Your thinking is right on. Going from the compound to recurves most of us drop some draw weight, speed, and a bit of accuracy (rather than golf-ball-sized groups we hope for baseball-size groups). Therefore we need to make the shot a bit eaiser if we can.
Depending upon the lay of the land and cover around my tree, I hunt 15-18' with my recurve. I like multiple stemmed trees or really branchy ones. I'm very stingy about trimming shooting windows. I would rather tie back limbs than cut them, so I can restore some cover if I over do it.