draw wt reduction and accuracy

[Matt Green]

I've asked several and wanted to run it through the pow wow as well.  Question:   What has happened to your accuracy when you drop bow weight?  Assume you were not overbowed to start with.  did you a) get MORE accurate b) NOT change, c) get LESS accurate?  Would be interested to know WHY you think the change (if any occurred).
thx in advance
matt green

[katman]

More accurate after I learned to get off the string cleanly with the lighter weight.

[Orion]

Certainly not more accurate.  I tend to hold too long with lighter weight and don't get as clean a release. Lower weight bow gives my tp more of an opportunity to crop up.  Don't know that my accuracy got poorer, but it certainly didn't get better.  Of course, either is better than being over bowed, which does play havoc with my tp and accuracy.

[McDave]

Originally posted by katman:
More accurate after I learned to get off the string cleanly with the lighter weight.

+1

The string is not going to just rip itself out of your fingers at a lower weight.  You have to learn to relax your fingers and let the string push them out of the way.

I would guess that this would not be a problem for most people in dropping from 60 to 55#, or 55 to 50#,  For me, weight drops at this poundage simply allowed me to hold steadier on target, with no offsetting downside.  But drop to a weight you can hold for a long time, like 40#, and you have to learn the finger relaxation technique.

[BOHO]

My accuracy increased because my form got way better. I wasn't fighting the bow any more and I could concentrate more on the shot than the weight of the bow. My longbow now is 45@28. Have one I'm going to pick up end of July that's 37@28. Can't wait to get it broke in and set up.

Imagine someone handing you what looks like two 50 pound weights and acting like they were both heavy,except one is hollow. He hands you the real one first and ask you to hold for a while. You set that one down and he quickly hands you the hollow one and you damn near throw it in the air.  That is what happened to me when my primary bows were over 80 pounds, when I would try to shoot a low to mid 50s bow.  I got over it soon enough.  Of course, one can point a lighter weight bow more effectively, but the muscle memory may take a bit of a learning curve.  Some lighter weight bows are more forgiving of release errors than others. When I shoot a recurve under 60 pounds, I do much better with a Cant Pinch tab than a heavy glove, but with longbows it makes no difference.  The question is, is your released aim based, strain based, or timing based?

[Red Beastmaster]

After hashing all this through before, you surely see by now that the answers are "yes" and "no". Just do it and see how it works out.

My own draw weight reduction was gradual over twenty years as my physical ability decreased as I got older. I shot well then, I shoot well now. If you have a crappy release and need a heavy bow to rip the string from your fingers then you have bigger problems.

[Babbling Bob]

Been there -done that,  and owned a bazillion bows.  No change. If anything, gained some accuracy with the lower draw weights, especially if shooting a whole lot in one day like over a  hundred arrows where getting tiered will set in.

An exception was a young bow who was shooting with his family at a 3-D in Oklahoma.  He was shooting a very low draw weight bow but had been practicing some at home with a heavier weight 40-lb draw weight bow.  The family said he shot better with the heavier weight bow. Maybe a straighter arrow path of a heavier bow helped him for those real short junior stakes he was shooting.

[pdk25]

I shoot a fairly wide range of bows, so I have more of a bell curve type thing going on.  When I am at the upper limit of my poundage range, My accuracy on longer distance shots suffers, and similarly I have issues with lower poundages.  I suspect a very different mechanism. For the lower poundages, I feel it is mostly that I have so little tension on my bow arm that I lose stability.  Pretty much anything under 50# or so does that to me.  I am sure that if I really focused on that, the problem would go away.  When I practiced regularly with my 82# bow prior to my buffalo hunt, I shot that better than any bow in my stable.  I would assume that most people overall have improved accuracy with lower weights, and some day when I focus on that I may find the same thing.

[pdk25]

I also think that for me, when a bow is heavier, I actually have better for on the draw, as in a more straight line draw through the shoulders engaging the back muscles, because I can't cheat and use other muscle groups.  Just speaking for me.  Obviously it all comes back to form.

[M60gunner]

I am going through this old age crisis myself. Dropping from 55-60# to 45-50#. May not seem like a lot of weight but it's got my sight picture way out of wack. Oh yes, it's easier to say "raise your bow arm" than to really do it. My other issue is I like other forms of archery besides hunting, 3D, targets, so longer shots are taken.

One advantage lower weight I like, I get to shoot a bunch more arrows before getting to tired.

I tried to give a 42@26 Hill Big 5 that I reduced to a local kid.  I showed him how it can hit peanut can lids out of the air at 12 yards.  He was doing the throwing.  We worked out a deal.  He is going to get a 48 pounder new and going to come over here and use the 42 pounder on my target until it get here.  A guy just cannot give stuff away anymore.  He was first talking about getting a 65 pounder, I had to do something to knock some sense into him.  65 is way too much for a first bow.

