To start off, Jamie fired arrows blunted with tennis balls while Adam tried to catch them. Though it took several tries, Adam did manage to catch the arrows flying through the air. However, these arrows were only moving at a third of the speed of a normal arrow. To test a full-speed arrow, Adam and Jamie built an artificial hand that could close with both human and superhuman speed. The artificial hand managed to catch the arrow easily in superhuman speed, but the human strength setting was just not powerful enough to grip the arrow in time.

The MythBusters first tested the speed of an arrow and showed that an arrow maintains its speed as far as 70 feet (21 m) because of its aerodynamic design. They then brought "The Arrowcatcher" Anthony Kelly onto the show and had him perform various tests. Anthony proved that he could catch tennis balls traveling at 85 miles per hour (137 km/h) (breaking a world record in the process). They then had him try and catch an actual arrow, and Anthony succeeded in catching an arrow. However, at Anthony's request, the arrow had been fired below full strength (3/4 strength) and directly in front of Anthony. The MythBusters decided to redo the test by firing arrows at full strength from multiple directions. This time, Anthony had much more trouble and could only catch the arrows when he knew which direction they were coming from. Since Anthony was unable to catch the arrow in full combat conditions, the MythBusters considered the myth busted.

While it is certainly possible to rear-end an arrow with another, only a fiberglass arrow can be split down the middle (known as telescoping in archery circles). With a wooden arrow, even under the most ideal conditions, the best one can do is a partial split along the grain of the wood, and even that is improbable. They clearly showed that the film's circumstances can be recreated using a hollow shaft, such as bamboo.

Even after multiple direct hits on a solid wood arrow with the bone nock removed with a professional archer, a tail-to-tip split could not be achieved. It took an arrow made of hollow bamboo to create the splitting effect seen in the movie, because the second arrow will follow the grain of the first, normal arrow, which will lead to the side before it makes it to the end. Also their tests revealed that an arrow fired from a traditional bow wobbles in the air enough that it will not hit the end of the arrow straight.