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Hi Guys,

Due to shoulder problems, I fear my days of drawing a bow are over. Lucky for me Nebraska now allows the use of crossbows during the archery season. Problem is, I know nothing about them. I'd like some input on brands, recurve vs. compound, bolts, basically anything you can throw out there to help with my selection. Thanks in advance.

Mike

I use a Wicked Ridge that was recommended by an archery shop.
No complaints about it at all.

I have an Excalibur recurve that I've harvested a few bucks with and a bear in Manitoba. Very good , simple to use and accurate bow . You can do all the maintenance yourself.
This year I bought a Ten Point Venom because the limbs are much shorter across and I now hunt from a box blind 16' up with windows too narrow for the Excalibur .
You can't go wrong with either.
Soup

I have shot both a Excaliber and Parker Tornado. The Excaliber is wider due to the recurve vs. compound but I found them to be about equally accurate, in my hands

Sell you old bow and buy a higher end crossbow.

Ten point is rock solid... but a bit pricey

Buy the PSE Fang reasonably priced and shoots with the real expense ones. No problem hitting the bottom of a coke can at 40 yards and under

Tenpoint. Tenpoint. Or go with a Tenpoint. Trust me. High quality, great customer service. Extremely accurate.

Just got a flyer in mail. Tenpoint Titan Extreme going on sale at Cabelas Nov. 10th. $549 with scope.......

Do you work for Tenpoint? Give us a break. This is getting old. Trust me

Stay away from no name brands and you should be fine. Barnett gets a lot of bad press on xbow forums as well. I have 4, two Bow Tech and two Parker. I haven't had any problems out of them.

Good luck,

loder

No substitute for actually getting to a shop, or 2, where you can get your hands on them. Many are heavy, unwieldy things, miserable to handle. Handle a few and you will quickly be able to figure this out for yourself.
Price does not necessarily indicate "better."
That said, be sure to take a look at the Barnett Recruit, the model with cams, not the recurve. It's small size makes it very nice to handle, its pretty fast, easy to shoot well, and is low maintenance. This provides a good starting point to determine if xbows that are 2 or 3 times more expensive are delivering 2 or 3 more times....performance? handling? speed?

Barnetts are famous for spending more time in the shop than in the field.......

I bought a Carbon Express X force this year , had Barnetts and others in the past . So far I love it , 12.5" cocked 16 " uncocked . 2" groups at 40 yds and very light with a decent trigger . Got 2 deer with it this year , best part under $300 shipped.

I have a Wicked Ridge Warrior. It's been very reliable, killed maybe 15-20 deer with it. I try not to shoot it much, just when taking a deer. I guess my reasoning is the less I shoot it, the longer it will last.

I have owned three crossbows. Barnett rx-280, Barnett demon, and a horton. Other than a couple of loose screws in the sights, I've had a problem and no shop time at all.

I got a crossbow and its more interesting to me than the long bow. I can 'shoot' the crossbow in my basement and it makes no noise and the 'target' catches the bolt just fine.

It's sighted with a Zeiss 4.5-14 X 44 MC at 200 yds with the 58 gr V Max over 4064,

Barnett-Recruit-Compound-Crossbow

[img]https://us-i5.tb.wal.co/asr/479985c...ht=450&odnWidth=450&odnBg=FFFFFF[/img]

One of our guys who's a great resource for all things crossbow related is MILES58. He's very knowledgeable on crossbows. He recommended and found me a used Excalibur Ibex, which is a now discontinued recurve model. Just a good, rock solid box. Look him up- he won't steer you wrong. Tell him Gophergunner referred you.

Check out the Center Point sniper 370 from Crosman air guns. It gets fantastic reviews.Three guys I work with have bought them over the last few months and they all love them.

WOW!!! The internet is full of great news on that Xbow. I'm a member over at crossbow nation http://www.crossbownation.com/community and they have nothing but praise for the Snyper 370.
If it's all they claim it to be then my Tenpoint Titan may be up for sale and I'll have $$$$ left over.

If these things matter to you, the manufacturer is Man Kung in Taiwan and branded to Crosman/Centerpoint.

tag

I would check out Kodabow if a recurve model interests you. Love mine and can't be any easier to shoot and maintain. The owner of the company is great too. Check out their website.

Excaliber...string, unstring in the field, you would only need to do this if you had to replace your string if you damaged it in some way. Accuracy and warranty are exellent as well.

For me, it was between the Excalibur and Kodabow because they were both recurves. Both will shoot forever with no issues.

Yes, that discussed extensively at Crossbow Nation. Crossman has decided to have its own 5 year warranty program.

I agree with Buckhorn ^^^^^^^^^

Get you a Recurve betwixed 300-330fps, a Nikon Crossbolt scope, VPA 3 Blade broadheads, and an extra string...You be fixed up fer sure.

https://vparchery.com/product/vpa-3-blade-broadheads-125-grains-non-vented-1-18-width-3-pack-copy/

I can't tell you much about other brands because I'm new to it also. 2 years ago I looked into it but wasn't sure. I was looking at 10 Point and Wicked Ridge at the bow shop, but wasn't sure about spending the money. Dick's had some no-name brand on sale, so I bought it. 2 days later, before I could even get it sighted in, the cocker broke, so I returned it and went back to the bow shop and bought a Wicked Ridge. Wicked Ridge is made by 10 Point, but has the old style larger limbs. The guy put it together, I took it home and no adjustment necessary on the scope. The cocker works great.

