As you wish

Over the past several weeks one of my friends has been struggling with the selection of a new bow and it has gotten me thinking about equipment selection. There's good gear out there; there's bad gear out there, and most shooters are more than happy to give their two cents on things but what doesn't get said nearly enough is:

Shoot what you like

There is most certainly value in getting sound advice and information about specific pieces of equipment but ultimately an archer who uses gear that they like and have confidence in will generally shoot better than one who just buys what is popular for the sake of staying with the pack (within reason). We can never forget the critical mental aspect of our sport and lacking confidence in or outright despising a piece of equipment will hobble us just as fast as a form flaw.

For example, when I started shooting compound competitively it was drilled into my head over and over again that the most stable shooting platform was a long ATA bow. Which granted this is true but for one reason or another I eventually settled on a relatively short (ok I guess medium) bow, the Hoyt Alpha Elite. I tried two different models of Hoyt Vantage Elite, the Hoyt Contender and the Bowtech Sentinel but just couldn't achieve the mental comfort that I had with the Alpha. So I stuck with it, despite being told on several occasions that my bow was "short".

Now the more astute readers will note that I gave praise in a recent post to the Vantage Elite. Let me clarify, I thoroughly enjoyed both of my vantages (I shot both a 2009 vantage elite with spiralX cams and a 2012 vantage elite plus with GTX cams) but when looking at the scores and statistics they just didn't stack up.

Or alternatively, let's consider my current equipment set up. I'll admit I was originally seduced by the shiny, Hoyt proprietary, Formula system but eventually jumped to a 2005 vintage Hoyt AeroTec riser. If I was just after the Tec bridge I had newer models to choose from and if I was just after the ILF mounting system I could have gone with... well... a lot of options. But rather, I simply just like the AeroTec both in look and feel.

One of those Weeks

Thanks to an out of spec brace height and major form issues (which I'm in the process of correcting)... it has been one of those weeks.

Review: Artemis Lite, A second pass

Well, about two months have passed since my initial review of Artemis Lite and now having had time to record more rounds and tinker a bit I have some additional thoughts.

Let's start with the bad news (but don't worry it's not all that bad).

Through my standard end consumer usage I've really quite honestly only come across one major point to which I take issue. While the tools work splendidly in general, I find that the program is far too eager to go on a witch hunt for inconsistent arrows. Of all the match data that I have entered to date, I cannot recall one match in which the program didn't pull up the little "inconsistent arrow" icon and quite honestly nine times out of ten I am willing to take full responsibility for those shots and say that it was not an inconsistent arrow, it was an inconsistent archer.

In a practical sense it is not a big deal, I at least, am willing to just ignore the icon; but for the sake of reviewing a product, it does cast some degree of doubt on the analytical ability of the rest of the program if it is getting this point so wrong.

Howwwwwever, that being said...

On the bright side my experience thus far with the analytic tools and the rest of the program has been fantastic and with out flaw.

Furthermore, I have to give tremendous credit to the developer behind this app, Marcel van Apeldoorn. In the intervening two months since my last review of the product, I believe the app has been updated twice. He is doing a great job listening to user feedback and continuing to push the application forward.


So once again, just like before; I am highly recommending this program. 

Well done.

Sexy and I know it

So first things first, I have to apologize for my absence through the end of July. Things have been a bit hectic since in my personal, non-shooting life, I've taken up a new job and have been commuting all over god's creation. Anyway things have settled down a bit so let the fun begin... again.

Let's get things back on a roll with this dead sexy recurve riser.

This fine example of the Hoyt Ion-X comes to us from Olympic athlete Jake Kaminski. I've never been a huge fan of gel dipped finishes (prefer anodized), and really this isn't exactly a head turner (it is technically a camouflage pattern after all) but at least personally this does it for me.