Category: Gear

I’m going to skip the whole philosophical debate about illuminated nocks and hunting for this post. For the safety of other human beings, I need to be shooting a highly visible arrow if I get a shot at a black Cape Buffalo. While fletchings of certain colors and mounting methods can make my black arrow better, they can’t match the visibility of illuminated nocks.

In the past I used Nocturnal brand nocks with my Black Eagle arrows. For the most part they worked very well. On the plus side, I NEVER had a single shot fail to light it up. That a pretty big thing in the pros column. The cons: I did have them go off in blinds and on stand by bumping the string. Even worse when hunting hogs at night is having to stare into that nock trying to find the little hole with a knife tip to turn it off. Speaking of that knife tip, I HATE that you have to have some tool to turn them off.

I went to the local archery shop (might as well be my second home) to buy some Nocturnals and the owner showed me his arrows setup with Carbon Express “Launchpad” nocks. The price is the exact same. The CE is supposed to be lighter at 18.5 grains, but on my scale they both read 20 grains. The final difference, no tools to turn off the CE nock, just pull and twist.  I bought one pack and shot them that night. Sure enough, they performed exactly as promised and I was very happy with the results.

I will note, this “one size fits most” is really on the tight side of my Black Eagle Outlaws in .300 spine. Every time I needed the nock tool to push them in.

Happy as I was I bought a second pack and outfitted a few more practice arrows with them. On two arrows I couldn’t get them to sit all the way in, so I left a tiny gap figuring the first time I shot them they would settle in. Maybe 1/32″ extra gap. Minuscule.  When I shot those two arrows, they lit. On the second shot, neither of them lit. On 5 more consecutive shots they failed to light.  I pulled them out and they were working perfectly. I reinstalled them by hand to the proper mounting depth and they worked perfectly on every shot since then.

I guess it pays to follow the instructions. I’m glad I resolved this before getting frustrated and going back to Nockturnals. I really don’t want to need tools afield just to deal with my nocks, especially true with TSA and international travel on the horizon. Simple is best.

*** UPDATE*** I recently found out that my Muddy Pro Sticks were recalled years ago. I tried to get in touch with Muddy via their website to get replacement parts to make my sticks safe, but I never received any replies. Although I was perfectly happy with the idea of buying the parts and paying shipping to keep my beloved sticks, it seems they must be terribly busy with other things. Now I have Lone Wolf climbing sticks, but I will leave the rest of the post as it originally read.

I have used maybe a few dozen treestands at this point, and I’ve owned 5 different hang on models and 7 different pairs of sticks to use with them. While I know lots of guys who’ve used many more over many more years, one good thing is that all of my experience at this point has been in the last 6 years.

When it came time for me to invest I thought long and hard about the different styles, and I immediately eliminated ladder stands due to my mobility requirements. I like the idea of a climber and have many friends that love them, but you always end up with the “hunting the tree instead of hunting the spot” problem. While a hang on system maybe have more parts, you can get into some crazy trees and sometimes it’s those crazy trees that are where the animals are going to pass. I decided that a hang on stand would be right for me.

I had many friends encourage me to invest in a Lone Wolf, and I ignored them and bought a bunch of cheaper stands instead. In total I bought 4 stands that together cost much more than a Lone Wolf, and then I bought the Lone Wolf and gave away all the other ones. I purchased the Lone Wolf Alpha 2 at Cabelas using points. While I love this stand, had I needed to pay cash out of my wallet I would have bought a XOP Air Raid instead.

While I think my stand was amazing coming out of the package, I was inspired by Jason at the TBWPODCAST to do a little better. I wrote up how I used rubber, zip ties, and military surplus gear to drastically improve how quiet and comfortable my stand is to use. Read about it HERE if you missed it before. The final modification I made was to remove the beloved “batwing” and go with an EZ-Hang strap. Look at my zip tie and Yak Grips in the Sticktalk article, those are really slick!

With my treestand 100% awesome, now I needed sticks to get me up there. Muddy had just released their new Pro Sticks and I was intrigued. While I much prefer three long sticks to 4 short ones, these had a few HUGE advantages over the LW sticks. First the rope and cam buckle system is absolutely perfect. It is actually impossible to make metal to metal noise with one of these sticks. Second, every step is a double step so you don’t have to swap your step from side to side. As a nice bonus they are geared together so if you pull one side down it brings the other side along with it.

Assuming I’d hang my first stick at waist or chest height, I could set my second stick across the top of the first. That left me two sticks to figure out. I ended up putting two loops on each side of my harness at my waist, but out of the way of my lineman’s belt loops. I also added 550 cord loops to two of my sticks, now I can click them in to my waist with rubber covered mini carabiners. Other than the loops on two of them, I have not modified them in any structural way. I did wrap them with Howie’s Hockey Tape on a slow winter weekend last year, but functionally they are just like they came from the factory.

