I believe it was sometime around 2005 or 2006 when I first started to notice lighted arrow nocks popping up on my favorite hunting shows.  Arrows that were once a quick flash in a dimly lit screen, leaving viewers to wonder if and where the arrow hit it’s mark, were now streaming bolts of light streaking towards their target.  Without question, the “cool factor” of lighted nocks was pretty high those first few years. 

Like many bowhunters out there, I quickly rushed out and picked up the first pack of nocks I could find, slapped them in my arrows and began shooting.  Of course I did little to no research on available brands or technologies, and even less research on how to properly install and use them.  Much to my dismay, I was never able to achieve consistent results and my somewhat expensive experiment was given up after a season full of mistrials.

Now, some 6 years later I’ve finally come full circle with these fiery little gadgets.  With a plethora of new options available to modern bowhunters , each with its own unique design, I decided I wanted to find out just how these new lighted nocks worked and which ones would be on the back end of my Carbon Express Maxima come October.  After all, there are few things cooler in the bowhunting world than seeing the bright flash of a lighted nock as it rushes towards a deer’s boiler room.

First Things First

To start things off I began to research the different brands and options available to me.  Queue Google!  A few savvy web searches turned up about ½ dozen major players in the lighted nock arena.  I quickly set out to get my hands on them all and wound up with 5 different brands; Carbon Express, Lumenok, Nockturnal, Firenock and Tracer.

Who knew there were so many different lighted nocks to choose from?

For my evaluation I decided to rate each nock on a scale of 1-5 in five different categories; Price, Ease of Use, Reliability, Brightness, and Weight.  While this system does leave out a few features which may be important to some such as color options, replaceable battery, durability and advanced technology, I felt these were a good sampling of what’s important to most bowhunters.  Here’s what I found out.

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