Dear Buster:

After reading Dr. Ashby's report on penetration, I've made some changes in my arrow set up to test his theory. He found the same bow, same broadhead same shaft to shoot differently depending on how far forward the FOC on the arrow was. Evidently, the live full size animals he used showed very different penetrations with arrows with the FOC in excess of 20% instead of the 8-10 we normally use. The only difference for great penetration was extreme FOC.

I too think your other bows should have been way more than enough to drop the deer you cited. I'm wondering about arrow tuning specifically. 525 grains seems heavy enough but if the weight is too far aft in the shaft when it hits the target the arrow will paradox and much of the needed energy will be lost in the shafts bending. Heavy weight arrows by themselves seem to only be marginally better than light ones. But when the FOC is moved way up by adding much weight to the tip, the arrow seems to follow the blade through the animal instead of punching the broadhead through. Its the old trying to push a string analogy.

Good luck. I'm jealous of your Daala. If you don't like it, give me a call, I'm sure we can make a deal.

Gary