Best Hunting Arrow for You Budget vs. Premium Options

What's up guys. Welcome to the channel. Today I picked up my good friend Cody from the airport. What's up guys. Problem is he's got to go back to the airport in two hours. We don't have a lot of time. We're going to dive deep into Easton Aeros today. Everything you know about their hunting line. And I'm going to finally let the cat out of the bag. There is this brand new air. No, no, no, no, he's not. No, he's not. Don't worry guys. Stay tuned for 2025. We've probably got the biggest product launch in the last 20 years with Easton. Stay tuned. Guys, welcome to the channel today. It's Easton versus everybody. You've heard me talk about Easton this whole year, been running it. And I was like, man, I'm going to reach out to my homeboy Cody Griffin from Easton, who I would say is like a subject matter expert when it comes to arrows. I'm going to just be like, Hey man, I want to just get right down to brass tacks. What makes Easton a better option for somebody like in your opinion, obviously biased, but I'm running Easton this year. What is, what makes Easton stand up? I just kind of want to give the first, you know, context to it. I actually came from the retail space, you know, so I've, I've had the opportunity to play around with everything and, you know, I've always shot a five mil axis, played around some came back to the five mil axis. I think one of the biggest things that separates us is, you know, we're the only American made arrow company based out of Salt Lake city, Utah. A great majority of our products are coming out of that factory. People on forums will be like, yeah, but are they really made in America? So like you guys literally do like the arrow gets built there from like, it's all the materials are carbon roll. So, and even our materials, you know, our aluminum, our carbon, you know, we have actually have a carbon supplier, giant one based out of Washington. Just know a lot of people travel with, you know, this form and fashion of carbon. And, you know, we buy directly from that source. We have some carbon coming out of California, out of Ohio, out of Utah. You know, we are very us-based and I, you know, I love that factor, man. And especially in today's world and today's economy, it's, it's nice to be able to say, you know, man, we're supporting, you know, American paychecks. We're supporting the guys in that local area and, you know, me and the reps and everyone else, you know, it's nice to see that money circulated back in here. But I think the biggest thing is, man, our engineering team is literally 30 feet away from my office. I can go walk to them, ask them a question if I don't know anything. I have the world's probably foremost subject matter expert on arrows ever named George at my disposal. Steve Anderson, call him. He's over there. He's our neighbor down the road at Hoyt. You know, he kind of had the position I had prior at World Champion Archer. You know, there's, there's, that's the coolest thing about being at Easton is the, the net work and net worth of people that are there and involved in that company are foremost matter experts. And I know that the market has been asking specifically for something under nine grains in that 300 spine, the most common spine. There's a little hole in that market for us. I think, you know, okay. More to come on that down the road hints clue, but I would say this, this arrow, when I started messing with this is like, I'm like, oh crap, this cut, this checks a lot of boxes. And if you haven't seen this Sonic 6.0, I'll have Cody speak to it. All right. So this, of course this, this arrow is built off a six millimeter chassis is what I like to call it. It's a little bit lower GPI for the spine ratio. For any, anyone in the world, even the elk hunting world, you know, and that's one thing I like about a six mil, I feel like once you get to that six and that five mil diameter, I feel like it's a lot more forgiving for most archers. You know, whenever you get someone that's a little bit more technical behind the bone, behind the release, I think you're going to be able to make a well-executed shot with any shaft diameter. But for your guy, that's just picking up their bow a couple of weeks out of the year, the five mil axis and the Sonic 6.0, they're just, they're, they're wicked. I would lean more towards this based on just my own testing. Now I've killed a lot of stuff with the Easton axis because that's what I ran for years, but I'm saying this guy, what, what comes with it is this insert, which is what, 15 grain? It's like 15, 16 grains, nothing too heavy. Aluminum, where you could go and buy the aftermarket from Easton brass and it's a break off? 75, 50. Okay. And so I broke mine off. I didn't want 75 grains. If I want weight, I'm going to put it in my broadhead. I don't want to put it in components. Put it in the Cody. And I said, y'all need a color for this. And he said, let me talk to the engineers. And then they called me back and said, try this collar. So this is a number six or five, say it's number six on a, it's a number six Easton collar. This thing weighs 15 grains, 15 grains. It's perfect. And once it made out of stainless, that's a stainless steel goes right over the top. I obviously didn't glue it in and then you can screw your broadhead in. You could glue it on top if you wanted to. But that to me is the best of both worlds. You got this insert and a collar and this total weight is 60 grains, which is kind of at my threshold. And then I add like a one 25, the FOC is over 15%. And then the total arrow weight is around three 25, three 30, I'm sorry, four 25, four 30. And for someone with my draw weight and that's what the 300. We're in the same room on that. I fight the same thing, you know, getting too heavy of an arrow and, and kind of where I like to be at personally for my setups or anywhere in that four 20 to four, you know, 75 at most, you know, I wanted to finish with your hunting catalog. Yeah. When someone's going through it, let's touch on kind of all the quick hunting arrow options. Let's start from the biggest diameter and work it down. You know, our standard diameter, we call it a 6.5. We offer three different straightnesses. I believe in that we have a 6.5, we have a 6.5. It's