I'm tired of pulling 70# bow. I just don't feel I need to anymore with the technology advances today. Why risk injury by pulling so much if I don't have to? I want silence, easy shooting over holding that much weight and pulling that much. I have my current bow turned down to 67# and it's a big difference from 72# that it was a year ago. I don't have any injuries yet but as I have aged I can feel it starting to work on my shoulder and arm. I want to enjoy shooting my bow for as long as I can. So I'm looking at dropping down to 65# limbs or 60#. The new bow I'm getting is made in both. Anyone else out there that's dropped from shooting 70# to 60# or even 50#?

I shot 52# for years and killed stuff all the time. This was before "let-off". Then I upgraded in 2001. Had to order my bow since I shoot a short draw length. Ordered in in 60# limbs and set it at 57#. Have no problems getting full pass thru now. Although I have never gone down in your case, but you don't have to pull 70 to kill stuff.

That's what I'm thinking. Let the tech advancement allow me to work my muscles and shoulder less and enjoy the sport longer. I hav been seeing a few other hunters shooting 60# these days too.

I dropped to 60lb limbs. Can adjust down to 50 but I like to shoot a bow maxed out. I shoot through most animals except if I hit a solid bone or the cartilage plate on a huge boar. Can shoot out to 50+ yards with ease and wouldn't think of going back to the days of 70 and 80lb limbs.

I hear you. I pull 54#'s on my recurve and it wears on you. Hell in the old days we used to pull back Golden Eagle, Hoyt and other compound bows at 60 and 70 pounds with 40 and 50% let off but those were the days when we were young lmao. You start feeling it in the morning now in the back and shoulders. Unless you are going for something like a moose or elk and there is some distance then you really don't need to go all that weight these days. I sold my 55-70 (I believe that was the weight amounts) and picked up an LX that was 50-60 pound draw with 80% let off. Man when they came out with 80% let off, people were stoked and went up in pounds on their bows they bought. It was bigger than mechanical broadheads coming out lol. I remember having to wait for a doe to turn her head who caught me out of the corner of her eye when I just finished drawing back and found it so easy to hold it back for the time I needed for her to look away. I like shooting a bow that is at it's peak weight too. I recently found my bow that I traded in over a decade ago for sale on ebay and bought it back lol. It's the LX and I haven't shot a compound since then so I am either going to feel like Hercules or feel like I did after the first day of Boot Camp lmao. I remember when I was able to break 275 fps using the Martin split end over draw and split dove tail rest with my bow cranked down to 68#'s hahahaha!!!! If you even twitched on release then your arrow was out in left field somewhere in a tree. Now I can do that fps shooting a kids bow with today's technology. I know some archers who used to shoot those 90 pound draw Hoyt bows back in the 80's but now they shoot 50 pound bows and do just fine while hunting. They had to learn yardage since they couldn't use just 2 pins anymore but they fill their tags each year. Those were the days. Thunderheads and Muzzy's were king and you used a small pipe cutter to cut your aluminum shafts lol.

Anybody remember the overdraw craze. This was a Martin Archery overdraw I used to use in the 80's for 3D's to shoot arrows the length of darts lol.

My uncle shot a sika spike at 35yd with Rage 2-blade in November with his bow set at less than 55lb. COMPLETE pass through and it kept going. Shot placement over raw strength!

(Then again I'm at 67lb and growing )

When I was younger I shot 83lbs on a Darton Viper. My pins were close together and I could shoot to 60 yards easily with a 5 pin sight. The shoulders had to be rebuilt and I'm smarter now. Be smart when you are young and you won't pay the same price as I did.

Go for the reduction if you want, on deer the difference between 60 and 70lbs is how far the arrow is stuck in something on the other side of the deer on most shots. An outfitter friend In Montana tells people hunting elk bring a 60ln bow that you shoot well and collecting your elk should be no problem, he told me that in the late 90s and it is even more true with todays bows.

A bow will be its most efficient at or very near its highest setting than turned down, I am currently shooting one at 62 that has 65lb limbs. At one point in college in the early 80s I was shooting 80lb draw.

