PABowhntr

For most of the hunting setups today 5 inch vanes are not needed in my opinion. Unless you are trying to compensate for tuning issues....you have problems with shaft alignment...or you are shooting fixed blade/replacement blade broadheads with a large surface area then any fletching larger than 4 inches is generally not needed.

Four inch vanes are somewhat of the standard used for today's compound bows. Longer, helical fletching was generally used in the past to produce a more accurate arrow when manufacturing tolerances on bows and arrows were not generally up to the standard that they are today. Some folks still tend to use them on occasion with certain setups but if you have or are going to use a setup that is typical of what is being used today then you will probably not need the extra level of "forgiveness" that a five inch vane does provide.

Lastly, you must also consider the issue of tuning them. With a longer fletch, especially one with a hard helical, you need to pay extra attention to launcher arm clearance as the fletching takes up more space on the circumference of the shaft. Ofcourse with the influx of drop away rests this is not always an issue.

To summarize, if you feel that you need a little more forgiveness then by all means try a 5 inch fletch but you definitely do not need to have it to shoot accurately.