whats pushing it with a 42lb treadway longbow and sbd string

[pdk25]

Well, you have a lot of info.  Hopefully more people with actual experience killing elk or other critters with trad equipment will chime in.

[pdk25]

Dang.  Double post.

[David Mitchell]

Originally posted by tecum-tha:
A 21 year old should be able to shoot a 55lbs bow with ease, unless there are some serious health issues. Your bow is a deer bow and small game bow and that's about it. Anything like elk, hogs, bear etc. is gambling. Were there animals killed with light bows. Yes. But no one tells about the animals which did not get killed with light equipment because of inadequate penetration when the arrow did not hit perfectly.

Nor do we hear of the animals that were wounded and got away because the person shooting had bought into the "heavy is better" thinking and shot an elk or other game with a bow he could not handle when perhaps with lighter gear the proper shot placement would have occurred.  It works both ways.

[pdk25]

There is no doubt truth to that, David.  The rule of thumb to shoot the heaviest bow that you can shoot accurately applies.  Just no reason that a young, healthy, professional fighter cannot build up to shooting a bow higher than 42# accurately  if they want to hunt elk.

[dragonheart]

Originally posted by Pat B.:
55+  IMO...
I hunted for several years with bows in the mid 40's.  

Even for deer I much prefer mid 50's and up..

X2, I have had same experience.

[Keb]

Prob the coolest thing is we can have a debate an express are points with out offending each other and it becoming a pissing match.

I respect the heck out of the members here.

[deadpool]

Sorry to bring back an old post but I just came back with some chrono numbers.the treadway shoots my 550g douglas fir arrow at 174fps, 3fps faster than my 50lb dryad longbow,talk about impressive speeds!

[pdk25]

Those would be very impressive, actually.  Are you sure that you are not overdrawing a tad?    For my little in the head math, that is a little over 13 gpi, so that would have you shooting over 225fps at 10 gpp.  Somebody else might have more exact figures, but I think you results might be a tad off.  One way or another, I a glad you are happy with the performance of your bow.  Go kill something with it. It will look good in a trophy pic.

[tippit]

Shoot what ever you can handle accurately.  If you can move up in weight do so...but a lot of times I see guys say they are shooting such & such weight without coming to full draw cause it's too heavy for them.  I'm about to turn 68 in January, I'm moving down in weight. Some of my favorite bows are also moving down on my knife grinder...tippit

42#@28 Carbon Griffin...

   

[deadpool]

Awesome picture tippit!
And pdk25 the numbers were accurate, shooting the same weight arrows atleast 30x, the speed ranged from 171-174, and at 10gpp, the arrows were a consistant 192fps, at 470g thr.arrows were averaging 185fps

[Mojostick]

This thread illustrates what Dan Toelke told me about how most guys benefit from going lower in weight because the working part of the limb on the lower weight bows usually gets achieved and it doesn't as much when guys try to shoot heavy weights.

Dan said he gets customers all the time who shoot a 55lb bow and then marvel when they shoot a 47lb bow and the 47lb bow shows more speed thru the chrono.

From my many years in the sporting goods business and especially my time at in Cabela's archery dept, it just goes back to my firm opinion that most bow hunters, trad and compound alike, are about 8-10lbs overbowed.

[randy grider]

everyone likes to get a pas through for bloodtrailing purposes, but you dont have to completley pass through the ribcage, and 40# is more than enough to bust through one rib, cross both lungs and the job is done. Yes, its enough. Better off to shoot 42# accurately, than 50# inaccurately.

[tecum-tha]

I know a few guys who shoot low poundage longbows/recurves and they get shots on elk, but the results are not overall favorable so far in my opinion. They do fine on deer though. On hogs I would check the forums here and use the knowledge gathered there.
Aside from that, everyone can shoot what he wants as long as it is legal to do so. If it is ethical everyone must know for himself.

[deadpool]

Especially with the lighter bow outshoots the much higher one! Lol

[Nativestranger]

Those are impressive performance figures. How about some pictures so we can see the design of this wonderful bow?

I have been giving this some curious thought. We should maybe trade bows as I have a faster than average Hill style yew lam bow that is in the mid fifties that shoots into 170s with that arrow weight and at your draw length, at least on the chrono we used that was suppose to have been tested to be accurate. No one would question shooting a cow elk with my yew longbow, it does not have any numbers written on it. But then you said that you were shooting your best with the Treadway, so forget the trade thing. Numbers are funny abstract things, especially the ones that are written on the sides of bows.

[Nativestranger]

Yes regardless of draw weight written on the bow, it's the final speed and weight of arrow that matters. No one would question a 60#  hill longbow for elk. But that probably shot the same 550g arrow at the same speed of 174fps.

[David Mitchell]

nativestranger, here are a few pics of my Treadway Black Swamp--not sure if that is the same model deadpool is using, but they are impressive bows.  Some of the best performers I have owned in my 40-some years of archery.


 
 

[Nativestranger]

Thanks David. It looks beautiful.

[Bladepeek]

I'm a relative new-comer to bow hunting. I started shooting a recurve around 1956 or so and then quit shooting bows entirely when I graduated high school until a few years ago.

I have been shooting a rifle quite a bit over my 73 years, though, and some of the same arguments apply. I've had friends who hunted elk every year with a .270 and nearly always scored . They killed elk very dead at 200 yards with that little pea sized bullet. I've also read lots of articles written by guys who have made a lifetime of hunting/guiding elk and most of them say the same thing - they like a .338 over the smaller calibers for elk because:

a. Elk are very tough animals.

b. Most importantly, many hunters who have perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity at an elk will want to take any reasonable shot. If they passed on every shot except a close-up, broadside shot and could place the bullet right where they wanted it, most anything .25 caliber or up with the proper bullet would do fine. It's the quartering shot that would be a piece of cake with a larger caliber that could result in a wounded, non-recovered elk with the pea-shooter.

I'm hearing the same arguments in this thread and I think they are valid. Those who say a 40# bow will kill an elk just fine will attach a few extra caveats beyond the usual "well tuned bow/arrow combo", "sharp BH" and "accurate shooting".

If you live where elk hunting is a routine activity, you might pass on a shot that others would find very difficult to turn down. I think if I was planning an elk hunt, even at my age I would work out to where I felt comfortable with something with a bit more steam behind it. For the time being, I'm sufficiently challenged trying to get an arrow into one of our mostly nocturnal whitetails this year.