The best bow ?

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Radar

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What is the best bow for you ? Is it the latest and greatest from brand x , the most popular , the fastest , lightest ?
The best bow should be the bow you shoot best with . If you shoot good with your current bow , keep shooting it ! If you are new to archery , go to several pro shops and shoot bows within your measured draw length and comfortable draw weight . Pick the bow you shoot best with .
The best bow isn't about the brand ....
 
Ive never owned one that wasn't great in all aspects. I like a bow to be fast,forgiving,good fit and finish as well as quiet. I prefer nothing over 32" ATA.
 
For me, I want something that is smooth to draw, quiet, tunable, dead in my hands during the shot, easy to hold at full draw with a solid backwall and well-balanced. I could care less about speed, as 95% of all bows out there are within the same speed range. My current bow, that will remain nameless, has every single quality that I have wanted�something that has never happened to me in the past.
 
I like the cam and 1/2 system of the Hoyt, but I've shot Mathews and they were good as well.

A big factor that has kept me on the Hoyt is its ability to fine tune. With adding and removing twists to the yokes to induce some static cam lean, its amazing how straight a Hoyt can shoot an arrow. I've had bows in the past that launched an arrow with a big left or right kick that rest tuning couldn't resolve.

115 Days till deer season so this thread could get HOT lol
 
TNDeerGuy said:
For me, I want something that is smooth to draw, quiet, tunable, dead in my hands during the shot, easy to hold at full draw with a solid backwall and well-balanced. I could care less about speed, as 95% of all bows out there are within the same speed range. My current bow, that will remain nameless, has every single quality that I have wanted�something that has never happened to me in the past.
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The same attributes I look for as well in a bow . Smooth draw cycle, solid back wall , forgiving , quiet .
 
UTGrad said:
I like the cam and 1/2 system of the Hoyt, but I've shot Mathews and they were good as well.

A big factor that has kept me on the Hoyt is its ability to fine tune. With adding and removing twists to the yokes to induce some static cam lean, its amazing how straight a Hoyt can shoot an arrow. I've had bows in the past that launched an arrow with a big left or right kick that rest tuning couldn't resolve.

115 Days till deer season so this thread could get HOT lol
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I'm shooting an older Katera XL . Very smooth and stable , longer ATA than most bows today . Shoots well for me . I took the grip off and it feels good in the hand .
 
TNDeerGuy said:
For me, I want something that is smooth to draw, quiet, tunable, dead in my hands during the shot, easy to hold at full draw with a solid backwall and well-balanced. I could care less about speed, as 95% of all bows out there are within the same speed range. My current bow, that will remain nameless, has every single quality that I have wanted�something that has never happened to me in the past.
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The Elite E35 has become wildly popular cause how great it is!
 
I was highly driven at 1 point with pure raw speed! I had a Bowtech Guardian that I bought in 2007. Awesome bow, great draw cycle, won most quiet bow that year, fast, 7 1/4" brace height very forgiven. All around an awesome bow. I sold it in early 2012 and bought a brand new 80lb model Bowtech Insanity. That bow was set on 81lbs and I'm a 30" draw. It shot a 430 grain arrow 331fps with 104lbs KE. That's a beast! But the bow was unforgiving and had a terrible draw cycle and a shallow wall. I can't tell you how many times I would draw it back, anchor in and the bow would come right back down. I sold it and now I own a 2013 Hoyt Spyder 34, a truely sweet bow. All the qualities of my previous Guardian but less poundage and faster. When it boils down to it, if your just hunting with a bow you have to find what's best for you.
 
