I can blow a 20 dollar bill and not blink an eye, but I will dig with broke shovel in 90 degree weather for three hours to find a 10 dollar arrow. I can't stand loosing an arrow. :banghead:
I am right there with you. I enjoy finding arrows, its kinda like hunting all over again.
Ive spent hours looking for arrows myself. If I had lost a ten dollar bill I would probably spend less than a minute looking for it.
sad isnt it?
i am with you guys i can not stand to lose an arrow. the last one i lost i shot a possum and he ran up a tree with my arrow sticking out both sides. i waited for an hour for him to fall out but he did not fall. went to check the next morning and no possum and no arrow. should have used a broadhead instead of a field point
I never lost one yet. I may quit looking for one a while til I get back in that area though.
One reason I never got too good in golf was I spent more time looking for golf balls than trying to knock one in a hole.
I still look in lost arrow buckets at ranges I know the arrow is at. Sad part is I know exactly what each arrow looks like that is at a certain club.
There's one that I've looked for for 2 years now. It's a spot I normally practice. It must be lost in the third dimension! Eats me up every time. I know it's there...somewhere.
I have lost a few in tree's. that's always a good time
Get some duck training scent. Dab some on the fletching. Send in the Labrador! My old girl, Mudd, would scratch em out of the heavy forrest duff in Virginia. Hate leaving an arrow to recycle nsturally
Ages from now archeologists will excavate the swamp behind my backstop and write of what must have been an archery battle of epic proportions.
:thumbsup:
Try teaching your pups to find them. It's easy and just like throwing a ball in the weeds with your scent on it and the dog finding it. Same thing with an arrow but a little harder because it doesn't hold as much scent as they are metal, carbon and wood. Make sure you rub your scent/ sweaty hands on them the first few times. Also a reward when they find them is needed a ball or some toy. So if they will hunt for a ball in the weeds they can be trained to find arrows.
my wife has been shooting for about 2.5 years and has lost one arrow and that was because it was at a shoot where we weren't members of the club and we had to move on and it was a cheap arrow. She looks after them like they are her kids or something. Spend part of your life dirt poor and things like that matter! I'm a very lucky man!
I cannot stand losing arrows. I will search to the point that it becomes ridiculous.
but the feeling when you find an arrow
Haha I thought I was the only one, I lost a CX Heritage 150 one time at my neighbors 3D range, I under shot a target in March and the ground was frozen it skipped off the ground thought I saw right where it went,we looked for days and when ever we shot the range, never found it!Finally just gave up! 2 years later my son lost an arrow on the same target, skipped and went rattling thru the woods, we didn't find that one either, my neighbor calls me last spring says he found my sons arrow and guess what my Heritage 150 it was back in the woods alot farther back than we normally look other than the feathers it looked like new! Go figure!
Yep. Looked for an hour and a half for a $10 carbon I lost at a shoot last weekend. I usually shoot woodies, and while I put a lot of time into making them, they don't "cost" as much as carbons. Might not have looked as hard for a woodie. Didn't find the carbon. Did find the poison ivy though. :dunno:
Ha ha all very true. I'm without question part of this Hunt Club. Maybe born of stubbornness idk but The one that gets away on my normal shooting range at hunting camp keeps me looking sometimes following years. I think raking a heavy carpet of leaves in the fall is my least favorite method of discovery and finding the wrong arrow that is finding an arrow you were not looking for is the 2nd best feeling :)
two years ago at the Hawkeye traditional shoot looking for my arrow I found a cane arrow with natural turkey fletching attached with sinew, self nock. I marveled at it, it was beautiful!
Yep! Losing arrows bites!!!!!!!
Bisch
My first trad 3d shoot I took a dozen arrows, lost 10 and broke 1 on a rock.
After that I figured out why guys like bright, colorful fletchings.
Gosh I despise losing arrows especially in my yard, but also while hunting. One time a few seasons ago while hunting with my dad I took an up hill shot at a deer as we were leaving the area where my stand was positioned. I missed just over its back so I thought should be easy to find the arrow. My dad and I searched for at least an hour, sweeping leaves off the forest floor and everything. Extremely pissed at this point I decided to call it quits. We took a 90 degree turn from where the deer was when I shot and began exiting the woods; low and behold about 30 yards ahead lay my arrow. Needless to say we looked at each other in disbelief. How could a broadhead tipped arrow end up 30 yards to the left of where I shot? My only conclusion to this day is that a ghost moved it there :dunno:
When I shoot short the arrow always ends up completely hidden after sliding under the grass. Fifteen minutes of shooting followed by 2 hours of fruitless searching.
