Arrow Ballistics Study | 2026

May 13, 2026
Tristan Litke
Founder, Precision Cut Archery
Squaring the nock end of an arrow is one of those things everyone agrees on but nobody gets excited about. I'm guessing a lot of shops and arrow builders don't bother. We were curious how much it actually changes the groups, so we did a quick non-scientific side quest between test sets.
Same standard-speed build as the rest of the 2026 vane study: shooting machine, Hoyt AX3 33, 28″ draw length, 70# draw weight, ~290 fps, bow tuned to a bullet hole at 15 ft. We cut a fresh set of arrows on the arrow saw the way most builders would, shot a group, squared the nock end, and shot another group with the same arrows.
No measurements, no confidence intervals, no data file. Just two photos of two groups: same build, same machine, same target, same bow. The only thing that changed between them is whether the nock end was squared.



Written by
Founder, Precision Cut Archery
Tristan Litke is the founder of Precision Cut Archery, a bowhunter, and a software engineer. For the 2026 Arrow Ballistics Study, he and his team led experiment design, data collection, analysis, and development of the website you're reading right now.