Get Ready for Archery Season: Are You Ready With Arrows?

There's a particular kind of quiet that settles over the woods this time of year. The light gets that gold, low-angle cast in the evenings, the bugs thin out just enough to sit still without losing your mind, and somewhere out there a buck you've never laid eyes on is already rubbing the velvet off his rack. Traditional archery season is right around the corner, and if you've hunted with stick and string for more than a season or two, you already know what I'm about to say.

Your arrows are not a last-minute purchase.

I get the emails and the phone calls every August like clockwork. "Blake, I need a dozen arrows, can you have them out by Friday?" And every year I have to have the same conversation. A rifle hunter can walk into a shop the week before season and walk out fully outfitted. We don't get that luxury. A proper set of traditional arrows — matched, spined correctly for your bow and your draw, fletched the way you like them — takes real time to build right. Rush it, and you're not hunting with arrows anymore. You're hunting with expensive guesses.

Why Wood Arrows Especially Can't Wait

If you shoot wood, and a lot of you reading this do because there's nothing that flies or sounds like a good cedar or Douglas fir shaft off a longbow, you need to hear this plainly: good wood spine stock is getting harder to come by, and it's getting worse every season. The mills that supply quality port orford cedar and fir dowel stock have been squeezed by supply issues for years now, and the tighter, more consistent spine groupings — the stuff you actually want if you're building a matched dozen — go first. I'm talking specifically about that 600 spine range, which happens to be one of the most commonly needed weights for mid-weight traditional hunting setups. When that stock is gone from a run, it's gone. There's no "let me check the back room" fix for wood the way there sometimes is with a manufactured shaft.

This isn't a sales tactic. It's just the honest state of things. If you want wood arrows in your hand before opening day, the order needs to go in now, not after the first frost has you suddenly remembering season is close.

Wood vs. Carbon vs. Aluminum: What Actually Matters

I get asked constantly which material a hunter "should" shoot, and the honest answer is that all three can kill deer clean when they're built and tuned correctly. But they're not interchangeable, and each comes with its own timeline and tradeoffs worth knowing before you order.

Wood is tradition made physical. It's what most of us cut our teeth on, and there's an honesty to hunting with a shaft grown from a tree rather than extruded or drawn through a die. The tradeoff is consistency — even a well-matched dozen will have more shaft-to-shaft variance than carbon, and wood is more sensitive to moisture and temperature than the other two. It also, as I said, takes the longest lead time to source and build correctly, especially in popular spine weights.

Carbon shafts have earned their place in a lot of traditional quivers, and I won't pretend otherwise. They're remarkably consistent spine to spine, tough as anything in this business, and far less affected by weather than wood. Purists sometimes turn their nose up, but a well-built carbon arrow shooting off a recurve or longbow is still traditional archery in every way that matters to me. The downside is mostly a matter of feel — some hunters miss the mass and the sound of wood, and carbon typically needs an internal or external footing to hold up to broadhead impact the way a solid wood shaft naturally does.

Aluminum sits in the middle. It was the dominant traditional hunting shaft for a long stretch before carbon took over, and for good reason — very consistent, reasonably tough, and forgiving to tune. It dents rather than shatters, which some hunters actually prefer, since a bent aluminum shaft tells you plainly it's time to retire it. It doesn't carry quite the romance of wood or the raw durability of carbon, but it's a dependable, well-understood option that's been killing game for generations of bowhunters.

Whichever you shoot, the same rule applies: get your order in now, while there's still time to build it right, test it, and put practice arrows through your bow before you're counting down the days to opening morning.

Gear Up While You're At It — Clearance Picks

While you've got arrows on the brain, it's worth taking a pass through the clearance rack. A few pieces worth grabbing before they're gone:

Bear Armguard — A simple piece of gear that a lot of newer traditional shooters skip, and a lot of veterans have the forearm scar to tell you not to. Protects you from string slap, keeps your sleeve out of the string's path, and it's one less thing to think about at full draw.

Fred Bear Titan Used Bow — These don't come through clearance often. If you've been wanting to add a piece of Bear heritage to your lineup, or you're outfitting a second bow for backup, a Titan at a clearance price is worth a hard look while they last.

"No One Cares, Hunt Harder" T-Shirt — Half joke, half philosophy. It's the kind of shirt that fits the mindset traditional bowhunting demands — nobody's going to hand you a shot opportunity, you've got to go earn it.

Bear Archery Traditional Bow Case — Protecting your longbow or recurve in transit matters more than most hunters give it credit for, especially heading into a season of truck rides, treestand hauls, and airport travel for those of you chasing hunts out of state.

Season's coming whether we're ready or not. Get your arrow order in, check your gear, and let's go earn some venison the old-fashioned way.