For most archery hunters, the quest for max­i­mum pen­e­tra­tion is nev­er end­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, many feel that goal can be achieved by sim­ply pur­chas­ing the “latest and great­est” piece of kit for their bow set up. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

     I firm­ly be­lieve that we at Day Six are the per­fect blend of real world ex­pe­ri­ence hunters com­bined with en­gi­neer­ing back­grounds. While the “sci­ence” and “data” may say one thing, the em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence from decades in the field may tell anoth­er sto­ry. So at the end of the day it re­al­ly boils down to a few sim­ple fac­tors and a lit­tle common sense.

     Pen­e­tra­tion is a re­sult of per­fect ar­row flight for the most part, with only a small frac­tion of the con­tribut­ing fac­tors be­ing every­thing else....in­clud­ing the ac­tu­al gear. How­ev­er, a quick scroll through so­cial me­dia or the in­ter­net will re­sult in a mul­ti­tude of mi­cro in­flu­encers tout­ing the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic break through in ar­row or broad­head per­for­mance that is the magic bean. While some things do cre­ate small per­cent­age im­prove­ments, with­out per­fect ar­row flight noth­ing else mat­ters.

     So, how do you achieve per­fect ar­row flight? Well there’s many ap­proach­es to the tun­ing process, but here’s how we do it at Day Six:

Con­cepts:

1. The con­cept is sim­ple, if the vanes don’t have to steer or cor­rect the shaft, then all they have to do is make cor­rec­tions for the broad­head steer­age.

2. Pa­per tun­ing is the equiv­a­lent of bore sight­ing a ri­fle, it only gets you started.

3. Most im­por­tant­ly, if the vanes don’t have to steer the ar­row on a per­fect­ly ex­e­cut­ed shot by the shoot­er, then they are in “re­serve” for when the shoot­er torques the crap out of his bow. For those read­ers that are think­ing that this doesn’t ap­ply to you.....it 100% ap­plies to you! Bad form and specif­ical­ly grip torque is the num- ber one rea­son for bad ar­row flight.

The Set Up:

1. Set your rest cen­ter at 13/16” from the side of the ris­er.

2. Set your rest and nock point height to al­low the shaft to be cen­tered on the Berg­er hole.

3. Pa­per tune at 10’ or so as a start­ing point. Rest ad­just­ments should be oppo­site that of the nock tear left to right and the same di­rec­tion up and down.

The Day Six bare shaft tun­ing process:

1. Sight your bow in with a fletched ar­row and field point at 20 yards.

2. Once sight­ed in, shoot a bare shaft and field point to see when and how the shaft im­pacts in re­la­tion to the fletched ar­row.

3. For left or right im­pacts move the rest 1/32” at a time to­wards the bare shaft. As a note: if you’re 6” or more left or right of the fletched ar­row, the ad­just­ments need­ed will be more than what can be ac­com­plished with rest ad­just­ments and you’ll need to have the cams ad­just­ed.

4. For high and low im­pacts you’ll want to move your rest op­po­site of the bare shaft im­pact point. As a note: some high and low im­pacts can­not be cor­rect­ed with sim­ple rest and nock point ad­just­ments. If so, you’re most like­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cam tim­ing is­sue and need to have them ad­just­ed.

The goal is to have the bare shaft and fletched ar­row hit­ting in the same spot. At that point the fletch­ings are only “along for the ride” un­til a broad­head is in­stalled.

     Re­mem­ber, when you make a rest ad­just­ment both the fletched and bare shafts are go­ing to move to­wards the di­rec­tion the rest was ad­just­ed. Once the two are hitting to­geth­er you can then make the nec­es­sary sight ad­just­ments to bring both back to bulls­eye.

     It’s re­al­ly a very sim­ple process and if you are ex­e­cut­ing a good re­peat­able shot it, shouldn’t take long. The beau­ty of this is that you don’t need to shoot expen­sive broad­heads to “broad­head tune”, once the bare shaft and fletched arrow are hit­ting to­geth­er your broad­heads will hit the same.

     Good luck and as al­ways we are here to help so please don’t hes­i­tate to reach out if you need as­sistance.