Then the dogs find it a week later.
I can't believe how excited and satisfied I feel at getting that rusty tipped, fletchless, dog chewed, nock missing, piece of carbon back.
Priceless!
QuoteOriginally posted by Orion:
Yep. Looked for an hour and a half for a $10 carbon I lost at a shoot last weekend. I usually shoot woodies, and while I put a lot of time into making them, they don't "cost" as much as carbons. Might not have looked as hard for a woodie. Didn't find the carbon. Did find the poison ivy though. :dunno:
I must be buying the wrong arrows. Mine usually run about $15 per. Every time I lose one, I say to myself, "nice job losing $15 pal". I too check the lost and found bins at my local archery clubs and know exactly which arrows are still out there.
I am currently looking for one I lost a couple of days ago behond my 3D target. It caromed off a rock and I probably won't find it for a while but I'll always have an eye peeled.....it's crazy!
Update: found it!
I bought some VAP arrow shafts and made a dozen arrows. Most expensive arrows I've ever shot. First time out on the range, I skipped one off the top of a target bale and it drifted 50 - 80 yards back of the target into some weeds. I've been back 3 times looking for it, twice with my metal detector. Found 8 or so other arrows, but not the one I lost. The difficulty is that the weeds are high and it's hard to get the metal detector close to the ground, and there's not much metal in the VAP's to pick up, so I think all I'm doing is finding other people's arrows. I've seriously considered bringing my weed wacker from home and weed wacking the whole lot, even though I know that would be a ridiculous waste of time even for a $15 arrow, but that's how much it bugged me to lose that arrow on the very first shot.
Trying orange, yellow, chartreuse, and even pink I still haven't found a fletch color that is totally 'loss proof'..depending on the time of day and light they all seem to find a way to blend in. Add to that the way field point arrows have a knack for going under the root layer of grass or under leaves..frustration!!!
So far the most loss resistant arrows for me have been ones tipped with judos.
Now that's funny, NBK! :biglaugh:
Once I shot an arrow with a broadhead in my suburban backyard, to see how they were flying... and they weren't flying well. It missed the target and disappeared in the direction of my neighbor's back yard. There's a lot of open ground, and no one was in danger of being hit, but I did NOT want the neighbor finding the arrow. I spent probably 2-3 hours digging around, using a rake, tearing up my grass, sneaking around the neighbor's yard... and finally had to give up because it was dark. The next morning I went out at dawn and started again. After about a half hour, I found it.
That was nerve-wracking. I could just feel a lawsuit breathing down my neck as I looked for that thing.
I am with the rest of you guys. When I lose an arrow I know that it will more than likely be broke. Our range is in the mountains and the terrain is not arrow friendly. I try and keep in mind what one of my fellow club members said to me after spending time helping me look for an arrow, "arrows are expendable ammo" lose one, make a new one. Of course that can only go as far as my budget but I keep buying shafts for the wife and me until she retires in Nov.
Only one I ever lost was a complete pass through on a doe. It was an evening hunt and was dark by the time I got out of the stand to track. It was a good hit and I had a great bloodtrail, found her in short order. Went back the next morning with my dad to look for the arrow to no avail. Hunted that general area for several more years, always keeping an eye out as I traveled anywhere near there. I never will quit looking for that one, but if I have / had to lose one...I just chalk it up as a sacrifice to the "archery gods".
Like a wise archer told me once... A lost arrow still has shots left. If you break one at least you know it's done. That lost one still has work to do.
,,, speaking of that I have to go see if anyone found the one I lost at the range last week... I had an hour to shoot and spent 45 minutes looking for one arrow.
It used to bother me a lot, but with experience I got over it. I still will look for quite a while but don't worry over it. If cedar shafts left in the woods would sprout into cedar trees, there are several properties in Middle Georgia that would have dense cedar forests on them.
As I have aged I have got a lot smarter about what I am shooting when there is a possibility of losing an arrow...my hunting arrows are about 160 bucks a dozen...my 3D arrows are 60
DDave
If I leave my wife at home I almost never have to look for arrows :-). Take her with me and im ordering her another dozens arrows, yeesh.
QuoteOriginally posted by PERUN:
but the feeling when you find an arrow
I hear you man!!!
I keep feeding my pumphouse arrows. I should wrest a few from it. They're as good as lost in there with the black widows.
I lose as many as I make, I swear. I hope I get better with practice...
