The Amazing Amazon Black Hunter Longbow - Unboxing and review

All right, guys, we're here with Randy. We've been out on the juvenile hunt this morning with Tucker, and unfortunately didn't see any deer, but this is probably the last time we'll be in the woods. Yeah. But we're kind of getting geared up. Randy's ordered a new traditional bow here. I'll let him tell you about it in a minute, but we're just kind of gonna do an unboxing. We've got some other bows that we've been shooting. My grandfather's got a Darton Ranger that I've been shooting. I think, Randy, you've got a, what's your recurve, you've got? Cimic. Cimic Predator. Cimic Predator that he's been shooting. We've kind of wanted to get into the longbow realm, so I got one of them and Randy got one. Like I said, we're just gonna do a little unboxing. We've watched a lot of reviews, and these are kind of cheaper bows, very affordable. Anybody looking to get into traditional hunting, I mean, I think this, for this whole pack, what do we pay, like $120? Yeah, yeah. Got it on Amazon, so we're gonna do a little unboxing, get this thing out and shoot it, and go from there, see how it shoots, but we'll let Randy get into it here. Yeah, we're gonna, got it in probably, I guess, a little bit more than a week ago, but we're just kind of waiting for things to kind of calm down so we can unbox, so here we go. Been excited about opening it. It's hard not to open something. It's like a little kid at Christmas when you get some hunting gear in. Oh yeah, it's, and to say this about traditional hunting, I've had that Predator for a pretty good while, and I really tried to shoot instinctional, and it really is hard to. Oh yeah, I can remember when me and you got on about four or five years ago or more, when I got my grandfather's dart out and started shooting. I honestly probably didn't know what we were doing. We were backing up, I don't know, 10, 15 yards, and half-time you'd hit the target, half-time you wouldn't, and you couldn't get any consistency out of anything, it seemed like, and like you said, we kind of gave it up. Yeah, kind of gave it up, but we watched. Well, we watched a video called The Push. I don't recommend anybody getting into a traditional archery. It's a long, it's like a little over two hours, but it's called The Push, and it will go into detail from start to end, everything you need to know about traditional archery, how to set your bow up, how to tune your arrows, and more importantly, aiming procedures and processes, and there's about three different ways that you can shoot. One of them is instinctual, which my hat's off to those guys. I mean, I don't know if I could ever do it. It's very difficult. You have gap shooters, which he'll talk to you about on there about how gap shooting is, and then string walkers, and what he kind of recommends for hunting situations is a fixed crop. Of course, we won't get into all that today, but that's the process, the method that me and Randy use, and probably within a month's time, after 25 yards, we were shooting very accurate using this fixed crop and watching that video. Well, we actually have been hunting with them. Yeah, yeah. So we went from really not being able to hit the broadest side of a barn, if you have it that way, to being able to hunt 25 yards with them. Yeah, so we were down in Giles County probably the last weekend of deer season this year. Yeah. Of course, that episode's probably done. Being out, you've probably done seen it by now, but yeah, within a month's time, we were able to get in the woods and shooting that consistent and familiar with how these bows shoot to have the confidence to get in the woods. And even further, when we get this one up and rolling, if it's rolling good here around the end of March, we're gonna try to harvest some turkeys, these bad boys, if we can. That's a tall order. Some would even call us stupid. No, we're gonna try. We're gonna try, we're gonna try. As long as we can get them shooting accurate and have the confidence to go in the woods with them, we're gonna try. We're gonna try. But this bow here, this is a Black Hunter bow. You can buy them from different manufacturers. On Amazon, like I said, they're fairly cheap. This package here, I think, $140, $125. Like I said, it's not your state-of-the-art bow by no means, not a custom bow, but we'll see how it shoots here. We'll see if it's, in our opinion, if it's worth the money. What do you got there, Randy? Looks like we got there levered up pretty good. We got some, as Tucker would call it, some constructions. We do, we do. And we got some allen wrenches here. We're gonna get her set up and get it put together, and then we're gonna see if we can, see what we can do with it. Looks like we got a wood riser here. Yep. Maybe made out of maple, I believe. Looks like a grain in there. Yep. I think the limbs are actually constructed of bamboo on the inside. Like I said, this is actually a longbow. I guess a kind of hybrid longbow, because it does have some deflects to the limbs. But when you string it up, we'll see. The string does not touch the belly of the bow, which does make it a longbow. So it looks like this kit here comes with a, actually comes with a bow stringer, which