Archery is a sport that takes on many different purposes for many different people. Here in the US, the focus of archery is very much on bowhunting. Across the globe, however, archery is almost strictly done for sport — very little bowhunting happens in comparison to what we have here in North America. Archers across Europe and Asia almost strictly participate in archery as a competitive sport, with the pinnacle of that being the Olympic Games. Many readers may have recently seen the archery event at the Tokyo Olympics on TV and taken note of some of the differences in the equipment they use versus what you take to the treestand or blind. Since archery returned to the Olympic Games almost 50 years ago in 1972, the sport of archery has seen huge advancements in equipment. Being that the most prominent archery equipment manufacturers are based in the United States, any developments made to improve Olympic archery inevitably take hold in the bowhunting world in some shape or form. The equipment development in Olympic archery over the years has had an impact on bowhunting and made all of us better bowhunters.
Olympic archery is contested only with recurve bows. These recurve bows have seen some development changes over the last few decades as material science has improved and allowed the use of improved construction of limbs, but the development hasn’t been as drastic as what has been seen with compound bow technology limbs. Since the bulk of bowhunters today are going afield with compound bows, the improvements seen in Olympic recurves have virtually no effect on their bowhunting experience.
By and large the biggest improvements for Olympic archery that have also had a huge impact on the bowhunting world come from the arrow manufacturers. The arrow is the most critical piece of equipment for any archer, olympic or bowhunter. A great bow is undone if it doesn’t have the terminal component to match. In Olympic archery, scores are based on where arrows land in the target. The scoreboard only looks at where the arrows are, none of the other equipment matters to achieve a perfect 10. In bowhunting, terminal success is achieved by putting gaping wounds in big game animals, and the arrow is the key to achieving the accuracy needed to do that. Bowhunters love to argue on the internet about broadheads and broadhead design and many might say the broadhead is the most important piece of the equipment puzzle; but the best broadheads are effectively worthless if their delivery mechanism (the arrow) isn’t up to snuff.
The biggest improvement that equipment development for Olympic archery has given to the bowhunter exists in the world of arrows. Until the late 1980s, aluminum arrows were the standard in Olympic archery. While aluminum arrows are made with great precision and have material properties that yield excellent consistency, the diameter of arrow needed to achieve stiff enough arrow spine for hunting applications created rather large diameter arrows that were susceptible to wind drift and hindered penetration.
The physics of any tube dictate that a given wall thickness will yield a stiffer tube as the overall diameter of the tube. A good example of this comes from looking at the Easton 2312 and 2512 aluminum arrows. The first two numbers in the sequence indicate the diameter in 64ths of an inch. So, the 2312 being 23/64” in diameter, while the 2512 is 25/64”. The second two numbers in the sequence indicate the wall thickness of the aluminum, that being 12 thousandths of an inch in both arrows. The 2312 is approximately a 420 spine arrow, while the 2512 is a 320 spine. An archer shooting 70 pounds with a decent draw length needed a relatively stiff arrow to achieve a tunable bow, and this often caused them to select large diameter arrows. Large diameter arrows are extremely susceptible to wind drift and don’t penetrate as well as a smaller diameter arrow, all other things being equal.
In 1988, Jay Barrs of Team USA used an Easton A/C/E arrow to win Olympic Gold in Seoul, Korea. The A/C/E was miniscule in diameter, built to cut through the wind and minimize drift at 90 meters (about 99 yards) which was the max competition distance for the Olympic Men’s Archery round. The ACE looked like a knitting needle sitting next to an Easton 2413 that was commonplace in hunting quivers at the time. By 1996, Easton had one-upped themselves with the design of the X10, the arrow that has won every Olympic Medal since it’s introduction. The X10 was even smaller than the A/C/E, which again helped archers to beat the wind and was designed with a mass weight ideally suited for recurve bows. To this day, the X10 still holds its place on the Olympic throne with 130 of 132 archers at the Tokyo Games using the X10, and the arrow has been used for every Olympic and World Record in the premier category. There is no denying the success of extremely small diameter arrows when used in the elements that come with outdoor archery.
Unfortunately for the bowhunter, this shift to small diameter arrows for Olympic performance lagged in the hunting world, due to the need for stiffer spines and materials that had the higher strength needed for compound hunting applications. Aluminum arrows were still commonplace in the hunting world in the early 2000s, as archers used overdraws in order to use lighter and smaller diameter arrows. The effects of overdraws as they were used in hunting created bows that were more critical to small input errors by the archer, and eventually became a thing of the past in the hunting world. In the early 2000s, Beman ICS Hunter carbon arrows began to take hold. This arrow is what is known as a 6.5mm diameter arrow today, referring to the internal diameter of the arrow shaft.
The 6.5mm carbon hunting arrows from various manufacturers went on to become the standard for the carbon hunting arrows for years. The biggest difference in the offerings was overall weight, which was achieved by using different types of carbon fiber layups. These arrows still looked relatively large in relation to the Easton X10 used by Olympic archers. The reason hunting arrows weren’t getting smaller was simply because of the need to use screw in components to allow the use of field points and broadheads. Some forays were made into slimmer arrows that used outserts or half-outs, but the machining and materials used at the time lacked the precision and strength to give good broadhead alignment and durability.
As the material science continued to develop, Easton introduced the arrow now known as the 5mm Axis in 2004. The Axis, still a staple in many bowhunter’s quivers today, utilizes a hidden internal insert to allow for a reduction in overall diameter. This system has been proven time again in the field over the last 17 years and will continue to be used in the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, the quest to achieve pinnacle accuracy will never leave the bowhunter. As things such as movable sights and faster bows extended the lethal range of well-practiced and competent bowhunters, the desire for long range arrow setups soon followed. In 2012, Easton again raised the bar (or made it smaller, if you will) when they introduced the Injexion line of arrows. These arrows truly began to rival the diameter and construction of arrows used by Olympic archers and were made with the needed strength and spine stiffness for today’s bowhunter. Over time, the Injexions were replaced by the present day Easton 4mm Axis Long Range, an arrow that is lighter and stronger than the Injexion to continue to narrow the gap between hunting and Olympic archery equipment. Olympic archer Brady Ellison was part of the development of the 4mm Axis Long Range, using a prototype of that arrow to take an incredible Coues Deer in his home state of Arizona.
Fast forward to present day and every major arrow manufacturer is offering a 4mm diameter arrow. As machining and materials have advanced, so have the arrows and the component systems that go with them. Carbon fiber advancements allow companies to build stiffer arrows without having to build the arrows larger to achieve a certain spine range. Components using exotic materials such as titanium create precise and strong foundations for a bowhunter’s choice of broadhead. Some of the trends of today’s bowhunter make the 4mm platform of arrows the perfect candidates for building hunting arrows that are high speed, or high-momentum with heavy total point and insert weights to create extreme front-of-center setups. These arrows are perfect candidates for long range hunting, or as setups create relentless penetration to help achieve passthroughs when things don’t go as planned.
As bowhunters, we have an embarrassment of riches in the equipment offerings available to us today. Just like some would say that motorsports racing pushes the development of vehicles and eventually shows up on our daily drivers, Olympic archery pushes the development of what ends up in the quivers of bowhunters.
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