atek3
Member
I'm living in NY, and most of the good deer options around me are bow only. Also, of my hunting buddies, one of them hunts exclusively with bow, and offered me the opportunity to hunt his land, which is bow-only. So I went to a local archery range, played with one of their rental bows, saw that I could indeed do bow. At the time however, I was doing rehab for a shoulder surgery (I've broken my left shoulder twice, and separated my right shoulder once).
My thought process was wait until my shoulder was 100% before I buy a bow. Six months have gone by. I went out to Oregon, took my first buck last week.
Now I've been bit by the hunting bug. Here in New York, the options for bow hunting are much much better so I've decided to get a proper hunting bow as a first bow.
The problem I'm having is this. I stopped doing physical therapy about two months ago. My shoulders are about as good as they'll get pain and recovery-wise. My shoulders aren't in pain much per se, but my upper body strength is MUCH lower than it was prior to my last big injury. I went out to the range last night to see what weight I could physically draw and I learned the following... my draw weight right now is 50# max (I could draw ~3 times before fatigue made that weight "too much"). My Draw length is 28". Several experienced bow people recommended against practicing with way too heavy a bow as it would teach bad habits.
So I'm essentially considering a bunch of different options that I'd like your help sorting through:
1) Get something like a Bowtech Soldier with a 45-60# adjustment range. Practice with it at 45#, gradually raise the weight.
2) Get something a regular adult #60 hunting bow, adjust it down to 50#. Slowly work my way up to 60#.
3) Buy a 50# "starter bow", shoot it as a 40# bow until fifty is easy, then sell it and buy a fancy bow.
I've always gone by the adage, "buy once, buy right". Yet at the same time, I tell new USPSA shooters, rather than dropping $3k on a race gun (which they probably couldn't configure well anyway), shoot a used Glock 34 for a good amount of time, then after they learn what works and what doesn't work for them, THEN buy a race gun.
Applying similar logic, if the "race gun" is a tricked out Hoyt Carbon Element, what would the used Glock 34 of bows be? My two "bow mentors", one is a Hoyt guy and the other is a Bowtech guy, so recommendations from those line ups would be awesome. "Last year's model" bow would probably be the way to go, at least to start right?
atek3
My thought process was wait until my shoulder was 100% before I buy a bow. Six months have gone by. I went out to Oregon, took my first buck last week.
Now I've been bit by the hunting bug. Here in New York, the options for bow hunting are much much better so I've decided to get a proper hunting bow as a first bow.
The problem I'm having is this. I stopped doing physical therapy about two months ago. My shoulders are about as good as they'll get pain and recovery-wise. My shoulders aren't in pain much per se, but my upper body strength is MUCH lower than it was prior to my last big injury. I went out to the range last night to see what weight I could physically draw and I learned the following... my draw weight right now is 50# max (I could draw ~3 times before fatigue made that weight "too much"). My Draw length is 28". Several experienced bow people recommended against practicing with way too heavy a bow as it would teach bad habits.
So I'm essentially considering a bunch of different options that I'd like your help sorting through:
1) Get something like a Bowtech Soldier with a 45-60# adjustment range. Practice with it at 45#, gradually raise the weight.
2) Get something a regular adult #60 hunting bow, adjust it down to 50#. Slowly work my way up to 60#.
3) Buy a 50# "starter bow", shoot it as a 40# bow until fifty is easy, then sell it and buy a fancy bow.
I've always gone by the adage, "buy once, buy right". Yet at the same time, I tell new USPSA shooters, rather than dropping $3k on a race gun (which they probably couldn't configure well anyway), shoot a used Glock 34 for a good amount of time, then after they learn what works and what doesn't work for them, THEN buy a race gun.
Applying similar logic, if the "race gun" is a tricked out Hoyt Carbon Element, what would the used Glock 34 of bows be? My two "bow mentors", one is a Hoyt guy and the other is a Bowtech guy, so recommendations from those line ups would be awesome. "Last year's model" bow would probably be the way to go, at least to start right?
atek3