rochelle

I currently draw 67lbs with my bow. Ive offten wondered would I be better off drawing 55lbs and getting the same results on game as opposed to the higher weight. Id think with the more efficent cams and sharper broadheads of today the higher draw isnt needed. What do you think?

Kanga

I for one have dropped from a 70# bow down to a 60# bow.
My shouldsers are thankfull for the decrease.

ARMallardSlayer

I for one will keep my bow turned up. My Mathews is set at 66 right now, it' s a 70 pound bow. The cables or something have stretched, cuz 66 is all it will do. After the season is over, I' m haveing a new cam put on and new strings and such, hope to get back to 70.........where it will stay.

Danny45

I' m shooting 70 lbs and I' m comfortable with that. I' m thinking about dropping my target bow down in weight so I can battle this target panic, but I' m comfortable in drawing 70 lbs.

One lesson I learned very early in my career, shoot near the top of the range for the bow that you' re using. I had a 65 lb bow but was only shooting it at 55 lbs. Sucker was noisy and I had 3 deer (1 at 30 yards, and 2 at 15 yards) in one day duck arrows. When I got home, I cranked it up to 65 lbs, retuned the set up and resighted it in. Next day, nailed a nice doe that never heard a sound.

Straightarrow

High draw weights certainly aren' t needed to make efficient kills on big game. Very sharp broadheads, well tuned bows and accurate shooting is what takes down game easiest.

I set my draw weight to match the arrow' s spine that I' m shooting. I have found that getting a perfect spine match gives me better flying broadheads. My current 70 lb draw bow is set at 63 lbs, because that matches the spine of my 55/75 gold tips very closely.

Arthur P

With the right arrow weight, right broadhead and sensible shot selection, a 40 - 45 pound recurve will do the trick on a deer. That' s what I used before I caught the magnumitis affliction and wound up shooting 80 - 100+ pounds. I' m closing in on being back to 40 - 45 pounds again.

My opinion about these new cams though... There are going to be a lot of people with severe shoulder problems a few years down the road. When you' ve got bad shoulders to start with, you can darn sure feel the strain they put on those joints. The smart choice would be to drop down in weight and accept the performance of your old style bows at 10-20 pounds less draw weight.

Not that anyone' s going to listen to THAT advice.

But, for someone that insists on using ultra light arrows and mechanical heads, then they need that extra poundage. It takes a lot of speed to get the momentum up to where it needs to be with ultra light arrows.

Deleted User

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CBM SC

You may want to research that a little !! You probably just need your existing cable twisted a few turns !!

A cam will not change anything regarding your poundage !! And with a quality string set your bow may stay set longer......but it will change!! If your bow is fairly old or has had a lot of shots through it , you may need the cable bushings checked.....they will change your poundage some, but are an easy and cheap fix $5 last time I replaced any!!

JeffB

Overall, I would say “yes”. I think most guys are drawing too much weight, but I think the underlying major problem is that they are not drawing the correct LENGTH with the proper form (using the back instead of the shoulders and arms), which causes instability in form and the shooting process no matter what the draw weight. Just a change of ¼” can make a bow that feels like a total bear to hold steady, suddenly lock in with no holding problems. And I don’t necessarily mean everyone needs to shorten their draw length, for some folks a ¼” the other way can make a positive difference too. With the older designs with very wide valleys, this was not too much of a problem, but rare is the bow today that doesn’t have a pretty narrow/critical valley. And because of that one needs to address the issue and be critical about draw length.

I know that over the past several years I have experimented over and over again w/ my draw length going down as low as 27.5” all the way through 29.5” (AMO). I’ve found that too short is just as detrimental as too long as far as accuracy goes. If your drawing arm/shoulder does not make it back far enough to allow your back muscles to take up the tension, you won’t hold steady enough to shoot ‘em down the middle. And if it’s too long and you have no “back” left you will not get a clean release and torque the bow: again making accuracy difficult to achieve on a consistent basis.

Being overdrawn/underdrawn automatically sets you up for being “overbowed”. You’ll notice the pro-shooters fiddle with their draw length until they get it absolutely perfect so they are holding steady as they can. I think more hunters need to do that (and more pro-shops need to be willing to take the time to help archers do so). Luckily we have more adjustable cams these days than we used to. One reason I love the Bowtech Infinity cam so much is that I can really fine-tune my draw length without going to the trouble of fiddling with string and cable length. I wish more cam systems provided a “micro-adjust” such as this (and it’s even better now with the ½” modules).

I think a large percentage (perhaps even a majority) of archers would have little problem with their current draw weights if they were to learn the proper from, and fine-tune their draw lengths. I see a lot more guys at the shop/on the range who can manhandle their bows than guys who have to point it skyward to get it back. But most of them also don’t have the correct draw length, so their shooting suffers anyway.

All that said, A 50 pound longbow is more than enough to cleanly zip an arrow through a deer. And most 45 to 60 pound compounds are also. My problem is holding weight. I shoot poorly if I don’t have enough holding weight, and even @ 65% letoff, 60 pound bows don’t quite provide enough holding weight for me. In addition, I’m a pretty big guy and I can handle 70 pounds on most hard cams w/ no problems. I generally don’t shoot hundreds of arrows at a time, so it doesn’t bother me. But I’m getting older too, and the days when I pounded my body lifting weights are catching up with me, fast! I eventually will need to work around the holding weight issue for the sake of my health. Smoother/easier draw force curves are fast becoming a priority for my bow selection if I wish to keep drawing 70 pounds.

silentassassin

I can only speak for myself when I say that I know I am not drawing too much weight. I currently shoot 70 lbs but I can set down in a chair and pick my feet up off of the floor and still draw 100lbs, so I don' t think 70 lbs is over doing it in my case.