Accessory for an Arrow

While the bow and arrow is one of the oldest of man's hunting tools and has been improved to the point where it presently is a weapon of vastly increased lethal characteristics than it was a mere 100 years ago, it is still far from ideal as a weapon for hunting larger animals. It has long been recognized that while bow and arrow hunting requires substantially greater skills than the use of fire arms, it has the undesirable characteristic of wounding many animals which are still capable of escaping from the hunter only to die later as a delayed reaction of the arrow. This is undesirable for many reasons. Among the fundamental reasons why an arrow is less effective than a fire arm as a lethal weapon is the fact that in many cases it does not create sufficient physical damage to produce an immediate or substantially immediate lethal effect.

The objective of the invention is to substantially increase the immediate lethal effect of an arrow. To this end the invention provides an accessory to be mounted on the conventional arrow which will greatly increase the physical damage caused by the arrow and will assure a rapid and quick bleeding of the animal struck with the arrow to assure a swift and certain lethal effect such that death comes quickly before the animal has an opportunity to escape from the immediate area of the hunter. The invention is designed to be sufficiently light and compact that it does not materially affect the trajectory of the arrow and does not adversely affect the directional accuracy of the arrow. To this end, it does not, to any significant degree, interfere with the balance initially built in to the arrow.

FIG. 1 is a fragmentary view of the head end of an arrow equipped with this invention;

FIG. 2 is an enlarged, oblique view of the invention before attachment to the arrow;

FIG. 3 is a central section of an arrow head showing the invention mounted ready for use;

FIG. 4 is a view of an arrow showing the position assumed by the invention after it has been released upon impact with target; and

FIG. 5 is a fragmentary, enlarged view of a modified form of the invention.

The numeral 10 indicates an arrow having a shaft 11 and a head 12. Both the shaft and the head are conventional and, as illustrated in FIG. 3, the front end of the shaft has an internally threaded opening 13 to receive the threaded shank 14 of the arrow head. In general the various arrow heads and shafts are interchangeable, permitting any number of arrow heads of various designs, sizes and shapes to be mounted on any one of a number of different shafts. So far as this invention is concerned, it is possible to reverse the threaded opening and shank in such a way that the female threaded opening is in the arrow head and the male portion of the attachment is part of the shaft.

The invention is an attachment 20 designed to be mounted on the arrow between the head 12 and the shaft 11. The attachment includes an elongated, narrow ribbon 21 of a resilient material, preferably a stainless, spring steel. In a preferred embodiment, it has a width of 1/2 inch and a length of approximately 10 inches. This ribbon 21 is tightly coiled about a shell 22 which has an inner opening of a size to slidably but closely fit about the arrow shaft 11. Thus, it forms the sleeve 23 which seats about the shaft and holds the attachment against any wobble or vibration with respect to the shaft. This is important to eliminate any adverse affect upon the arrow's accuracy.

At the forward end of the sleeve, the attachment has an inwardly extending flange 24 which seats over the end of the shaft and has a central opening 25 of a size to just closely fit around the threaded stem or extension 14 of the arrow. By this arrangement the invention can be mounted on an arrow simply by sliding it over the end of the shaft and then mounting the arrow with the rear end of the arrow tightly clamping the flange 24 between it and the front end of the shaft.

Adjacent its outer end, the ribbon 21 is provided with a pair of spaced slits 30 extending from the rear edge of the next to the outermost coil to a position approximately half way across the width of the ribbon. Also, the outer end of the ribbon is notched at 31 so that it has an extending tail 32 of a length and size to be received through the slits 30 and behind the finger 33 created between the slits. The end of the tail 32 is bent outwardly to form a radially extending catch 34.

The inner end of the ribbon 21 is secured to the shell 22 by any suitable means such as spot welding. The ribbon is then tightly wound around the shell and is releasably locked in the wound position by placing the end tail 32 beneath the finger 33 with the catch 34 holding the ribbon against withdrawal from behind the finger 33.

Because it is important that the entire attachment be as light and as compact as possible, all parts of it are designed to be thin. For example, the flange 24 can be of 0.015 to 0.020 while the walls of the shell can be 0.015 stainless steel. A preferable material for the ribbon is 0.005 stainless spring steel. In a preferred construction the catch 34 extends approximately a 1/4 inch outwardly from the surface of the coil 21.

When an arrow equipped with this invention strikes a target, as the arrow head initially penetrates the target, the catch 34 engages the target and pulls the end of the ribbon 21 free of the finger 33, this permits the tightly wound spring coil to release. As the arrow continues to penetrate the target, the uncoiling of the ribbon multiplies the amount of physical damage done to the target. Furthermore, since the catch remains basically at the exterior of the target, the ribbon extends as a coil in as far as the head of the arrow penetrates. This assures a large and open wound which will result in positive and rapid bleeding and thus greatly increases the chances that the wound will be not only lethal but quickly lethal rather than requiring a period of slow bleeding and infection to cause death. Thus, it not only greatly increases the chance that the hunter will recover his quarry but it also materially reduces the possibility of the animal suffering a lingering and painful death.

To further increase the effectiveness of the invention, the forward edge of the ribbon 21a may be scalloped at 40 to provide a large number of small, sharp forwardly extending teeth to further increase the power of the invention to produce immediate or substantially immediate death to the hunter's quarry.

Having described my invention and the manner of its use, it will be recognized that various modifications of the invention can be made. Such of these modifications as do not depart from the principle of the invention are to be considered as included in the hereinafter appended claims unless these claims by their language expressly state otherwise.