Shoot and Self Nocks

Great shoot yesterday at Avalon, I was worried that I would be too sore to shoot all day, but it actually loosened me up. I flagged a bit and got a tad grumpy near the end and I think we all need ed the hasty tea and cake break about six targets from the end. There were six of us from our club shooting together and it was a relaxed good natured affair. Two of us took the cards and scored, I did it for a change as it saved me bending down to pull arrows. One we settled to a routine the scoring ran smoothly with only the odd arithmetic blunder, (a tiny joke there, as all the scores are even numbers, thus when I had someone down as 235 something had to be wrong!)
Mick the blacksmith scored highest of our group (496 despite blanking the first two targets), but this was only decided by the last arrow. I did a respectable 470 over 36 targets.
One target appeared impossible, shooting up hill through a gap in the conifers at a bear with a cub standing in front of it. It looked to be a long shot, but it was deceptive, to add to the problem any hits on the cub scored negative! I was annoyed with myself as I put 3 arrows round it, the final shot from the blue peg was actually easy, but I missed. It didn't help that we'd been waiting a good while for the shot. One of the marshals said that everyone was miss judging the distance. It didn't help that onlookers we miss-calling where arrows were landing in an attempt to help and minimise lost arrows (actually, to the rules, there should be no 'sighting' of arrows by anyone else, but it wasn't a competiton ). My response to a call of  'Low' was an ill tempered 'it wasn't ***kin' low' as I stomped off to the next peg. I was what our family euphemistically call "tired and hungry" by then.
Two of our party managed first arrow hits, I'd have been happy with a third arrow hit, or even a negative score on the cub!

Thanks to Avalon Archers for a great shoot, and excellent catering.... coffee and danish before the last six shots prevented me becoming terminally grumpy!
I tried out my little video camera taking footage over the shoulder of Lawrence and Mick as the shot on the practice butts. The video wouldn't really show the arrow flight well enough on here, but I can certainly confirm that Lawrence's arrows were going sideways for the first 5 or 10 yards, he swapped to a different set of arrows half way through the day and his scores dramatically improved. Here's a screen grab of our group amongst the merry throng before the start of the shoot.

Explain More was ticked on the previous post.
Not sure what is needed, probably the grain of arrows, there was some discussion of this during the shoot.
The reason people don't notice it, is because it isn't clearly visible until you sand the end of the shaft. The rough sawn end disguises the grain.

If you grasp a shaft in your fist and rub the end on fine sandpaper (say 240 grit wet & dry) which is on a flat surface the end grain will soon show up. It is sometimes also visible along the length of the shaft.
Doing the nocks like this has the added benefit of ensuring that all the arrows have the same grain alignment and thus a more consistent spine. Apparently the spine should always be measured with the grain aligned so the arrow is flexing right to left in the pic, it is different in the other direction. I've not actually measured it myself. So even if you are using stick on nocks, maybe it's worth checking.
Personally, I'm probably not a good enough shot to notice the difference, but you are only as good as your arrows and the better matched they are, the more consistent they will be. making arrows isn't my fave, but I do at least keep 'em the same length, same weight point, same fletchings and same grain alignment. There are those who weight and spine match all the arrow in a set. Thats great if you enjoy doing it, I'd rather make the actual bow, but I'm certainly not decrying it.
Note:- If I was doing a horn nock insert on a heavy arrow I'd put it in the way the red lines run for maximum strength. The nock would then be cut at 90 degrees to that. The horn takes the load from the string and transfers it to the wooden shaft, so the horn /wood joint is where the strength is needed to prevent splitting.
There may be other opinions, so trawl the web if you want, I don't profess to be the authority on this!