like a 0.003 straightness arrow. Then we have one called a bow hunter. And that's a 0.006 very friendly on the wallet for a lot of guys that are getting into stuff like that and kind of moving down in that diameter to a six mil. That's where we got the Sonic. Yup. And that arrow, I think that's one of the most impressive areas I've never touched prior to coming to Easton. Yeah. It checked all the boxes where I could plug in. I actually run 175 up front. Okay. Arrow weights coming in around right around four 28, I want to say four 30. It shoots excellent. I love that. I love that diameter. I think it's really forgiving for me and my shot. You know, being a shorter draw archer and stuff like that, we can get away with a lot, but I feel like that shaft just proves itself to me. Okay. And then kind of going down into the five mil sector, we have the Axis lineup and we have the FMJ lineup. Axis, that's a legacy shaft, man. It's been around for over 20 years, I believe. FMJ has been around almost two decades as well. I've still killed more elk with a full metal jacket, even though I haven't shot one since probably 14. Yeah. I've still killed more elk with a FMJ. Well, that FMJ, you know, the design. So Gary actually had a lot of, you know, back in the, he don't like me telling this story at all actually, but he actually glued in a carbon shaft inside of aluminum shaft in the late nineties, early 2000s and said, Oh, this was really cool. You know, I might want to play with this. And then, you know, engineering was like, man, this might be, we might be onto something, you know, with using these materials like this, you know, flip-flopping AC, basically having a metal on the out or, you know, aluminum on the outside, carbon on the inside. Yeah. When we've done that, man, spine around shaft straightness is crazy with an FMJ. It is unreal. There's nothing that's going to touch FMJ in regards to straightness as far as not having to do a lot, you know, to see what that arrow's done or see how that arrow's made in regard. The spine around shaft consistency is incredible with it. It's an acu-carbon process. That product, the way those fibers are formed around in our manufacturing process with Axis, with Sonic 6.5, that's the same core in an FMJ. Right. Okay. Yep. All right. And then you have your four millimeters, which is probably what we'll finish. Yep. And I have been in that category just because I do think it penetrates just a little bit more. It's just my opinion. I can't prove it. And then I have shot in such high winds trying to learn my drift. It's coming at me. And so even yesterday, man, I was like, okay, I'm going to have to hold three or four inches, I believe. And I'm shooting at this antelope at a buck 12. And I was like, okay, I'm going to have to hold middle body. And I kept hitting where I was aiming and I could not get these to drift like a normal arrow. Well, that's surface area. Yeah. So explain to everybody kind of like what I'm experiencing and your options in four mil. I think more folks should go four mil. I feel like some of the accessories are now really good to where there's no excuses. Component wise, you know, there's a lot of companies bringing out really good components. And I think that was a space that we could use an upgrade if you want to call it. And that's where those match grade half outs came into play. But on the component or on the arrow side, you've got carbon, you've got aluminum carbon, which is what you're holding there. And then you've got carbon aluminum, which is an FMJ. So you get the chance to play around with three different materials that no other company in industry is messing, you know, really messing with that aluminum carbon, you know, combination kind of thing. And we'll just start kind of with the parallel pro, you know, this is what we call an AC shaft, aluminum carbon. We're taking the best of both worlds here. We're taking that precision that this core tube is perfect. The carbon layout is perfect. You guys looking at all these different arrow options, you can easily get clouded and lost in it. So as a tinkerer, what I've done in the past is I've never bought more than maybe a half dozen arrows at a time. And I may do a couple of different components on all of them, maybe even different vein configurations. And I date them for a couple of weeks and tinker and, and shoot them and really figure out what, what gives me the most confidence. What do I observe? You know, and it's completely anecdotal. Yeah. I don't have graphs and charts and I'm not doing a scientific experiment using scientific method. I'm using the tinkering method of dude, this is grouping. Yeah. No doubt better yesterday. This different set of wasn't working for me. Um, if I had to pick one arrow out of everything we talked about today for guys on a budget, I would pick this arrow right here. That's a great one, man. I just like the GPI. Yeah. I think that it's super straight. It's match grade. The price is right. It's one of the most affordable and you can bump that collar on there and that brass to be a foot up for those that sleep better at night. And I would feel comfortable taking that arrow anywhere on the, anywhere in the U S now taking that on an elk hunt, a whitetail hunt, you know, a bear hunt, um, you're going to get plenty of velocity. You know, that's, that's part of that part of this area. You see right here, high velocity guys, Easton's got a lot of options. Cody's got a lot of knowledge comment below what are you running? What's your favorite one from Easton? And do you really believe the man that everything is made here in the States? I do separations in the preparation. We'll catch on the next one. Oh yeah. The video is not over it. Cause I forgot to tell you guys the secret Cody just went to the bathroom. So I have this arrow for elk this year, but I got picked to run the new experimental arrow. And so let's just say as soon as I did the testing, I can't tell you the GPI. I can't tell you the millimeters, but Cody's right. This is going to be the best arrow they've launched in 20 years. And it's so good that I am building this arrow for elk right now, two days before we leave for elk season, 2024 be on the lookout guys. I can't wait to share it. You're going to be as stoked as I am.