Had a good friend give me a box of assorted arrows. There mostly aluminum and pretty much new looking. I thought I'd shoot some tonight picking out some 2213s in the old school autumn orange.  I had shot a couple when I had a nock explode. This was the first time for me in 22 years of shooting a bow. Scared the crap out of me    I should have check the plastic nocks out better or replace with newer ones. Ruined a good string and smacking my arm is what I get for it. The bow seems to be fine.   So the moral of the story is checking things over before hand is always a good idea.

Your not alone on this one. Got a big box of arrows from brother-in-law. Did exact same thing, didn't think about how plastic can get brittle in our heat. I had a chunk of skin off my thumb. Now I change nocks just because.

Good to hear that nothing more serious occurred.

Good to know for future reference and thanks for sharing your story.  Glad to hear you're ok.

Thank you for sharing, hopefully your post will prevent more people from getting hurt/ruining their gear. I'll keep what happened to you in mind.

Glad you didn't get hurt too badly

 A few years back I had a nock failure too. I was taking a shot at a 4X4 whitetail that was under my tree stand along with some does. He was only bout 12 feet or so out from the base of the tree. When I released the string there was a loud noise that scared the heck out of  me and the arrow rattled down to the ground.  The buck did a quick sideways jump and stopped, the does only looked at him wondering what the noise was all about. I wasn't sure what had happened but when I looked at the arrow on the ground I figured out that the nock had broken. I could have nocked another arrow and took another shot but I wasn't sure if I had damaged the bow or the string. After the deer wandered off I checked everything out and found that everything was ok.  I'm just glad it wasn't a huge buck or a 6 point bull.  I now pay more attention to the condition of the nocks and the entire arrow and bow after that.

It's definitely something that I will pay more attention to in the future.

OUCH!

I'm glad that you were not seriously injured.

Same thing happened to me once.  I got in the habit of picking up old discarded arrows on our range and shooting them off onto a big hill behind our range, usually at no more than 3/4 draw.  One time the nock exploded, and it was quite a shock.  I decided the risk wasn't worth the fun of watching an old arrow sail off to it's final resting place.

I've had it happen more than once with nocks that weren't old. I think they had been hit and damage by another arrow ( an almost robin hood ).

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Sounds like it's happened to some of y'all. I'm going to order some new nocks and replace the beat up and older stuff. Kinda gun shy now 

I had a nock break on release the other night when I was shooting in the garage. It sounded funny coming off the string and then I saw a chunk of plastic flying off to the side. Luckily it didn't injure me or the bow, and the arrow was off, but still hit the target. It wasn't all that old, so I'm guessing as someone else said it was cracked from previous damage on a tight group.

Glad you didn't get hurt worse than you did!

-King