Inspecting and Preventing Damage

After repeated use of your equipment it may become damaged putting yourself at others at risk. It is important to make frequent inspections of all of your equipment to make sure there is nothing wrong which could cause problems in any part of its usage. Checking all of your equipment every time you use it before and after can prevent injury and make your equipment last much longer saving you money.

Inspecting the limbs of the bow is always important, repeated flexing of them during drawing puts a lot of stress on them and may cause splintering especially if it doesn’t follow the curve of the bow when drawing. You should also avoid pulling back the string farther than the intended design or dry firing. Dry firing is when you shoot without an arrow. This puts all of the stress that’s normally put into the arrow directly back into the limbs which can end up in broken limbs or worse (Engh 100). As long as you take care of your bow and make sure to check it thoroughly it will be fine. Make sure there are no splinters, check screw tightness, and make sure parts aren’t too worn.

Obviously to be able to shoot effectively you are going to need arrows that are in good shape. Shooting them can over time put a large amount of wear on them from hitting hard objects or pulling them out any way other than straight out. After shooting them “Look for tightly glued vanes or feathers and tightly glued points and nocks. Also, inspect for any broken nocks or cracks or splits along the length of the arrow. Finally, examine the arrows for straightness (Engh 102). Shooting a broken arrow is a good way to get hurt or damage other equipment. You could try to repair arrows if you know what you are doing but replacing them is probably a better idea. Bent arrows can be straightened over time, but the condition they are kept in will need to be changed or else they will most likely get warped again.

How often do you check your archery equipment? Do you think this is often enough?

Engh, Douglas. Archery Fundamentals. IL: Human Kinetics Inc, 2005. Print.