The odd thing to me is the number of times you'll find an arrow that was lost some time ago that's more or less in plain view. Happened to me this morning. We were searching around in the brush for a friend's lost arrow, when he reached down and picked up one of mine that I lost months ago. I don't remember this specific arrow, but it is a place I have lost arrows, and I've never given up on a lost arrow until I've gone back more than once for longer periods of looking when I'm not holding people up. I've found other people's arrows the same way: just look down and there it is for anyone to see.
I've lose one in all 50 states. I am begining to think it's just part of the game. After I've hunted for longer then it would take me to build another I just build another.
I lost one here, but I really didn't go look for it.
(http://i1201.photobucket.com/albums/bb356/elknutz/IMG_0190.jpg) (http://s1201.photobucket.com/user/elknutz/media/IMG_0190.jpg.html)
I did get him with the 2nd shot. I find you can often get a 2nd shot on fake elk when they are standing in a river.
(http://i1201.photobucket.com/albums/bb356/elknutz/IMG_0191.jpg) (http://s1201.photobucket.com/user/elknutz/media/IMG_0191.jpg.html)
would rather break them than lose them. at least then i know what happened. even when i break them though, i try to find all the pieces! at least save the point.
I made up 6 new arrows for my son. He and his buddy lost the first one on the very first shot. After about 30 minutes of searching they came back to the house with 3 found arrows, none of which was the one they just lost. Guess we'll consider that one seed for the next big search.
If you never lose them or break them your not having any fun. - Ground squirrel hunter. I will hunt for them for weeks also.
Too that usually isn't the case on real elk Elknutz!
Teach a kid(ages 14 to 18) to shoot and you will learn to live with lost arrows. They think cause they are wood they literally grow on trees. Oh and they didnt buy them either.
QuoteOriginally posted by NBK:
Ages from now archeologists will excavate the swamp behind my backstop and write of what must have been an archery battle of epic proportions.
Lol, the pasture behind my house too.
I bought a metal detector to find mine. Even with woodies you still have the metal tip. :)
Funny how easy they are to find after one set of seasons have erased the feathers.
I don't have much problem with losing an arrow. Losing the field points, however, is a totally different situation. I shoot some tips that no one makes any longer. A local sporting goods store was going out of business and I bought all they had for a nickel each. Now I'll search for hours to find that 5 cent point! I can replace shafts. I can't replace the points.
Here's a lost arrow found story that might be a little hard to believe.
A couple of years ago, I lost a woody behind a target. One year later, at the same shoot, we were looking for my brother's arrow behind the same target, and danged if we didn't find my arrow from the year before. I know it was mine because of the distinctive constrution and fletching and the fact that I write the arrow spine and weight between the fletching on all my arrows.
The amazing thing was that the arrow looked like I had just pulled it from my quiver. Finish hadn't started rotting away and the feathers weren't matted and falling off, but looked as fresh as the day I put them on the arrow.
Actually, wasn't too hard to figure out what happened. Someone likely found my arrow the same weekend, if not the same day I lost it, and deposited it in the club's lost arrow bin. This is a club I only visit once a year for its 3-D shoot. The subsequent year, someone must have pulled it out of the lost arrow bin and shot it, just happening to lose it at the same target I did a year earlier.
It's also possible that the person who found it just held onto it for a year. If so, he didn't shoot it much, because the arrow was still in almost new condition.
Regardless, if my brother hadn't missed that target on year two, we would never have found/known about that arrow.
How's that for coincidence. And no, my brother wasn't playing a trick on me.
I have a reputation among my shooting buddies that I despise loosing an arrow.
This year we found a buddie's arrow behind a target that his group had shot earlier in the day and that arrow got a lot of "airtime" between when we found it and when I gave it back to him. We all shot it. The rational was "It was lost and given up. If it makes it back all the better."
What is so cool is that when Trad Archers find an arrow they always return it to the lost arrow bucket. This is a phenomenon that is hard for new comers to imagine. But its a great thing.
I hate to lose an arrow. So I say the best thing to do is not miss. Unfortunately the saying and my shooting ability doesn't always match up.
This year at Compton I lost an arrow. Shot over the back on a deer on the Red Course. It landed in some long grass and I looked for it 3 different times and never found it. I did find several other arrows however, and turned them in.
I checked those buckets: One w/ woodies, one w/ aluminum, one w/ carbon, daily. Do you know it took those lazy buggers 3 days to find my lost arrow! Can you believe it!! LOL :clapper: