This month’s On Target focuses on doing a late-season safety check of your equipment.

I’ve just come back from an event and started to look over my loaner equipment. In the first picture, notice the nock on the left arrow is cracked, the nock on the arrow on the right easily twisted off and required some superglue.

Pulling more arrows out of the quiver, I was able to easily twist off an arrow tip as well.

While inspecting arrow shafts, I thought I saw a very small crack. Giving the shaft a small twist, it shattered in my hands. This is the second time I’ve seen this. Lesson learned: darker shafts can hide splits.

 

Lastly, I took a beat up target off a piece of foam to replace it with a new target. The foam was so badly shot up it split. Any arrows shot at it would all blow through resulting in possible damage or loss of the arrows.

 

I’d like to take a moment to thank my editor, Mistress Arianna, for correcting my spelling, grammar, and punctuation that makes this article readable.

As always I would love to hear some questions or comments.

This month’s safety tip: never run down range. You may come across an arrow in the ground, or as we call it, “deadwood,” and trip.

In service,

THL Deryk Archer