When I first saw FOB fletches, I was very impressed with their inspired design and how easy it was to set arrows up with them.Since then a number of our customers have also been trying FOBs. There was fair bit of hype about them. James’ target archer focused review below pretty well nails the results they give, now that all the dust has settled on the hype. His review marries up with bowhunter – Luke Hebb’s FOB assessment. Luke is a very busy hunter and trialled the FOBs from the hunter point of view – his view, in a nutshell, was the same as James’ – HOBs are OK, but why bother when ‘normal’ fletches do as good or a better job with none of the FOB downsides.For instance, Luke lost a lot of FOB’s and arrows with pass-throughs on pigs. One of the recognised upsides of FOBs is they fall to the ground on pass-throughs and are easy to retrieve. This proved not to be the case, anyway… FOB’s have a following and they are a brilliant bit of industrial design – maybe they’ll work for you.
“FOB – Fletching but Better Review”
Hi, I’m James Morgan. I shoot a 50 pound Hoyt Carbon Matrix compound bow. I am a target and field shooter. I first decided to shoot FOBs at a close range. At the distance of 10 metres, I noticed that when the arrows hit the target butt, the tail of the shaft is much lower then the point. I do not know why this occurs, as my fletched arrows do not do this. At 20 metres this is no longer happens.
Shooters using FOBs on a single target face, have a major issue for the archer to overcome. The compound shooters can achieve amazing arrow grouping. I managed to brake three FOBs with tight grouping. This problem can be solved by shooting Spider Eyes target faces, but why should you, as an archer change your standard target face for your equipment when a fletch arrow can shoot at all target faces with no issues.
A feature of the FOB is that when the arrow hits an animal the FOB is designed to pop off to allow the arrow to pierce all the way though the animal, I did not test this but I did find out about it when I recently purchased a G5 Prime sight from Archer Essentials. When I was setting the pins on the new sight I tried a couple of FOB equipped arrows. We have all been there when sighting in a new sight and your arrows go over or under the target. I fired a total of three missed FOB arrows that day. Due to this feature the FOBs popped off when the arrow skimmed along the ground. I lost three arrow shafts. I found the FOBs and nocks but not the shafts. I was not very happy.
When at anchor with a FOB equipped arrow, the FOB itself was touching the bottom if my chin. While this did not effect accuracy it was very uncomfortable. This may not be the case with other archers but I did not like it. I also imagine archers with facial hair would not enjoy the experience.
FOB equipped arrows shoot magnificently over greater distances. I did notice that FOBs did hit a bit lower then fletched due to how straight they make the arrow fly. This is nothing major, as a simple sight adjustment will bring you back into that X zone in no time.
Overall, I would not recommend this product to a target shooter. For the hunter the FOB is a wonderful one shot kill arrow, but your fletched arrows that you have been using for years and years do a great, if not better job.
