Shooting a lighter weight (40 lbs) wouldn’t a person want to shoot a head with a little more taper? Just a question?

I’m shooting big 150 grain VPA 1 1/4” cuts this year. Damn things are huge. But hope on deer and pigs it will punch thru and leave a hellacious blood trail.

I think a magnus stinger, Ace Standard, or similarly amgkedbblade is sufficient
However I would shy away from trocar style points on replacement blade heads. While they do punch through, they, like wide blades, take a bit more horse power

I have a new for now fix. 85 grains checks out on the calculator from draw length 29.25 all the way up to 30.75. More then makes up for the variances between my fixed crawl and my point on shooting. And i don’t have to trim anymore arrows to get there. I am down to three arrows now with all that has happened.

I just happen to have 85 grain Montecs in my box. And Magnus makes an 85 grain head to boot.

I never was trying to achieve FOC i just like the heavier insert because it is longer, makes the front end of your arrow a lot stronger when glued in right.

His bow is 40 at 28inch draw, if he is drawing 30 inches he is stacking 2 inches so that with the stacking will be I expect on that bow 45lbs+ perhaps 47 or a little more. If you are shooting a 40lb bow at 26 inch draw you loose some of the rated draw pounds. On a bow scale drawing my 50lb recurve to my 29 inch draw got to about 53lbs per the scale in the shop. The second inch of stacking will get a little more poundage than that first inch of over draw.

Disclaimer that is from what I measured on my recurves. One of my coworkers ask about why my bow with the same poundage as his were sinking the same arrows deeper into the target. 3 inch longer draw was my quick answer to him.

First shots with the 85 grain Montec “pre-season” head. Basically a dull Montec.

Fixed crawl 15 yards very first three shots holding point on:



Fixed crawl 20 yards blotting out the target with the shaft:



Three under holding “point on” at 20 yards. This one was weird, the first time I shot I completely missed the target. A few more consistent misses so I tried holding “one shaft” to the right and bingo!



First time I ever had a lateral variation from my three under vs my fixed crawl. I think i am gonna toe a spare “nock point” on for my crawl, see if that improves consistency and precision.

It is 35 at 28”. I am pulling 29.5 on my fixed crawl and 30.5 shooting three under. Give or take. According to Fleetwood every added inch if draw adds 3 pounds. So about 40 pounds at 28”. According to the 3 Rivers calculator I should get 27 pounds of energy based on a generic recurve. I know there are some that shoot 50 pounds and get less!

Passthru is like the best hunter that nobody knows. If he makes a recommendation, I would pay attention. He has more experience killing animals with a stick than probably all of us combined participating.

I am gonna find me some 85 grain 2 blades, probably a Magnus 2 blade stinger. If they fly anything like these 85 grain montec head I am going to use them.

Here is 30 yards with the 85 grain Montec. I would not even attempt that with any other head, in my small yard. For reference i think the center circle is 7” and the target is 15” wide. My fingers spread like that is almost right at 8”.

I know Passthru has killed many times more than I have especially with trad archery. I started hunting with Trad in the 70s and killed a few. Switched to compound in the early 80s then in about 2013, got back to shooting some trad archery at work. just having a little fun. Got a Browning Bantam 50lb bow in and since it was strung up shot 3 that at 12 yards my first 3 were in a nice little 1.25 inch group, coworker said you must shoot a lot. Nope haven't shot a recurve in 30 years or more. Those first 3 shots were about 6 inches to the right, pulled those arrows corrected and shot 3 more into an inch group around a half inch dot. It may be the me that shoots that way one day then not again for a but generally can shoot pretty good if I focus.

Who knows how many arrows i have slung over the years from trad equipment from a hickory self bow growing up to a 25lb fiberglass recurve. Got to where with that birds were in trouble until I hit my teens. growing up on a farm allowed for lots of shooting opportunities for a young man. shooting that much instinctive/self taught trial and error just got to see spot shoot spot.

Over the years I have taken 4 deer of the 5 I have shot at with Trad archery but the miss was the first one I shot at. ranges from 7 to 25 yards.

I have killed two whitetails in my whole life. A 8 point basket rack with a rifle a few years back, and about a 5 month old fawn with my compound on opening day this year. Every single one of ya’ll could teach me something, for certain. But I do pay attention, I would not personally try to debate with passthru on broadhead selection. He knows.

For learning true instinctive shooting, nothing for reference and just looking at a spot you want to hit, Byron Ferguson’s Become The Arrow is still one of best videos out there.

We all seek advice and wisdom from those who came before. Buff, Bisch, Tim. They've killed more animals with trad bows than I ever will. But I've killed hundreds with a compound so the numbers might be closer in total bow kills.
Your bow performs differently for you. Your anchor, your release, your stance. It's unique to you. Unlike a compound where you get set up for your draw length and the machine is adjusted to fit and line up trad bows don't work that way. While I've listened to advice I've also tried things old school trad archers consider sacrilege. Like killing pigs with Rage tipped arrows.
Guys kill animals with wood bows they build, wood arrows they build and stone points they fashion. Been happening for eons.
But your mistakes, bad choices and miscalculations are measured in wounded and lost animals. That unfortunately is often the best but hardest lesson.