That's awesome passthru. I have over $100 plus of rage crossbow broadheads that the guy at the shop swore by so I ended up buying a bunch of them and all the extra replacement blades, tip blades and packs and packs of the crossbow collars. Well they didn't work with my set up and would open up in flight which I have heard of that happening with certain crossbows. I have a Mission MXB-360 crossbow and I think it's too much force in the design that kicks them open. I lost 3 mission arrows which cost a lot that flew off in to the swamp to the left at the range lol. They said they were bows up to 400fps but couldn't stay together with my crossbow. I will probably give them to my buddy or sell them for 1/2 price to someone who's crossbow set up works with them. I got a screwed up should from my days in the Marine Corps and when I got out, I couldn't pull anything back. I had to work with surgical bands and a 40# recurve to get my muscles strengthened up to where I could shoot a bow again. I remember trying out a dual cam bow from PSE and my shoulder almost came apart. Thank got for the Mathews solo cam bows. I can't wait till Wednesday when my LX comes in the mail. A nice sharp Thunderhead and a 50# bow with shot placement will take down any North American animal. Hell I have friends who have taken down huge black bears with a 60# recurve, 2-blade traditional broadhead and a cedar arrow. I am talking 325 plus black bear. They are nuts but they do it. When the arrow leaves the bow, it's not putting out 60#'s and is more around 50#'s. Look at all the game Fred Bear has taken down with a traditional bow. But I have to say that if I was having to hunt in west Texas for mule deer then I would probably want to shoot more than 60#'s because I would want to shoot a heavy arrow and the shots are pretty far out. The longest shot I have ever taken at a deer was 44 yards from a tree stand 20 feet up a tree and that was in to a field on a farm that I had permission to hunt on. That was a shot I took with a Spitfire mechanical because I got insanely incredible tight groups shooting them and practiced and sighted in my pins at the clubs 20 foot high platform. I shot higher once I got past 25 yards so I made sure to have it sighted in perfectly. Up north in MA and NH you have branches all over the place and you have to know your set up or your clipping a branch and might as well move to your back up stand because they will avoid it like some anti Hunter pissed all over the area lol. But from what I have seen so far out of Texas archers, you all can make some incredible distance shots with your bows. Up north if you take a shot over 30 yards then you must be on a trail or shooting towards a field because you can't even see that far in the woods unless you are in a managed area where they take out trees for firewood lol. I recently bought two Red Stag T/D recurves with a set of 60 and 55 pound limbs and even though I am only pulling 54 and 49 pounds out of them, I ache like a SOB after an hour at the range! I am probably going to have to order a lower weight set of limbs for them. I wanted one set up for a bow fishing set up and one for hunting but they were sold out of the lower weight limbs during the clearance sale. I can feel my age these days.

By turned down I am referring to tightening the limbs all the way down to the highest draw weight. That was the first thing my buddy's uncle taught us when he took us to a shop to buy some bows. That's why I went with the 50-60 LX. I didn't need more than that and the shots were all so close up north. When I was younger I could pull the top weight of 70#'s out of my Golden Eagle and now forget it because those days are over for me. If there's something that can tare or rip then that would probably happen before I got it over the valley these days. I remember when I got my first mail order bow from Bowhunter's Warehouse, I had to wait 3 weeks till it arrived and couldn't pull it back for the life of me. After 5 minutes of killing myself, my buddy's uncle filled me in on how they send them with the limbs cranked all the way down lol. It's amazing what 10 or even a couple of pounds can make.

To hell with my strength, I want my hair back lol.

My daughter killed 2 bucks this year with her new bow set around 36 to 38lbs pull (30 is legal in Oklahoma). Her bow shoots almost as fast as mine set at 65 and is 10 times more quite. Technology has done wonders for bow hunting.

That's awesome! Congrats to your daughter.

This thread instantly caught my attention. I am 54 years old and have been shooting 70lb compound bows for a long time, but this year I really felt increase in effort that it took to draw back (especially in cold weather) for the first time.

To tell you the truth, it is tough thinking about how you can't do something with ease anymore.

I really need to back off to 60.

I will turn 53 in June. I need a couple more repairs I'm putting off and realize I'm not the man I used to be. That said I can still kill them just as dead with 60 as I did with 70. The last time I had to eek through a season with a bow turned down to 56lbs the arrows still went through the deer. I am more thoughtful on shot placement.

Good to hear so many agree. I'm definitely going to take advantage the technology provides me and shoot 60# maxed out. It's still going to be faster than my current bow is at 72#.