Help me Buy a bow???

[buckinrut]

I currently have an older bow my dad gave me a few years ago when I wanted to start bow hunting. It is a Bear Super Striker XLR 31" draw 80# pull. I am looking at buying a new bow for next year and am wondering what to buy?

I have only been bowhunting for 3 years now and know very little about bows. So what kind and model do I buy?

Really the only thing I have on the Bear bow for add ons is a quiver and I added a bushnell bow pro rangefinder. What else should be added to a good hunting bow?

Thanks in advance, and got to say I love this sight.

 

[Cornfed]

buckinrut,

Bowhunting is an awesome sport and you will truly get addicted to it.......

There are a lot of good bows on the market. Mathews and Hoyt are probably two of the most popular...... however, there are a number of other quality manufactures.

I would recommend you go to a good pro shop and try out a few and see what feels best.

Just a few bits of advise...... don't overbow (60lbs or less is plenty of bow to harvest any big game animal).... if you can't comfortable draw the bow without raising your bow arm more than a couple of inches above the horizontal then you are overbowed. Your accuracy will suffer dramatically.

Don't get caught up in speed..... speed means nothing. No bow shoots faster than the speed of sound (approx. 760 ft/sec.).... most really fast bows are really noisy and only cause the deer that you shoot at to jerk after the shot. A quieter bow is more important than speed.......

Keep your set-up simple..... don't let a proshop sell you a bunch of gadgets that you do not need to be successful.

I am sure that you will get a lot of great advise from other guys on this site. I shot compound bows for around six years before switching to more 'traditional' equipment. So I am sure that they can offer more specific advise as far as equipment specs. etc...... Good luck

 

[SD Buck]

I recentley bought a new bow, called a Buckmasters G2 XL. It is a smooth shooting bow, but there are also a lot of others out there who claim and do have some of the same characteristics as mine does.

The only thing I would say to do is test a lot of the bows out before you buy them, and see which one fits you the best.

SD Buck

 

[jharrell]

Great advise so far. You can probably narrow down your list by figuring out how much you are willing to spend. Bows will cost in the neighborhood of $200 to more than $800 so figure out how much you want to spend and find the most bow for the buck.

Some good things to look for are: 1.) a good brace height (measurement from the center of the riser or plunger hole to the string). The higher the measurement the easier to shoot. You give up a little speed with the higher brace height measurement but if you are just getting into the sport it is worth the frustration. I would advise somewhere in the 6 to 8 inch range. 2.) a good axle to axle measurement. Depending on what you are comfortable with I think the average length would be somewhere between 34 to 38 inches. Again the higher the measurement the easier it is to be more accurate.

With that said I shoot a 31 inch bow but it has a 8 inch brace height. It shoots very accurate because of the brace height. This is an extremely short bow but something I am comfortable with. As stated above I would give up speed for quiet.

Good luck in your search. Take your time and look around.

If I have steered you wrong I am sure someone will find it in their heart to point it out and steer you straight again.