Every bow hunter will have to live his own journey and have his own experiences. What works for one, may not work for another.

But, I believe in the old adage, that the only way to get good at killing animals with a bow, is to go out and kill a lot of animals with a bow. You will not be 100% even with a compound. I had a rangefinder give me a bad read last week and I missed a very large Eastern Candian moose. If you hunt enough, things like that happen.


The journey is a marathon not a sprint. Try and mitigate your mistakes by learning from one's others have made, but you are going to have your own, that's for sure.

Well said Passthru, the group you named are very good and share their knowledge and experiences, some more than others.

ntxtrapper, I agree "Byron Ferguson’s Become The Arrow" is a classic with lots of great information.

i am not in those guys league and would never pretend to be, somedays it is just natural to me but consistency day to day is not what I have been and probably never will be. When shooting good i will hunt with the trad, if not the compound or crossbow goes out. I got the crossbow after missing 2 years of archery season with frozen shoulders. the next year texa opened up cor all to use crossbows so i bought one. still prefer the vertical bows but occasionally will hunt with the crossbow why not i have it.

I use the same target Bryan posted for a lot of my shooting but also have an old dirt pit behind the house with plenty of various shots through the woods for my own 3D type course with a high bank to stop any arrow behind targets. My standard on if I am shooting well enough shoot 6 at 20 yards and if all well inside the yellow with the 5 dots, will remove those and throw them from the target different distances around 7 to a bit over 27 yards. Go to each noc an arrow and turn then shoot the target. if all those are in the center of the outer of the 5 target dots then I hunt with the recurve that day otherwise it is the compound or crossbow depending on which stand location. just a standard that I have set for myself. i would much rather let one walk and enjoy the encounter than make a bad shot (hard learned lesson). that is for deer, on hogs not so worried about it. Something else that is fun practice is small game hunting with archery.

Tx you are correct, something can happen you have no idea of. Gut shot one that everything looked perfect on shot until a short way from the doe there was a small vine the broad hit and cut, deflected it out of the lungs into the stomach, we would have never recovered her without my dog. I never saw that little vine until it deflected the arrow on a 25 yard shot with the compound.

So true TrophyTexas. And you won't kill a bunch unless you shoot a lot of practice arrows and hunt as much as you can. Unfortunately I'm slowing down lately. Earning money for Africa has been a priority the last two years and paying for a ranch the last 5 years before that. I need to get back to time away, pigs to slay and enjoying the skinning of a freshly taken animal.

That longer power stroke is definitely a plus.

I have made a lot of mistakes already and i have only been serious about trad archery for about a week, haven’t even shot a animal with my recurve yet

Read up on some of the early archery clubs that started in the 50’s and 60’s. Guys interested in archery would get together and form a club, no one knew a whole lot so they all shared what little info they had acquired. It took many of them several years before they killed a deer with a bow, populations were not like they are now and opportunities were few.

Gene and Barry Wensel are on many traditional bowhunting podcasts and they offer a lot of insight to how things were in the earlier days.

Yeah one of them will postpone TG now and then. Those two were the first bowhunting videos I enjoyed.
That said today we have all kinds of resources to speed up the learning curve. But you still have to do the work.

Well I plugged in the number and wouldn’t ya know, my wood shafts spined at 50 pounds, cut to 30” behind the head, will spine out perfectly for me with a 150 grain point. So I put theear razorheads on them. I barely cut a crease at 30” and tapered them by hand with my pocket knife, occasionally trying to slip on one of the field points and then try to hammer it down onto the shaft. Once I got it tapered that i could just barely hammer that field tip down to the ring in the varnish, then I partially filled the head with hot glue, got it good and hot, and crammed and spun that arrow until it fit to the line. Then i heat it and make minor tweaks until it spins true, then try as hard as I can to pull/wiggle it off after it cools. They are solid, I can not pull that head off if I wanted to, and measre exactly 30” from the throat of the nock to the back of those heads.

These wood shafts look to be fletched straight with right wing feathers, should work fine with a right bevel Bear Razorhead.

I will get them sharpened up and if they give me good enough flight to hit 20 yards I am going to use them. The arrows are a hair short but they will work with my fixed crawl.

Gotta love the excitement.

Good conversation and making me want to shoot but a 1lb weight restriction on my left shoulder says NO.

I will hunt at least gun season even if with the handguns.

As long as you get out there the weapon is just a detail. Heal well.

Hand tapered arrow. I have improved the process so far. I use the pocketknife to whittle it down, until I can just tap it on. Then i hold the field point in a pair of pliers and twist the arrow by hand, and that kind of burnishes it in and squares it up. When i am done the head is a friction fit on there and pretty straight.

Tapered shaft-



Bear razorhead after about 30 shots in the dirt on a underspined arrow and a few minutes of file work and a quick run across the coarse stone. Never broke the tip off but i took it off with the file for added strength, it is still cut on contact.

And yes those are wood shavings in the floorboard lol

I have two Ace standards that stuck in offside shoulders in Africa. Small piece of the tips chipped off. I plan to take em down and get em back with a cut tip, tanto style if you will. Then they will kill again. The old Bear Razorheads are the real deal. You're fortunate to have them.