You' re right, Nic. Top to bottom, you' re right. I guess most of us accept it as given that people will make good equipment choices and that they will use sharp broadheads. That leaves this momentum/KE stuff to argue about. And there shouldn' t even be an argument.

Didn' t find a copy of the magazine last night but I did run across my ancient copy of ' Balanced Bowhunting' . Never noticed it before, but Holt was turning into a light arrow advocate even then! Since I still haven' t seen this version of Holt' s article, I' ll reserve further comment on specifics. But in general...

The worst part about this KE/penetration baloney is it' s based on NOTHING but unsubtantiated opinion, backed by poorly designed ' experiments' that are basically geared toward proving a prejudice in favor of light, fast arrows (Holt' s or a goodly smattering of other such ' tests' ). I' d even go so far as to say it' s based a good bit on snobbery.

When you really dig into things though, you can easily see that it' s all smoke and mirrors. Just a cursory glance at Newton' s Three Laws of Motion will tell you a good bit. Kinetic energy isn' t even mentioned. Force, inertia, momentum, acceleration, velocity... These are all there. Where is KE if it' s so all fired important?

What really bugs the crap out of me about this kinetic energy fixation is it sets up the anti' s for an attack. If they can take one of those infamous minimum KE charts that are floating around, they can argue, in court, that someone MUST have 40 ft lbs minimum of KE for hunting deer or similar size game. We could not defend against it because they would be using OUR own information! Then they can get a lot of perfectly capable equipment banned. Like stickbows drawing under 50 pounds. Even some folks shooting compounds that draw less than 50 pounds, especially women and children with their shorter draws, would be cut out.

Surely I' m not the only one with enough brain power to see the potential for threat in this!!