342 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 15, 1913 
Forest and Stream is the official organ of the National Archery Association. 
Notes on Hunting Arrows. 
BY JAMES M. CHALLISS. 
The recent revival of interest in archery 
throughout the country causes no surprise to 
the devotees of the sport. The prominence given 
the matter by Forest and Stream has helped 
much, but the real reason is the intrinsic merit 
of the sport itself. When once the border line 
is crossed and a speaking acquaintance estab¬ 
lished with the rudiments of the art, conviction 
generally follows. One of the serious draw- 
hacks has been the difficulty of securing proper 
tackle. A few years back I personally inspected 
the supply of the two leading commercial houses 
in search of a good bow, and the best I was 
able to find was a defective undersized Spanish 
yew in one and a badly twisted-backed beef- 
wood bow in another, together with a lot of 
indifferent lance. One house had some hickory 
bow's that it recommended as being reversible; 
that is, the belly and back were interchangable. 
Shades of Ford, not to speak of the algebraic 
Rendtorff! At that time I had not been initiated 
into the charmed circle, and knew naught of 
the wizards, Barnes and Whitman. It is appar¬ 
ent from the advertising matter carried in the 
columns of this paper that the supply houses 
are waking up and have put in a fairly com¬ 
plete line of tackle. That is good. But they 
have just touched the surface. Their line is 
complete from the target archer’s standpoint, 
but totally inadequate for the hunting archer. 
True, the heavy target bow may be used in the 
field, but it is not helped any in the process. 
But as for arrows, it is impossible to buy one 
from any supply house in the country. There 
is no form of target arrow that wdll do for 
hunting. They are too light, too fragile, and 
have no shocking power. That being the case, 
the writer and his archer companion, Z. E. Jack- 
son, were compelled some years ago when they 
took up the sport to evolve methods and devices 
for the manufacture of hunting arrows as a 
matter of necessity. After numerous experi¬ 
ments covering a series of years, with the help 
of suggestions made by Will H. Thompson out 
of the wealth of his experience, a standard hunt¬ 
ing arrow was produced that seems to meet all 
requirements. There is no reason why such 
arrows should not be produced in the factories 
devoted to the making of target arrows and the 
demand supplied, or in fact a demand created 
when it is known that hunting arrows can be 
secured. 
Hunting arrows are of two kinds, one known 
as a birding arrow and the other as a broad- 
head. They are of straight-grained, well-sea¬ 
soned hickory, 28 inches long and 23/64 inch in 
diameter. Smaller than this will not do as a 
general thing, as the arrow is liable to buckle 
and gad or flirt in flight. With exceptionally 
good material it might be possible to reduce this 
diameter a sixty-fourth of an inch, but not more. 
They are feathered with the broad side of a 
turkey feather, primary feathers for broad- 
heads, and secondary for birding arrows. The 
feathers are four inches long and are put on 
spirally. The feathers are stripped, not cut 
from the rib, and in the birding arrow are un¬ 
trimmed, while in the broadhead they are cut 
in a triangular shape, one-quarter of an inch 
high at the forward end and three-quarters of 
an inch at the nock end. This makes a very 
“sassy” looking arrow, approaching the idealized 
arrow of the artist. The birding arrow has for 
its pile a round knob of babbit metal or solder 
one-half inch in diameter, while the broadhead 
is armed with a diamond-shaped head, stamped 
from a steel saw blade, one and three-quarter 
inches long and three-quarters inch wide, with 
a tang of course which is inserted in a saw slot 
in the steel. This is secured by a whipping of 
fine wire, coated with- solder. The nock should 
be uniform in width, just fitting the string nicely 
and one-quarter inch deep. Of course the arrow 
should be painted between the feathers to pro¬ 
tect the glue. As much adornment may be put 
on here as the taste of the individual archer 
dictates. The arrows of each should have a 
distinctive marking. Arrows made on these 
specifications will weigh approximately two 
ounces or ten shillings, and at first will prove 
disappointing to the target archer who has been 
shooting a 4-3 or 4-6 arrow. But when the 
real sphere of the hunting arrow is appreciated, 
their merits will appear. 
