Barnett Headhunter Crossbow Bolts

The 303 grain figure for the 20-inch Headhunter is the complete, ready-to-shoot weight: shaft, insert, half-moon nock, vanes and the 100-grain field point. That is the number that matters, because bolt weight drives both speed and trajectory.

The practical consequences:

• Switching to a heavier bolt slows it down and drops your point of impact. You will be re-sighting.
• Switching to a lighter bolt speeds it up and raises the impact, and if you go too light you move toward dry-fire behaviour, which damages the bow.
• Mixing weights in the same quiver guarantees inconsistent groups and is the most common self-inflicted accuracy problem.

The 22-inch Headhunter uses the same shaft at the same 13.78 grains per inch, so it is proportionally heavier. Do not treat 20 and 22 inch as interchangeable on a bow that was set up around one of them.

Everything that is not a Hyper. That includes the Whitetail Hunter and Whitetail Hunter II, Whitetail Pro STR, Whitetail Hunter STR, Recruit and Recruit XP, Wildcat CRX and the older Wildcat models, Jackal, Raptor and Raptor FX, Quad 400, the XP series including XP350, XP370, XP380, XP385 and XP400, Explorer XP370 and XP385, Droptine, the Ghost series, Predator, GameCrusher, Stalker 410 and Alpha 410.

The exclusions are the ones with Hyper in the name: Hyper Raptor, Hyper Raptor GTX, Hyper Raptor BCX, Hyper Ghost, Hyper Whitetail 410 and Hyper XP405. Those take Hyperflite.

The full model list with string lengths is on the fit by model page.

Full specs for the current Alpha 410 package are on its own page: Barnett Alpha 410.

Headhunter is not just for current bows. Long-discontinued models use it too - the Wildcat C5, for instance, shoots standard 20-inch Headhunter arrows and a 5-pack drops straight in. Because the shaft has been in production for decades, keeping an older Barnett fed is rarely a problem as long as the bow is on the standard-diameter side of the range.

Headhunter comes in 5-packs and 12-packs. The 12-pack is the better value if you shoot regularly, and you will shoot through more than you expect - bolts get lost, buried and split, and two bolts that collide in a tight group are two bolts gone.

Barnett also makes Headhunter Strobe lighted arrows in 3-packs, with polycarbonate half-moon nocks that light on release. These are worth having for hunting rather than for the range: they make the bolt easy to follow and, more importantly, easy to find afterwards in low light and cover.

The Strobe lighted nocks are also sold separately, so you can convert existing Headhunter shafts instead of buying complete lighted bolts. Remember that adding a lighted nock adds weight at the rear of the shaft and re-check your zero.

Headhunter bolts ship with half-moon nocks fitted. A half-moon nock has a curved groove that has to be aligned with the string, and if it is rotated wrong the string sits across the nock rather than in it. That is the classic route to a dry-fire.

The habit that prevents it: every time you load, rotate the bolt so the groove lines up with the string, push it fully back until it stops against the string, and check that the cock vane sits in the rail channel. It takes two seconds and it is the single most important safety habit with a crossbow.

If you replace nocks rather than whole bolts, keep to half-moon. Flat nocks index differently, and mixing types in the same quiver is asking for the one mistake you cannot undo.

Carbon shafts fail suddenly and without much warning if they are damaged, and a shaft that breaks on release can injure the shooter. Check every bolt before every session:

• Flex test. Bend each shaft slightly and listen. A crackling sound means the carbon is compromised. Bin it, do not shoot it.
• Visual check. Look for splintering, especially near the insert and the nock.
• Vanes. Crushed or torn vanes will not fly straight. Re-fletch or replace.
• Insert. Check the point is still tight. A point that unscrews in a target is a point you will spend twenty minutes looking for.

Store bolts in a tube or a bolt case rather than loose in a bow case, where the vanes get crushed - see cases.

Two older models searched for by name both feed standard Headhunter bolts. The Jackal uses the 20-inch Headhunter, and the Raptor Pro STR uses the 22-inch - neither carries the Hyper prefix, so neither takes the narrow Hyperflite shaft. If a Barnett's name does not start with Hyper, Headhunter is the bolt.