Forward of Center – Physics Doesn’t Care Whether It’s an Arrow or a Raft

Forward of Center – Physics Doesn’t Care Whether It’s an Arrow or a Raft

by Jeremy Johnson

There are certain moments in life when physics becomes very real.

For me, one of those moments happened recently on the Lower Rogue River at Rainie Falls.

Every spring, I like to get together with an ever growing group of guys from my cousin’s church who run the Wild and Scenic section of the Rouge River. This year with such a dry winter the water flows were at summer levels lows. At this water level I knew my raft would be too large to fit down the fish ladder that bypasses the falls. I had only one option left:  run the falls.

If you’ve spent any time around the Rogue, you already know Rainie Falls is no joke. At the flows we had, it was a violent hydraulic mess capable of swallowing full-sized rafts. Before the trip, I watched every video I could find of successful and mostly unsuccessful runs through the rapid. What caught my attention was the pattern.

The unsuccessful runs almost always looked the same.

The raft would drop into the hydraulic, disappear under the surface, then explode upward out of the boil. The sudden upward surge would eject anyone on board from the raft. In many cases the raft flipped, gear scattered everywhere, and the river took control.

As I watched video after video, I remember thinking:

“I know how to fix that — FOC.”

Forward of Center.

The exact same principle we talk about in arrow performance.

So I loaded the heavy gear and my Cabela’s Drybag full of firewood toward the front of the raft. Then I rigged hand straps onto the dry box because I knew once that raft resurfaced, it was going to hit like a freight train.

When we dropped into the falls, the hydraulic force instantly buried the entire 18-foot cataraft underwater. The force shoved me flat against the dry box and gear behind me while the raft drove beneath the surface.

Then it happened.

The raft rocketed upward out of the boil exactly like all the others I had watched on video.

But this time, instead of the bow launching skyward and throwing me out, the extra weight forward stabilized the raft and kept it driving ahead. It stayed upright through the chaos and gave me a stable platform to hang onto while the river tried its best to rip me off of it.

The straps probably saved me from going swimming, but the FOC is what kept the raft from overturning.

Physics is a wonderful and predictable thing.

And physics doesn’t care whether the object is an arrow or a raft.

The same principle that stabilized that raft in violent hydraulics is the same principle Dr. Ed Ashby uncovered during his terminal arrow performance studies decades ago.

For years, most bowhunters viewed Forward of Center simply as an aid to arrow flight and accuracy. But Ashby’s research revealed something far more important: high FOC dramatically improves penetration and stability during impact.

Why?

Because when the majority of an object’s mass is positioned toward the front, it resists being knocked off course.

A properly balanced arrow keeps driving forward when resistance is encountered. Bone, muscle, hide, angled impacts, and tissue drag all attempt to redirect the shaft. High FOC helps the arrow maintain direction and stability through that resistance.

The exact opposite is also true.

An arrow with poor weight distribution is easier to deflect, easier to destabilize, and more likely to waste energy flexing and oscillating instead of penetrating. Ashby’s work showed penetration gains as high as 60% in some setups when extreme FOC systems were used correctly.

That shouldn’t surprise us.

We already use this principle everywhere else in life.

Darts fly point-forward because the weight is in front.

Spears penetrate best when mass is biased toward the tip.

Even whitewater rafts behave better in violent hydraulics when the center of mass is moved forward.

The laws of physics remain constant regardless of the object involved. As I wrote in my book, physics is the authority governing arrow performance, whether we acknowledge it or not.

The bowhunting world spends a tremendous amount of time chasing speed. But speed alone is not stability. Speed alone is not penetration. And speed alone is not insurance when things go wrong.

That’s where a properly designed arrow system matters.

A heavy, structurally strong, high-FOC arrow system acts like a bowhunter’s “Plan B.”

When an animal moves.

When a shoulder gets in the way.

When impact angles aren’t ideal.

When resistance tries to redirect the arrow.

That extra stability and forward-driving force becomes incredibly important.

The reality is that animals, rivers, and life in general are all dynamic. Things rarely happen exactly according to plan. But physics remains dependable.

That day on the Rogue River reinforced something I already believed deeply from years of studying arrow performance and hunting large animals:

When enough weight is positioned forward, moving objects become dramatically harder to destabilize.

An arrow.

A raft.

Or just about anything else traveling through resistance.

Physics doesn’t play favorites. It simply rewards proper design.