Traditional Bowhunting Misconceptions! Bow Noise

All right, hey guys, welcome back to the channel. Jason here, what we're gonna talk about today, another misconception. Did one on shot distance for you. Now what we're gonna talk about is bow noise, bow and arrow noise and broadhead noise. These are the things you wanna dive into. Actually, John Tucker's calling me right now. John, we will call you back. But what we wanna talk about is the reality of the noise factor, okay, the sound. If you think, just because you shoot a recurve or a longbow, that it's gonna be quiet and you aren't gonna hear you, you bumped your head, you're crazy. I mean, this is a 57 pound hill style ASL longbow, super quiet with a 720 grain arrow. And when I shoot this thing, you hear it. Listen to this thing take off. You hear that, okay, that makes a noise. There's a lot of sound that comes out of that. And if you think a deer at 15 yards or a deer at 17 yards or 20 yards, isn't gonna hear that in a dead quiet still, boom, they're not gonna hear that go. And then on top of that, you have the arrow fletching noise. And then on top of, sorry, there's gnats everywhere here. It's 90 degrees humid. I'm wearing bug spray, but they're still just driving me crazy. And we're getting ready to go out and hunt. Actually, if I were to show you, as soon as we are done with this video, we are going in right here. Like, I'm gonna tip you here for a second, but look down there. Look at fresh hogs right there, right into that swamp. And that is where we are gonna go here in just a few minutes. But what we wanna see here is understand that, you know, people think, well, my bow's really quiet. Well, look, I got silencers on mine too. Silencers here, silencers here. Some people put two of them on there. Some people do all kinds of things. Again, I'm shooting heavyweight arrow, which absorbs a lot of the sound out of this thing, yet they are still jumping the string. They are jumping the string. Do you realize what that means? So this whole thought that, well, I shoot a traditional bow, so it's super quiet. They never hear it go off. Total BS. They will hear it every single time. They may not react to it because the sound is a little more thud, a little more boom, a little more natural, a little more, not quite so metallic-y, ting-y that you get from some of the compounds, especially crossbow, pink, you know, pink, the crossbow. So you get a little less of that. So it matters some, and they are quieter, but they are not quiet enough to matter. What I mean is that you cannot get an arrow to go fast enough out of a traditional bow, or a compound bow, for that matter, or a crossbow, for that matter, to beat the time that the sound gets there. A deer's reaction time is literally four times faster than a human for everything. That means that they, from the time they hear the sound till they process the sound and react, the processing time, four times faster than us. The reaction time, four times faster than that. Everything is four times faster than what we can. So they have plenty of time to react. And again, having over a hundred shots filmed right over my head with that GoPro right here, poof, at live animals, watching their reaction time off the charts, straight up off the charts, what they can get away with in such a short amount of time. That, whatever that 10 point was this year in one of my Midwest states, you've seen in my Patreon video, V-logs from the Midwest trips, you know, right there, right there, you know, poof, and I shoot, and that thing literally dropped down. I was wearing rain gear without an arm guard and it caught my, that first light rain gear, made a little smack on there. That sound, that deer literally dropped down so low and rolled that his belly touched the ground and my arrow ended up hitting him high. And then when he took off, my arrow was pointing almost straight down. It fell right out, but it's pointing down because he was so far tipped over like that to get out of there. And that was on a, like a 16 yard shot. Okay. Understand that we cannot, and I can show you again, if you're my Patreon, you see countless, countless examples of this. You cannot beat the noise factor. I don't care how much you try. Now you can reduce it. How do you reduce it? Shooting a heavier arrow matters. Heavier arrows are going to absorb sound better than a lightweight arrow does. And there is no denying that a heavy arrow is going to be quieter than a lighter arrow. It's just simple physics is how it works out. You can also do whatever you can to your bow to make it as quiet as possible. Shoot a brace height, find a brace height sweet spot that's going to really sound really good for your bow and get rid of that twang and kind of get it to a thud and make everything work. And it doesn't hit your arm and you get all that. Brace height matters. You can tune it in for that. The other thing is this right here. Look at the arrows. Can you see that helical on the end of my arrows there? And how much helical is on those feathers? How aggressive that helical is that's on there? That matters. That is not by mistake. When you watch my arrow making videos, you see that I have marks on my jigs. This is not, this didn't just happen overnight. Okay, this level here. Yes, I shoot a high back feather, but I also shoot a shorter feather. These are only three, these