How to know when your bow needs tuning

Nobody brings a bow in and says “this is untuned.” They say the groups opened up. They say it feels different. They say they used to be able to do this.

A bow going out of tune is gradual, which is why it sneaks up on people. Here is what it looks like from the other side of the counter.

Your groups opened up and your form did not change

This is the most common one and the easiest to misread. Three arrows that used to touch are now spread across a fist. Nothing about your shot feels different.

Before you blame yourself, check the simple stuff: a serving that has separated, a peep that has rotated a few degrees, a rest that has crept. Any of those will open a group without giving you any warning that something mechanical moved.

Your arrows are fishtailing or porpoising

Watch an arrow in flight in good light. If the back end is wagging left and right, that is fishtailing, and it usually points at center shot or a nocking point that is off horizontally. If the back end is bobbing up and down, that is porpoising, and it usually points at nock height.

You can see both of these at fifteen yards if you know what you are looking for. Paper tuning just makes it obvious rather than a judgment call.

Your broadheads hit somewhere your field points do not

This is the one that ruins seasons, and it always shows up in the last week of September.

A field point is a smooth cone. A broadhead has blades, and blades are steering surfaces. A bow that is slightly out of tune will shoot field points into a decent group because the field point has nothing to steer with. Put a broadhead on the same arrow and the bow’s small error gets amplified all the way to the target.

If your broadheads print six inches off your field points at twenty yards, the broadheads are not the problem. The bow is telling you something.

Something got loud

Bows do not get quieter with age. A new rattle, a new tick at the shot, a new hand shock you did not have last year. Those come from somewhere. A loose limb bolt, a cam that has drifted out of time, a stabilizer that backed off, a string stop that hardened.

Loud is a symptom. It is worth ten minutes to find out of what.

It has been a year

Strings stretch. That is not a defect, it is what strings do. As they stretch, draw length creeps, peep rotation shifts, and cam timing drifts. It happens slowly enough that you adapt to it without noticing, which is exactly the problem. You have been compensating for months.

If you shoot leagues or hunt every season, a yearly tune is not maintenance overhead. It is the cheapest accuracy you will ever buy.

What we actually do

When a bow comes to our bench, it gets measured before it gets touched: draw length, draw weight, axle to axle, brace height, cam timing. Then paper tune, center shot, nock height, and a rest and peep check. Then it goes out on our range and gets shot, because a bow that tunes clean on paper and shoots badly at twenty yards has not been tuned, it has been adjusted.

Then it gets looked over a second time before it goes back to you. That rule did not start with us. It started with the man who opened this shop in 1957.

If any of the five things above sound familiar, bring it in. Read more about how we tune a bow, or just call us at (201) 843-7788 and describe what it is doing. Half the time we can tell you over the phone.