I just read another personal bow review. (I have read not a small number of these, I just don’t know what that number is.) The bow was claimed to be “nice to shoot” and was “incredibly accurate.” And, of course, people are urged to “try it out.”
The reporter doesn’t mention whether he is a sponsored archer or not, which leads to me wondering about his motivation for the “review.” There are, in archery, fanboys of the bows of certain manufacturers. Just as I grew up with “Ford guys” and Chevy guys” and “Mopar guys,” there are archers who are Mathews guys and Hoyt guys. If this guy is a fanboy of this company’s bows, then he might have posted this review just to get some props from his contacts inside the manufacturer.
I also have to ask “why?” Why is this bow more “accurate” than his previous bows? What were his previous bows? How much more “accurate” was it?
Of course, bows are not responsible for accuracy at all, we are. So bows aren’t accurate in an of themselves. A better statement might be “I shot more accurately with this bow than any of my previous bows (list of previous bows).”
What we do ask from bows is consistency, that if we aim them the same way and release them the same way that the arrows land in roughly the same spot. (I say roughly because the arrows have a lot to say about whether they land in the same spot and no two arrows are exactly the same, etc.)
The bow has to impart the same energy to each arrow and the guiding bits, mostly the arrow rest but also the eccentrics and their synchronous actions, have to guide the arrows in the same way, etc. And we can’t just use shooting machines to test a bow’s abilities in this realm. Some bows are stable and steady in the hand and some are not. Some are positively squirrely. For example, the last time I bought Claudia a new bow, she absolutely loved the way the bow “fit her hand.” I, on the other hand, felt as if the bow (another bow as she is left-handed and I am right-handed) was going to slide out of my hand and fly back and hit me in the face. After several attempts to draw that bow, I declined to try any more, for reasons of personal safety. Clamp that bow in a shooting machine and I have no doubt that you could wreck some arrows (one crushing the previous one).
So, back to the review I read. The bow was a carbon fiber-risered bow. I am not sure there is a net advantage to using such bows, except to the manufacturer who can charge a great deal more for the whiz-bang technology. The largest stabilizing factor of a compound bow is the mass of the riser. Newer bows are using longer risers and shorter limbs, which makes them somewhat more stable. The bow has to stay still while it is driving the arrow out, otherwise it changes the position we put it in while aiming. We can’t hold it still because we just add to the movement of the bow through trying. So, carbon fiber compound bows are lighter, which may be an asset over time because you won’t get as tired lugging it around and lifting it into position, but you are also sacrificing some bow stability through that loss of mass. So, what the carbon bows allow is for mass to be added back, but instead of being near the bow hand, the added mass can be placed out on stalks, which we call “stabilizers or rods.” In effect this takes mass that was concentrated near the bow hand and moves it out away from the bow, which makes that mass more effective at stabilizing the bow.
So, did my reviewer do that? Did he change his stabilizer setup? (He didn’t say.)
So, when I read one of these “reviews” all I can say is “Well, one person was happy with his purchase.”
Does it say anything, anything at all as to whether that bow would please me?
No.