[BWallace10327]

My accuracy, and consistency each drop sharply when I put up my 55# limbs and put my 43# set on.  I snap shoot, I can't help it and don't want too.  The lighter weight leads to more chances overdraw,torque the string.  The upside is, I can shoot light weight limbs all day, but down side it, most of my shots are more mediocre.

[McDave]

Originally posted by M60gunner:
I am going through this old age crisis myself. Dropping from 55-60# to 45-50#. May not seem like a lot of weight but it's got my sight picture way out of wack. Oh yes, it's easier to say "raise your bow arm" than to really do it. My other issue is I like other forms of archery besides hunting, 3D, targets, so longer shots are taken.

One advantage lower weight I like, I get to shoot a bunch more arrows before getting to tired.

By adjusting arrow spine and weight, you should be able to achieve very nearly the same trajectory with your lighter weight bows as with your heavier weight bows.  "Very nearly" sometimes can mean getting an even flatter trajectory with the lightweight bows than you want, and having to increase weight or something to slow the arrow down.

For example, I get the same 45 yard point on shooting my 55# Robertson Fatal Styk with a 5575 GT and a 150 grain point as I do shooting my 40# Bob Lee Legacy with a 600 spine GT Ultralight shaft and a 100 grain point.

I got some PSA Razorback 1000 spine kids arrows to shoot in some 25# bows I use for teaching.  They were quite zippy, so just for fun I tried them in a 31# Bob Lee.  They clocked along at 195 fps, and gave me a point on at about 55 yards.  If I were going to use that bow myself, I would have to use a heavier arrow because I would have no idea where the Razorbacks were going to hit, unless I wanted to shoot enough of them to re-program my mental computer (which translated, would mean to f*** u* my mental computer for shooting anything else).

[Pat Ct]

I shoot 50 - 60# regularly but once a month I shoot a 35# recurve bow to practice form and release. I don't aim for groups, I just stand about ten feet from Target and shoot. It really makes me realize what I'm doing wrong since, for me, the lower draw weight is much more sensitive to MY mistakes.  Cheers! Pat

[A Lex]

My standard go-to bow is a 75# Blackwidow longbow. I shoot it a lot, and usually shoot it quite well, probably because of how much I do use it. But I have a lighter bow, a 55# Blackwidow longbow, that I call my "Form" bow. I've never been able to shoot it as consistantly or as accurately as the big one, I guess because I don't shoot it anywhere near as much, but it sure helps me to keep on top of any form issues that come up now and then.

That said though, I  have been shooting the lighter bow more than usual over the last couple of weeks, and now I've got the relax the fingers release sorted out, I'm shooting it almost as well as the 75#er.

Long answer to the OP, but based on me using my lighter bow a bit more than usual, I'd say if I used the lighter bow as much as the heavier bow, accuracy would be on a par.

Best
Lex

[Sirius Black]

I've seen with my bows that just playing with the BH, can have the same effect. At a higher brace, I have a cleaner release, at a lower one, less so. I've come to agree with people like Steve Fausel, in MBB 2, when he said a higher BH is more forgiving in a bow. I know that working with that lower brace, just like a lighter weight bow, I will get better, but I still like more forgiving!    

About 20 years ago I did some flight shooting after we got some very confused readings from a chronograph at a shoot.  An 85 pound longbow shooting 7.125 gpp net bop 27", a 64 pound Schulz 8.52 gpp same fletch and length and a 51 pound Schulz shooting 495 grain cedars with the same fletch and length.  I shot them repeatedly for length and without fail, the 51 pound bow came in just a little bit behind the 64, while the 85 pound bow with the very low arrow weight had the least cast of all by 15 yards.  All bows were drawn as close as possible to the draw and shot at the same angle. One can say that on one hand the numbers don't lie, but  on the other hand they do lie.  The numbers on the side of the bow, means poundage, it does not always mean cast. When I teach someone how to shoot a longbow, I am impressed with how smooth and in control they are with a bow they can handle with ease, even though without fail, they always want to push for more draw weight.  Pulling a heavy bow can be a fine and fun thing, but the fun goes away if the struggle is too much and the accuracy is not there.  I did pretty  well with the heavy bows, but I wish now that I would have capped it a bit below 70 pounds.  On the other hand, shooting my right hand 60 pounder today, I was on, maybe all of those years of shooting over 80 pounds had something to do with that, who knows.

[WVbowhunter]

Stayed about the same. My average score on an NFAA blue face with my 60 pound bow is 244/300. My average with my 44 pound bow is 246/300.

[KeganM]

The bell curve analogy is a good one. Worked my way down from 90# as a daily weight to 38# and right now it appears that my "peak" is right at 45#. I can then shoot 40# and 50# almost as well, but as I get further from there it gets harder to be as accurate. The "peak" weight is probably different for everyone and would likely change during a person's lifetime.