Turkey Feathers

[Bowhunter57]

I decided to try my hand at cutting, grinding, trimming and fletching some of the real turkey feathers, from the Tom I shot this spring. I've been building arrows, since '77 and have always enjoyed it. I was going to buy a feather burner, because I'd heard some bad things about feather choppers. Then I thought I'd try just cutting them with a good pair of scissors and it worked better than I thought.
I'll be hunting with these arrows, this fall.

 

[Bowhunter57]

I'm always tinkering with arrows and trying to fine tune or just build something different and see how it flies. I've been building arrows since '77 and enjoy it.

The standard arrow build for both my recurve and longbow is a GT 500 spine with a 200 gr. tip weight, 490 TAW, 20% FOC and 3" feathers.
Just for fun, I built a "tank arrow" from a 400 spine with a 250 gr. tip weight, a 100 gr. insert for a 665 TAW and a 26% FOC. These arrows hit like a freight train, but are done at 20 yards....hold over at 25 yards is silly. I doubt that I'll hunt with them, but it was interesting to see how this build turned out.

As good as the new turkey feathers fly, they're a bit oversized and because of that they're noisy. They've definitely have that "hiss of death" and I don't need any "forewarning arrows" making any extra noise.
Many years ago I shot some Maxi-Fletch feathers that were 5 3/4" long, in a banana cut. They were awesome for flight control, accuracy and they were quiet too. I took the scissors to one arrow, shot it and was pleasantly surprised at how well it flew, had good accuracy and was very quiet out to 30 yards. I ended up cutting them all down.

 

[Bowhunter57]

Thought I'd add this....
I was shooting those 665 "tank arrows" this evening and my 490 turkey feather arrows. Both were hitting good, but I thought a nice compromise would be to put the 250 gr. field tips on the 490 arrows and see how they fly.

They seem to be the "happy medium" of both weights. The bow is quiet, arrow flight is good and I think I have a new hunting arrow. TAW at 540 with a 23.3% FOC....and turkey feathers too.