It may be possible to so feather an arrow 
that will fly true and not rotate upon its axis. 
I have never seen one. A decided rotation is 
almost inevitably produced by the natural cup 
of the feather when they are mounted as nearly 
parallel with the axis as human ingenuity can 
accomplish. In the hunting arrow this tendency 
to rotate is exaggerated by putting the feathers 
on spirally; that is, by having the ends of a four- 
inch feather a sixteenth of an inch on either 
side of the true axis which passes through the 
middle of the feather. The result is that steadi¬ 
ness of flight is secured, and even an indif¬ 
ferent, crooked arrow will be made to fly true. 
As Will H. Thompson says, spiral feathering 
covers a multitude of sins. Another thing. 
Strange as it may seem, a hunting arrow 
should be of limited flight. Every shot does 
not hit, some miss, and when they do. one does 
not wish to walk into the next county to re¬ 
cover his gear. In shooting squirrels, grouse, 
doves or other arboreal game, the angle of the 
shot is generally that which will produce the 
maximum flight of the arrow, and to be able 
to recover your arrow without a day’s walk is 
a desideratum. The initial flight of one of these 
hunting arrows is very rapid, but beyond the 
range of probable hits they soon lose their force. 
The range of the bow is about that of the shot¬ 
gun. There are more killing shots made under 
forty yards than beyond, and more around 
twenty than forty. Of course it is the long shot 
that arouses interest. I have seen Jackson im¬ 
pale a rabbit at seventy-two yards and have 
helped eat the deer that he shot at sixty yards, 
driving his arrow clean through from shoulder 
to shoulder. 
Another object in having the birding arrows 
headed with a knob of babbit is to prevent their 
sticking in the limbs or trunks of trees and thus 
being generally beyond recovery. This advant¬ 
age was well illustrated one day when Will H. 
Thompson and the writer were camping along 
the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. 
Our camp was pitched in the Sualkane Canon, 
a narrow fertile valley that ran back into the 
mountains, at the head of which lies Old Baldy. 
Bear were plentiful there, and one day we started 
out, but that is another story. On the day in 
question we had been hunting grouse and had 
been blessed with an abundance of game. We 
would walk along and scare the grouse from 
the sunflowers and sage brush, and they would 
fly into the branches of the nearby fir and cedar 
trees, making ideal bow shooting. We each had 
a quiver of arrows among which were two pos¬ 
sessing individuality. The one carried by me 
had been made by Jackson with infinite care and 
upon special lines, especially the side and char¬ 
acter of the pile, and had been christened the 
“Whirling Spray.” Jack had been disappointed 
in not being able to make the trip with us, but 
wishing to be a factor in some way, had made 
this arrow and forwarded it by mail, with the 
special injunction that it was to be buried in 
nothing less than the bowels of a black bear, or 
on a pinch he would not scoff at a deer. Thomp¬ 
son’s special arrow was one that had been car¬ 
ried by the Tartar archers accompanying the 
allied armies that drove Napoleon from Paris in 
1814. It was a beautiful specimen of barbaric 
art and we had dubbed it the “Tartar Emetic.” 
Shooting had been so good that we found be¬ 
fore the day was over that our ammunition was 
running low. We lost many arrows among the 
rocks on the mountain sides and among the 
alders and undergrowth along a little stream of 
crystal clear water that traversed the canon. We 
had flushed a covey of grouse and they scat¬ 
tered and lit in the fir trees. At this particular 
time at my first shot I got one, hit through and 
through at the butts of the wings. Soon my 
attention was attracted by a shout from Thomp¬ 
son, and I saw a grouse headed across the canon 
giving a very good imitation of a monoplane, 
rudder and all. Thompson had hit it fair, from 
below and behind, and his keen arrow had trans¬ 
fixed the bird without hitting a vital spot nor 
affecting its flying powers. It lit along the little 
stream, and we searched in vain for it. The 
next day while passing that point we discovered 
where a wolf had secured the bird, devoured it 
and badly gnawed the arrow. But on the day 
in question we had exhausted our arrows ex¬ 
cepting the “Whirling Spray” and the “Tartar 