feathers are three and three quarter inches long, but they are high back and that is done. And you can see the helical amount on this and how much curl they have to them. And that again is on purpose. I tested that. I figured that out. What I did is actually had Tina, my wife, stand behind a tree, a big oak tree, when we were in Michigan, and I would shoot past her and you gotta have the talk, you know, as you're doing it. Okay, arrow coming, three, two, one. Here it comes. And then shoot, boom. And you shoot that arrow and you shoot them a few different ways. And you say, which one was louder? One, two, or three? What she's back there listening to is she's standing behind that tree and the arrow's going by her. She's a big tree, no chance to hit her. But as that arrow goes by, she's listening for, whew, okay, and she's hoping to find one and she just goes, whew, rather than find one, goes, whew. Okay, that's the difference there. So she's looking for the quieter one to tell me. And then I can know how far to go, how much helical I can get away with before it starts to get too loud, but yet I still got a lot of spin and steer on my arrows. I want the helical. The helical on my arrow controls and overpowers my broadheads. That's a beautiful thing. We like helical. Helical is good. Plus I shoot single bevel heads. So the helical help rolls, sorry, seeing things down there. The helical helps roll the arrow for my single bevel broadhead. So it's win-win all the way around on arrow two. So it's a great thing. So dial your feathers in when you can. This is one that you can do later on. It takes time. Again, you're gonna, and you gotta be fletching your own for the most part. But you're gonna fletch one, you're gonna strip them down, you're gonna fletch it up, you're gonna try shooting it and compare three. Three different levels of helical. Usually the one that's less helical is gonna be better, but I'm looking for that fine tuning mix of as much helical as I can before I start getting the noise too loud. That's what I was after. All this stuff matters, but on the same note, it doesn't matter because of the fact that I got a horrible yellow fly bite and it drives me nuts and it's on the underside of my arm right there. But the helical amount is going to make a difference. But yet again, not as much because this is really detailed fine tuning. But it's something you can mess with. Your broadhead is another one. Your broadhead flight, there is a reason that I shoot specifically solid broadheads. I do not shoot a vented broadhead because vented broadheads for me with the amount of helical I shoot, doesn't matter who makes it, they make noise. You know, when it shoots right there. You draw, you shoot, and it's what it does, through the air like that because mine are spinning so fast and that wind gets through there and it makes that noise. I've tried filing the inside edges of those to get rid of that hard edge on them and using Dremel in there to do it. I've tried everything. I cannot get them to fly consistently good. They might do all right, but then if I get a windy day, they're whistling. So I don't shoot vented heads. Make sure that your broadheads are going to fly right. Test your equipment. Get it out, shoot it, see what works, make everything as quiet as you possibly can, and then understand that no matter what you do, it's never quiet enough. And it doesn't make any difference. Nothing you do can beat them. How do you do better for that for shooting? When we are hunting and we are shooting at a live animal, it is best to aim low. Some people like to aim to miss, meaning like if that animal's there, aiming right in it, like aim to go right through this pocket underneath them, right underneath them at that pocket and hope they drop into it. Others will say aim right for the bottom, you know, right at heart shot, let them drop into it. You can go either way with this. I personally find that mature bucks normally are less prone to drop, where the does and yearlings are more likely to drop and the button bucks are less likely to drop. So it's all a crap shoot of all sorts of different variables. Okay, there's no predicting what's going to happen. I do believe that shooting to aim low is very, very important. I always aim for that bottom. I aim for that, almost for that heart shot every time on a deer. Now on a hog, I don't. On a hog, I'm aiming to hit exactly where I want on a hog. With a deer, I'm aiming to hit a little bit lower, hoping they're going to drop into it a little bit. Every animal is moving. Unfortunately, even hogs, they're always moving. Usually a hog is going forward. So with the hog, I will aim where I want, but I'm going to stick real tight, right up to straight up the leg, right there. And I want to be there. Cause most likely if he stays still, I'm getting right in there anyway. And if he doesn't, and he moves, I'm going to usually get right there behind the shoulder and be okay. So these are things that matter the most for you that you're going to shoot because they're gonna hear your bow. So the misconception of the fact that your bow is quiet enough that they can't hear you, it's false. It makes no sense. Do everything you can to get your stuff as quiet as you can, cause it helps. But don't think for a second it's going to save you. Questions, comments, put them below. Thanks for watching.