So aside from the hardware, there is one trick that makes all of this work especially good for me. I walk to my tree with my stand on my back, and my backpack hanging on it. I have my bow in my right hand, and my sticks in my left. At the bottom of the tree I always do the exact same thing:

1. I put everything on the ground.
2. I put on my harness, I put my EZ-Hang strap in my right cargo pocket, and my second strap in my left cargo pocket.
3. I take my lineman’s belt and attach it to my harness.
4. I have a rope permanently attached to the top handle of my backpack, I fish it all out and make sure its tangle free.
5. There is a loop 6′ up from the backpack handle, I secure the top limb of my longbow to that.
6. The every end of the 30′ rope has a loop on it, I attach it to my right side mini carabiner.
7. I put the stand on my back like a backpack, without using the waist belt.
8. I put the first stick on the tree, balance the second stick on the first, then put my other two sticks on my sides with the mini carabiners.
9. I climb up on the first step and wrap my lineman’s belt around the tree and adjust the prussic knot to fit.
10. Put on the second stick, climb up to the bottom step of it.
11. Pull the third stick off my right side, mount it, climb onto it’s bottom step.
12. Pull the fourth stick off my left side, mount it, climb up to it’s bottom step.
13. Take EZ-Hang strap out of my right cargo pocket, put it chest high and cinch it up.
14. Get a really good check on the lineman’s belt, loosen up the shoulder straps, and hang the stand on the EZ-Hang.
15. Make all adjustments for the platform angle, etc.
16. Install the second strap on the bottom button, cinch it up tight, double check platform level, try to twist sideways, etc.
17. Take rope going to the backpack and longbow off the mini carabiner, put it on the top (unused) “button” on the stand.
18. From top step, install tree tether as high up as I can reach, click the strap from my back onto it.
19. With seat up, step down from the top step of the fourth stick onto the platform.
20. Give it a one legged kick/push/and apply weight while keeping 3 other points of contact.
21. Move second foot over, feel it out, remove lineman’s belt.
22. Drag up bow, put on seat.
23. Put backpack’s handle on the top step of the top stick. Secure excess rope.
24. Sit down, put an arrow on the string, put the lower limb in my boot, and hunt!

OK, that looks like a lot of steps but as long as you prepare at the base of the tree for the steps you’re about to perform, it just flows from one thing to the next.

One thing I realized in typing this up, instead of putting the loop on the string between the backpack and the treestand, I want a 6′ rope on the bottom of the backpack to go to the bow. This way I can drag up the heavy backpack and hang it then bring up my bow last (without a second haul rope.) It is good to maintain a “beginners mind”!

When I restarted my archery journey as a man, I went immediately to the aluminum arrows I was accustomed to as a boy. I think that xx75s, xx78s and Legacy shafts are a great way to learn a lot about arrow building and tuning, and I’m glad for all of the arrows I built, shot, lost, and broke. The experience and knowledge gained was invaluable!

After a few years of that, as I was ready to really set my sights on hunting. I went back and forth on carbon as an arrow material for quite a while, but eventually I did build a few dozen. Augmenting what I knew with what I learned, I found the material to be superior to aluminum for my hunting needs. The only problem I had with carbon was that the shafts were so expensive! The shafts I was using where $15 per shaft at the local pro shop.

When Simply Traditional started carrying Black Eagle I had the opportunity to shoot some of the first two sets that came in.  I spent some time shooting the Carnivores as well as the Zombie Slayers. They both made fine arrows, but I wasn’t drawn to change my setup for either of those shaft materials based on performance or savings.

A short time later the Outlaws were announced. They were much cheaper for bare shaft purchases, and they held an even lighter Grain-Per-Inch than the previous models at .300 spine. Since I am a believer in high FOC I want my shafts well below 10 GPI and these came in at 9.1 GPI. I bought several dozen Outlaw shafts for different bows in different spines and found that I loved them in every application. At this point I converted entirely to Black Eagle Outlaws. At $70 per dozen I was getting 3x as many shafts as the one’s I’d been buying at the local pro shop.

When the much anticipated Vintage shafts came out I purchased a dozen of them as well. These are very much like the other Black Eagle shafts, ut they have a very nice wood grain look to them which is why I picked them for the picture above. They are advertised down to .350 spine, which is what I ordered. They came at 34″ total length which I thought was awesome, but I had to keep cutting them shorter and shorter to compensate for the weaker spine compared to my .300 Outlaws. In the end I needed to remove 150 grains of tip weight to get the Vintage flying right on my test bow and that created an arrow too light for my preferred hunting setup. IF I had a draw over 31 inches, you can bet this would be my go-to shaft!

I will say that all the other Black Eagle shafts hold tighter tolerances than the Outlaws. Outlaws are to a tolerance of .006 and all the other Black Eagles are about twice as good, or even better. Those are tolerances that I could never observe an effect from shooting a glove, finger release, from a stickbow. I’ve very grateful that Black Eagle provides what I believe to be the perfect shaft option for me to build extremely high FOC arrows, at reasonable tolerances, for an incredible price. I intend to shoot .300 spine Outlaws for the foreseeable future.