Nothing Made Sense: A Mathews ARC 34 Update

How a weekend of 3D shooting in Wisconsin led to a shocking reveal with my Mathews ARC 34.

By Justin Campbell | Equalized Outdoors Newsroom

I recently had the privilege of touring the birthplace of my current bow, the Mathews ARC 34, and of almost all its predecessors, thanks to an invitation from none other than HHA Sports co-owner Chris Hamm himself.   It was part of Mission 41, a collaboration between HHA USA and Centershot Blue, and it was a wonderful weekend that we will cover in its entirety in a future article.

That said, the part of said weekend that’s relevant to this article is a couple of days of 3D shooting at a wonderful course in Norwalk, WI, called “God’s Country Stick n String”.  It was an amazing course that was both beautiful and challenging.

There was only one problem.  My shooting just wasn’t up to the standard I set for myself. I would make difficult shots but then miss routine, straightforward ones, with most misses being low on longer-distance targets.

Throughout the weekend, I struggled in silence with my shooting, trying not to let it seep through and ruin the moments.  I was able to push through it initially, but eventually I traded in my bow for my camera, which was a bit of a welcome reprieve.    

All I wanted to do once I returned home was test my bow properly at the range.  Out in Wisconsin, I noticed that my issues only showed up on targets beyond 35-40 yards, which I hadn’t really shot much of, if I’m honest. 

Undoubtedly, that contributed to the problem, because at those ranges and under the margins, any inconsistencies aren’t easy to detect due to the speed of modern compound bows. 

However, I’d already broadhead-tuned this bow, with fixed blades out to 60 yards, and was able to group with my field points.  The setup was capable; I just had not been shooting much beyond 40 yards before the event.

I say that to say, it was still completely possible, that it was me and my form that was the problem.

Fast forward a little more than a week, and I’m back at the archery club in Dallas for a proper shakedown.  Unfortunately, that day the practice range was due for some maintenance, so I spent the day on the field course with my daughter and my newly acquired recurve.

Even though the session was cut short, I had shot the ARC enough to know that some adjustments were necessary. I grabbed the package of sight tapes that came with the Nytrx XV3 on my bow and headed back the next day to start from scratch, essentially.

By the end of that session, I had a sight tape so different from the initial one that the alarm bells in my head should have been even louder than they were.  Blame the heat for that, I guess. 

Coincidentally, I was due for a visit to Legacy Archery in Fort Worth for some measurements, since I wanted to try some custom sight tapes from Precision Cut Archery.  A chrono reading was included, and that’s when I had my first concrete evidence that I wasn’t the problem.  Well, at least not the only problem.

Back in November, we had put the bow on the chrono as well, but this speed was a full 10 fps slower.  My bow was also ever so slightly out of time, so that was corrected as well. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMh7HpWdoaM

Upon rechecking, the bow remained 10fps slower.   Suddenly, all the low misses in Wisconsin on targets beyond 35 yards were starting to make sense to me.

That’s when I asked to check the draw weight, and lo and behold, it was less than the expected 70lbs.  I was only pulling 65#s at best, with the lowest measurement being around 63#.  To correct for this, we put on a set of 75# mods, and the bow was back pulling 70 pounds, and the arrow was back at 270 fps. 

Keep in mind that this is the same bow that I published a six-month review of back in May.  Before then, there had been no indication of any problems.  Even as I write this, I have a hard time calling this a case of string stretch.  Any stretching should have been long settled, because this bow has well over a thousand arrows through it at this point.

Usually, I would’ve opted for a set of Catfish Custom Bowstrings almost immediately, but I decided to keep the stock Match strings this time to get a sense of how the stock Match strings would perform.

The durability of said strings is now fairly in question, and a pair of aftermarket strings is on standby.

It took one more trip to the range, but the ARC is back-sighted in, on time, and on speed.  How long will it remain that way?  Time will tell. 

My early verdict is that these stock strings need closer monitoring, even after the initial break-in period.  Had I not been considering Precision Cut Archery sight tapes, I may never have reached the true bottom of the issue.

To be clear, I still love my bow and will likely shoot it for years to come, but my intent since purchasing it has always been to provide a long-term, non-sponsored, ownership review series of it.

That said, if you’re shooting a Mathews ARC 34 with the stock Match things, make sure you keep checking your specs periodically.  Even post-break-in, because you may be losing speed and not even know it.