My best friend broke his bow a couple of days ago and the limb came close to putting his eye out. This got he and I talking at work about bow safety and we were looking at pictures of guys that have suffered a catastrophic carbon arrow failure, which got us both thinking about wearing safety glasses and a protective glove on the bow hand.

Here's a link to the protective gloves we are going to buy:

https://www.shootingedge.com/

Warning if you are eating lunch don't click on the gallery of pictures...

Here's a link to the glove on eBay. $40 seems like cheap insurance after looking at those pictures and imagining the emergency room visit.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SALE-Brand-New-ProTx-made-with-Kevlar-Armored-archery-glove-PROTX-Black-Full/222488398260?hash=item33cd5789b4:m:mlZSNYKog_IIMY7CvbfVC2Q&var=521336695052

Do any of you wear protective glasses or a protective glove while shooting? Has anyone of you ever had some sort of a failure like shown in those pictures?

By the way here's my buddy's failed limb on his Samick Sage...

I have never worn glasses or a glove in 60 years of shooting bows. I did have an old Ben Pearson recurve break a limb at full draw once, but there were no injuries to me.

You’re over thinking it, Irish. You’re far more likely to injure yourself walking to your target to pull your arrows.

I figured it was a rare occurrence. Of course all your bows and arrows are probably scared to piss you off...

I never even considered any of that stuff until my buddy started worrying me about it. He's in the office next to mine so I hear this chit all say long.

That's kind of what I was thinking, still those pics look pretty painful. Of course these guys are trying to sell a product, so they probably scoured the internet to find all the pictures of bow disasters that they could find to scare people into buying their stuff...

That said, "over thinking stuff" is what we are both paid to do. We design stuff for power plants, so we are constantly thinking about all the stuff that can and will go wrong and then trying to "engineer out" the potential problems. It becomes sort of a mental disorder once it bleeds over into your personal life...

I’m going to give you a piece of advice Irish and I’m not trying to insult you. If you bring that over thinking it mentality into the archery game, you will not stick with it. You will develope what is known as target panic within time. Every person I know that has developed it have one thing in common, they’re OCD about things.

No. Not at all. That's good advice and I appreciate it. My buddy is much more like that than me (Over thinking stuff.) In all honesty, when I get home and shoot in the afternoons, it's really me just relaxing and actually trying to clear my mind of all things and and just drawing, focusing on the tiniest spot on the target and having a nice clean release.

Thanks for the input. I'm not really worried about it, I was mainly curious of those types of incidents were a common occurrence, because I have never heard of it before. I mean I know bows sometimes break, but...

If you want a good prank to pull on someone shooting a trad bow, especially a self bow, stand behind them and break a stick just as they’re drawing their bow.

I'll have to remember that.

Or say "was that your bow making that popping sound?" when they are drawing even though you didn't hear anything.

Of course I wear a arm guard on my leg but not on my arm shooting a compound.

Yes, many times from recurves and compounds. The had my limbs start coming cracking at a ASA Pro/Am in Louisiana (Driveby and Shaw about got me threw in jail, but that's another story) on the first day of a two day tournament. It popped and made all kinds a noises when I drew it back forward the end of the second day. But the old Hoyt Protec held together even though I could tell I was loosing poundage.

Had the top limb of a High Country bow exposed at full draw. No warning at all on that one.

For me it has been a WTF moment and nothing more. I think the protective glove would cause me more problems that it might solve.

I’ve had an arrow come apart on me. The front two thirds stayed in tact and it splintered the rear third. I was in the tree letting one fly at a doe. I wasn’t sure what happened the bow sounded like 22 short when I shot and the 2/3 of the arrow intact looked like I threw it by hand over her back. The bow unraveled it’s self and the splintered part tore my cotton glove and gave me a small cut on my hand. Only thing I can figure is it had a crack in it. I have since started periodically checking for cracks in my arrows. I don’t think much of it to wear protection but I do inspect my equipment more frequently now. I hate wearing gloves myself but had them on that day due to the skeeters. Last year I had an arrow flying funny and further inspection found a hairline crack about 3in long you could only see by bending it. Couldn’t really see it but I could feel it with my fingernail.

Most of the carbon arrow failure accidents could have been prevented by simply flexing the arrow before shooting it. If I think that I’ve slapped arrows together while practicing then I’ll flex both to check for cracks. If you see a bad spot on the arrow quit using it.
I was shooting at Lincoln archery park several years ago and had one fracture right in front of the fletchings. It hit me on the hand but wasn’t enough of it to do any damage. I didn’t see it when I flexed it because that’s where I was holding it.

There was a guy at the state championship in Cullman a few years ago that had one go through his forearm. My son and I were shooting the practice bags at Heritage archery park the evening before the championship and he was there shooting also and I talked him into coming back the next day and shooting the championship. He had never shot a tournament before and was warming up on the practice bags when it happened. He was lucky that it didn’t splinter out but it did go all the way through his arm. As far as I know he still hasn’t shot a tournament.

When I was seventeen I had the top limb on an old Jennings bow break at full draw. The cam hit me right in the nose and nearly knocked me out. I had blood pouring out both sides of my nose. There was no warning before it snapped.

Thanks for all the replies guys. At the very least, I am going to start checking my arrows every time before I shoot them, flexing them and also giving the limbs on my bow a good looking at.

I flex mine every time I pull them out of target, just a habit. I saw some of those splintered arrows years ago and made me start this practice.

I think I'm going to start doing that too. Thanks for the reply.