Big JWC 50 said:
I was highly driven at 1 point with pure raw speed! I had a Bowtech Guardian that I bought in 2007. Awesome bow, great draw cycle, won most quiet bow that year, fast, 7 1/4" brace height very forgiven. All around an awesome bow. I sold it in early 2012 and bought a brand new 80lb model Bowtech Insanity. That bow was set on 81lbs and I'm a 30" draw. It shot a 430 grain arrow 331fps with 104lbs KE. That's a beast! But the bow was unforgiving and had a terrible draw cycle and a shallow wall. I can't tell you how many times I would draw it back, anchor in and the bow would come right back down. I sold it and now I own a 2013 Hoyt Spyder 34, a truely sweet bow. All the qualities of my previous Guardian but less poundage and faster. When it boils down to it, if your just hunting with a bow you have to find what's best for you.
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Exactly ! So many guys get caught up in shooting only one brand , or focus too much on gaining speed , but the bottom line is buying the bow that you shoot best with .
 
Radar said:
The bottom line is buying the bow that [color:#CC0000]you shoot best with [/color].
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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.

There are certain attributes that we look for in bows at the bow shops. Smoothness. Quiet. Overall looks. Feel. Etc. The most important part of it is the very one you can't get much of a feel for at the bow shop just test shooting bows: Accuracy.

All the other stuff are bonus attributes but if a person can't hit what they are shooting at, then it really doesn't matter if it felt smooth when you drew it back. If its quiet enough, you might get another shot at a critter though.

For you hunters out there...if you get a chance, go shoot some bows from a company called Obsession. They've got two that I've shot that will blow your mind. I shot one called the Phoenix and one called the Evolution. I don't like the camo patterns on 'em and they are ugly to me as far as riser looks, etc. But I've never shot a smoother drawing, quieter, and dead in hand bow as those two were. I don't know anything about them other than the name. They may be horrible shooters as far as accuracy. I couldn't tell ya...just shot them at 5 yards or so.
 
One of the best shooting bows I've ever laid hands on was my switchback xt. I've liked all of my other bows but there was something about both of the xt's that I really liked! The chill is my all time favorite because over 60 yards it "holds" more steady which is very important to me.
 
Agreed , although it may be hard to judge long range accuracy at the shop , a bow that feels good in the hand , holds steady with a smooth draw cycle , often leads to a good shooting bow for me . I look at specs. beforehand and pick out the bows I wanna shoot based on the specs .
Then narrow down my list by shooting each bow on my short list . One of the leading causes of poor accuracy is a bow with cam lean . I check for cam lean before buying . Some binary cams without split yokes are impossible to correct if they have cam lean .
 
Radar said:
One of the leading causes of poor accuracy is a bow with cam lean .
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True in most cases but actually putting a little left cam lean on the top cam on Hoyt Spyders tunes it to dang near perfection. Matt at Energy Wave and I tweaked with the yokes on my Hoyt Spyder Turbo until we got it shooting bare shafts with fletched at 20.

I had Mathews Z7 that started shooting sloppy when the cam leaned .
 
I had a test bow with so much cam lean , It was impossible to tune and shoot accurately . It stayed on the bow rack .
 
Here again, is something that is going to be user specific regarding bows. It took me a while to realize that not everybody else wanted the same thing out of a bow that I wanted. I'm sitting here looking at a CD laying on my desk and it brought to mind a great example of this. Some guys would be perfectly happy if they could take their bow setup and stand at 25-30 yards and just HIT something the size of this CD. To them, that would be a perfect bow setup. It wouldn't matter where they hit it...just as long as they could hit it. Then there's me...who would be shooting at the center hole in that CD...and a bow would not make me happy unless I could hit that center hole greater than 3/4 the time I shot at it out to 30 yards. I know where my strength yardages are and where my weaker points are; right now to me, my weakest points are yardages from 35-50 yards. At those distances if I could just hit the center hole in the CD half the time, I am very happy. That is extremely overkill to some people but at the same time, I know people that would say they wouldn't be happy with a bow that could only hit that center hole in a CD 4 out of 6 times at 50 yards. I'm not that level of a shooter and wont ever be. But there are some out there.
 
for me the two bows brands I shoot the best and that fit me are hoyt and elite and the hoyt fits the best. I have no clue if they are the best could care less it fits me and I shoot it fairly well and it a good bow from a very good company that will continue to get my business. I want a quite bow with a smooth draw cycle that shoots like a rocket and I get all of that with the hoyt.
 

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