Do feathers or vanes fly better?

The honest answer, which the grey catalog buried beneath a photograph of a recurve and a toll-free number, is: it depends on your shooting conditions and bow style, and both materials are legitimate. Neither is universally superior.

Natural feathers are lighter, typically 5–7 grains each versus 8–12 grains for a standard plastic vane, and they compress against the arrow rest and shelf on release rather than deflecting off it. This makes them the superior choice for traditional bows — longbows, recurves shot off the shelf — where the fletch must pass the riser without kicking the nock sideways. They also begin steering the arrow sooner after the shot, which matters at the close distances of instinctive and traditional shooting. Their weakness is water: a wet feather lies flat and provides almost no steering authority until it dries. They also wear faster.

Vanes — plastic, TPU, or similar — are waterproof, durable, highly consistent in profile, and well-suited to compounds with elevated rests where the fletch clears the riser entirely. A properly tuned compound with a drop-away rest loses nothing by using vanes, and gains longevity and weather resistance. Vanes can also be made very low-profile, which reduces paradox drag and suits fast, flat-shooting setups where the added steering of a tall fletch is not needed.

A few practical specifics: for a recurve shot off the shelf, a 4- to 5-inch natural feather, shield or parabolic cut, is the proven starting point. For a compound with a drop-away rest, a 2- to 4-inch vane of 0.4–0.6 inch height serves most hunting and target applications. Longer, higher vanes recover a poorly-tuned or heavy-FOC arrow faster — but they are not a substitute for proper spine selection and bow tune.

The fourth fletch, in either material, adds a measure of steering redundancy that the Committee declined to discuss. I note this without further comment.