It is totally unacceptable...but it's part of it! I have had limb failures that were everything from small edge splinters to full broke in half limbs from most of the manufacturers out there! I have had fewest equipment failures with Hoyt bows.
I've been shooting these contraptions for a long time and I've got a memory like 100 elephants! Before machined risers became the status quo, your main choice was a cast magnesium riser that was strung with swaged pigtailed cables. I probably had 9 or 10 of the magnesium risers fail! Some broke at full draw and some broke on release. They usually fractured as just above the lower cable guard or in the sight window and most of these were of PSE manufacture.
I lost count of the number of times I had pigtail cables come flying apart with the bottom cable flying right up between your legs and the top cable smacking you on the backside of the head or shoulders! With the advent of fast flight rigging (circa 1992-3) the cable problem was solved but a higher rate of failure was occurring because of a higher stress load on the riser, and that's when the machined risers really came on.
The limb splinter issue I had on a Hoyt Alpha Elite last summer was minor in nature, and a first for any Hoyt I have ever owned. I am pretty sure that this limb splintering came about from some ding at the the London ASA ProAm. If you've been to one then you know there several hundred people carrying bows and most with long stabilizers and often in a confined space and getting bumped and dinged is part of the assigned risk! Hoyt replaced the limbs no questions asked!
Equipment is a lot better today than it was just a few short years ago!
