To four fletch or not to four fletch, that is the question.....

One of the most com­mon ques­tions we re­ceive dai­ly is whether to choose four fletch or three fletch? What are the ben­e­fits and ad­van­tages of each, and why?

The an­swer is not a sim­ple yes or no for most, but for ex­pe­ri­enced hunters it
is....yes. But, be­fore the “grain coun­ters” re­volt in hor­ror and de­clare their dis­sat­is­fac­tion in the lack of de­tail, graphs, charts and spread sheets with such a sim­ple an­swer, I’ll expand with the DATA to keep all con­tin­gents hap­py.

The pri­ma­ry job of fletch­ing is to sta­bi­lize an ar­row as quick­ly as pos­si­ble by way
of ro­ta­tion. For most shoot­ers, the fletch­ing has to work “over­time” to ac­com­plish this task due to poor tune or poor shot ex­e­cu­tion. So a four fletch ar­row will “re­cov­er” faster which is an ad­van­tage. Should the ar­row en­counter a de­flec­tion on its path to the tar­get, a four fletch will “re­cov­er” slight­ly faster and sta­bi­lize the ar­row be­fore impact. With the ad­di­tion of a broad­head, the above is­sues are only mag­ni­fied, fur­ther re­in­forc­ing the ben­e­fits of four fletch.

So, why doesn’t every­one shoot for fletch then? Well, there’s al­ways cons to accom­pa­ny pros.....

Noise is cer­tain­ly a ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tion for a hunt­ing ar­row and a four fletch arrow does gen­er­ate a high­er deci­bel lev­el than three fletch by way of ad­di­tion­al drag. To that end, that ad­di­tion­al drag also re­duces speed slight­ly. How much, well our test­ing only in­di­cates only 1-2 fps....which to some (the grain count­ing con­tin­gent) is a deal break­er. In truth, if a bow is prop­er­ly tuned and shot ex­e­cu­tion is cor­rect, the fletch­ings should just be “along for the ride” as their pri­ma­ry task is cor­rec­tion. If there’s noth­ing to cor­rect, then they serve no pur­pose.

So now that the de­tails have been dis­cussed and the “grain coun­ters” are slight­ly sat­is­fied, why is the an­swer a sim­ple yes for ex­pe­ri­enced hunters? The fol­low up shot....that’s it in a nut­shell.

Ex­pe­ri­enced hunters know that the fol­low up shot whether be­cause of an ini­tial miss or just an in­sur­ance sec­ond ar­row is a re­al­i­ty and be­ing pre­pared for that is paramount. So how does a four fletch ar­row aid in this? The abil­i­ty to load a sec­ond ar­row quick­ly with­out hav­ing to take your eyes off the an­i­mal is more im­por­tant than all the pros and cons above in my opin­ion. As a tra­di­tion­al hunter for more than 25 years, the re­al­i­ty is MANY of the an­i­mals I’ve killed have come af­ter I’ve sent a “warn­ing” shot down range. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, even with a com­pound many times a fol­low up ar­row on an an­i­mal I knew was hit “per­fect” has been the fa­tal ar­row.

To put a bow on this, we are a hunt­ing com­pa­ny. Our philoso­phies only cen­ter
around fill­ing tags con­sis­tent­ly and with ef­fi­cien­cy. We are not go­ing to make de­ci-
sions and rec­om­men­da­tions based upon “data”, rather real world ex­pe­ri­ence that we love to share to make you, our cus­tomers, more suc­cess­ful.

- Bryan Broderick, Day Six Gear