If I were to do it over, I would buy the 10 Point. The old limbs on the WR are long, and when shooting around the back of the tree, it limits how far you can go around the tree. 10 Points have the short limbs.

Someone earlier said not to buy no-name brands and I agree. If you're gonna do it, do it right.

I haven't touched my compound in 2 years, I love it.

my wife got this bow a few weeks ago. it is pretty awesome.
Ravin Crossbow.



she tried quite a few xbows but felt most comfortable with this one.

built in crank to cock it.
shoots 390 feet per second.
14 inches wide (outside to outside) when uncocked.
about 10 inches wide when cocked (outside to outside)
Sight in scope at 20 and it's spot on at other ranges.
Can you kill with it at 100 yards? don't know, but you have a 100 yard pin that is spot on!

We are headed to Africa with it in June for her to hunt the waterholes.

Wicked Ridge Invader G3 for me. What a bow! Bought one last August. Scary accurate! It's really fun to shoot. I installed string dampening rods and it helped with noise and vibration. It's light and easy to carry and the cocking mechanism is awesome. Wicked easy you might say.

Will the Ravin crossbow make noise when it's extended in the field to shoot at an animal? Will cocking it make noise and would the hunter be seen moving to do all this?

After watching several vids of your wife's new bow I must say that it's pretty darn LOUD.

Having said that. Best of luck on your hunt and please post some pics, Sir.

the cocking is loud, but you can initially cock it before going in and place an arrow in it once you get situated. like most xbows, it has a dry-fire preventer.

For a follow-up shot or a miss followed by reload.
You can hold a button that will allow it to be quiet, but if you slip, there is no safety and damage may occur. With that said, she couldn't do that. She wanted a bow she could operate for herself with her limitations. This is it. It seems to be the safest and easiest, to me, of xbows for cocking.

We've been shooting it some. She is basically a one-hole shooter at 20 yards and kill-zone every shot at 40 yards.
Shooting at 20 yards is just boringly easy.
I can one-hole shoot at 40 yards. Ridiculously easy to do.

I plan to get it out to 60+ yards.
Thinking I might try to do some stalking in Africa for a bonus animal if/after we kill our list of 10 animals..... or if all kill list is getting punched really quick.

as for the movement question when recocking, you can do it easily sitting in a tree-stand with little movement. you don't have to stand up to cock it. As mentioned, the loudness is the problem not the movement.

I will do a full report, as I've done in the past, on our hunt. Will likely post them in both the archery and africa sections.

Mike there were a couple of nice ones in the Classifieds. I almost jumped on one.

Think it was an Excalibur.

If you're going to be going far afield, a recurve is the way to go. You can restring them yourself and there's no cams to keep tuned; like a standard recurve bow, you don't have a lot of fiddling around to do. With a compound xbow, if the cams get out of adjustment, you'll have some major windage problems.

For long distance travel, especially involving airlines, you can unstring and disassemble a recurve bow so that all the pieces fit into a double take-down shotgun case, then reassemble everything when you get where you're going. A couple of test shots and you're good to go.

Excalibur had some problems with limb breakage, so I bought a spare pair of limbs and can change them at hunting camp if needs be.

There's advantages to both compound and recurve, but for me the recurve won out.

I just bought one of the center point sniper 370's. Couldn't resist for the 209.00 it cost me with my industry pricing discount directly from Crosman. Only shot it a few times but have to say that so far it's as good as everybody says it is. Sighted it in at 30 yards and was consistently keeping them in a 1" bullseye with the cheap arrows that came with it. It definitely shoots fast and flat and is considerably quieter than my brothers parker or my buddies barnett game crusher.

I bought a Sniper 370 as well.

String simply goes THUD and a very quiet THUD at that !!!

My Ten Point Titan sounds like a cannon in comparison.

So how do you like it ? Shoot as good as your Ten Point accuracy wise ? At this point the only things I'm intending to do to mine is figure a way to take the sloppiness out of the adjustable butt stock and I'll probably take the trigger mechanism apart and see what can be done to improve the trigger pull.

Haven't had a chance to wring it out but at this point in time I'm liking it above the Ten Point so the TP will probably be gone some time this spring.

Trigger ???

Found this thread over at CBN but haven't looked at my internals. Lotsa time for that.

http://www.crossbownation.com/commu...0-trigger-creep-mod-diy-in-20-min.40662/

Bolts ? Man the sky is the limit on them. Factory bolts that came with the Sniper 370 shoot well but these are a little tougher I'm told.

????

http://www.crosman.com/crossbow-bolts

Thanks for those links 284. Gives me a place to start on my trigger.

I have a Stryker, my daughter has a Wicked Ridge. I think the Stryker is made by Bowtech. They are all loud, to the point of being ridiculous. I am glad I don't have to hunt with one. I prefer my stickbow or Hoyt Carbon Matrix and I am very lucky to be in good enough shape that I don't have to use a crossbow. The amount of noise they make cause you to have to be careful when you take your shot at a deer. Crossbows are fast, but not faster than the speed of sound. Deer will still jump the string and they do it worse with crossbows.
Suggest you get a portable press if you do go with a compound crossbow...they are cheap enough and you will need it. They are easy to use and save you from running to the pro shop when the bow gets out of time or needs a string.