completely take whitetail distances out of the factor and go stand at five yards, five stinking yards, go stand at five yards and just put them into don't, don't resize it and just hold your pin on stuff and see where everything lands.

and just make sure it's consistently landing. Don't aim at the same spot, you're gonna break arrows. Aim at different spots and just work at five yards. Then work at seven yards. Then work at 10 yards. And you'd be amazed how fickle you'll be with yourself when you're trying to put your pin on a little piece of canvas that's on your target or your burlap or your foam or whatever you're shooting at. Do that for a while and you'll be amazed how that can translate then to 20 yards when you're ready to go step back out there. I've been shooting a bow for 20 years, or 21 years now.

almost at a very high level for the past decade. There are days where I still need to do that. And I wish people would be less scared of, I'm in regression. No, you're not. Sometimes you just need a new breath of fresh air. And that allows you then to play them with your grip too, with a target that close. You can try really torquing the grip one way the other, massing your face into the kisser button and see how that changes your accuracy. And at five yards, if you see a change, what do think it's gonna do at 20?

So it allows you to have a very controlled environment and a very positive feedback environment. We all hate it when it's at 20 yards and we miss. Then we're just like, man, I suck, I'm terrible. Well, you miss it five yards, you're missing by like a quarter inch, half inch, two inches. And you're like, okay, I know I need to work on that, but your brain tells you good shot, you didn't miss. So that's real key because 90 % of bow hunting is right in between the years. And 10 % of that animal's standing down range.

Dan Johnson (51:08.023)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (51:21.111)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (51:28.076)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (51:34.401)
Yeah.

Yeah. And to look at it though, from a different light, like I'm, feel like I'm a, I'm a good bow hunter, but I'm a shitty archer. So those things do not go like, you're not supposed to say that. Right. And so I have always, every year when I get the time, I always try to become a little bit better of an archer every single year and take on some type of new, even though my new goal.

Nate Sellers (51:47.675)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (52:07.385)
of becoming a better archer. And then like my woodsman ships there. I know I'm going to run into deer. It's just a matter of getting my equipment where I want it. Like I want to be what's that dude's name from Lord of the Rings. I want to be Legolas or whatever that elf guy who he's like he's like shooting. He's shooting orcs in the eye from like 300 yards. That's what I want. That's what I want to be like.

Nate Sellers (52:24.197)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nate Sellers (52:32.516)
yeah.

Nate Sellers (52:36.042)
Fantastic. I think I'd rather just be Gimli, just a little short bearded guy with an axe.

Dan Johnson (52:37.175)
yourself.

Dan Johnson (52:40.549)
Okay, yeah throw it throw an axe is that animals Do you remember that rage broadhead commercial from back in the day where the guys like it's like throwing an axe through an animal

Nate Sellers (52:43.69)
Throw an axe at a deer, just got it. Just a giant dwarf.

Nate Sellers (52:54.546)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (52:58.173)
How cool would it be to actually have a primitive weapon season? Because you can a primitive weapon season includes like at a ladles and crossbows and things like that. And you could just you you could jump out of a tree stand with an axe like some Viking and just completely almost.

Nate Sellers (53:07.914)
Mm -hmm.

Nate Sellers (53:17.98)
I would think it'd be cool to do throwing knives. I can, but like throwing knives would be interesting. There's a lot of guys that are actually very effective with throwing knives. That, you know, that can be a very interesting, very interesting thing. But man, there are people that can't hit him, he had the broadside of a bar with a compound bow. Let's just stick with that for now.

Dan Johnson (53:20.79)
throwing knives.

Dan Johnson (53:36.353)
Yeah. Stick with that. How about we start working on our compound bows, right? There you go. There you go. Hey, Nate, man, I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much for the conversation today and good luck this upcoming season.

Nate Sellers (53:51.066)
Absolutely, man. Same to you.

‍