we use the step-through method. I've never really used these, but it comes with a bow stringer. Looks like you've got a string here. We opted for the Flemish Twist. We had already pre-ordered some strings for these. Got mixed reviews from what I was reading on the strings that come with these. Some of them say they're pretty good. Some of them say you need a new string. So went ahead and got a Flemish Twist string for this. It's the size of the bow. This is a 60-inch bow, AMO. So if you do order something for it, it'll be an AMO 60-inch length. So that's what you want to get. Also comes with some Otterball silencers, which are pretty nice. These alone will probably cost you eight or $10 on Amazon. So these are pretty good. Of course, on Randy's old bow, you can also use paracord to make silencers, but it's a pretty easy way to do it. But we've noticed that on these bows, and of course, we're not reinventing the wheel, but you can really quieten them down with some paracord or some Otter or Beaverball, and also some of the silencers that attach to the back end, which we'll be showing you later, these things that really quieten them down. The bear hair on the back side. Absolutely, the bear hair. It makes a world of difference for them. And this here too, Randy, I don't know if you can see it on here, but it's got some felt here, which is actually where your limbs connect. So that's gonna actually probably quieten it down a little bit too. And it's actually got a little guide piece here. Some of the cheaper ones I've noticed don't have this little guide piece, so that's kind of nice that they have that. But we're gonna have to get this thing together. Randy's got some shelving. Basically, we've been just shooting straight off the shelf. Seems, especially for hunting situations, a lot easier. So we're gonna get this thing constructed and see. And that's pretty much the process other than stringing it. And this is just me personally, and I'm definitely by far no expert on traditional archery. I'm new to it myself, learning as I go, but I would probably recommend to anybody wanting to get into traditional archery, unless you've just got money to burn, I would not go out and buy a $500, $1,000 bow, get started, get you something like this that's got good ratings, that's cheaper. See if you like it. I mean, I hate to think you've done $1,000 in a bow and didn't care for it. I mean, at least this, you're not out much money. And like I said, the ratings on these, for what they are, is pretty high, but we'll run it through the paces here and see if it'll hold up. Well, it's different type shooting. You might say, well, I shoot 70 pounds on a compound. If you've never shot one of these before, it's a little bit different. You really need, because I thought I was wanting to go maybe to 50, 55 pound, but the more I've thought about it and the more I've read about it, 45's good enough. You can't get too much poundage in your. Especially getting low, until you build up to it. And I've noticed the more I've been shooting, the easier it's getting. But starting off a 45 pound bow is, I know it may sound like a lie if you've never shot it, but it's kind of difficult once you start putting a few arrows down range. So, don't outbow yourself in the beginning. Get something lighter. Work on your technique, your anchor points. And once you build up, if you want to go up in poundage, go up. 45 pounds is more than appropriate to kill a whitetail. Yep, sure is. Next thing we're gonna do is set our nock. And we always, like I said, I'm no expert. What we normally do is set up about a half inch or so high. Now, it's been our experience with this. You always want to set just a little higher than where you want because you want to shoot this thing a few times. When you shoot it, you want to be watching for your arrow to porpoise. When I mean porpoise, I mean it's gonna do like this if your nock's too high. Which we're gonna intentionally set it just a little high. Shoot, start moving down in small, small increments to where that porpoising comes out of the arrow and you start getting a straight flight. Then you're gonna tighten your nock the rest of the way down. That's work for us. You just want to set that flush where your arrow is going to sit on your rest. All right, guys, we're upstairs now and got us a couple targets in it here. Starting off, when you're setting these nocks, you want to kind of get up close to make sure where you're hitting because we're actually not shooting right under the arrow nock. If you'll notice, I don't know if you can tell, but we've got another nock down here below. That's my fixed crowl. Of course, that's something we'll set up later after we get the arrow shooting straight, but gonna shoot it 10 to 15 yards. And then also another thing we're gonna do is you notice on my bow, we've already got the otter balls installed and the bear hair underneath the string. And so we're kind of gonna see how much this quietens it down versus just a raw bow out of the case. So we'll go ahead and Randy will shoot first. It'll be Randy's new bow shooting first. Three rules in traditional shooting. You have to turn your hat around backwards. You have to wear a flannel. You have to have facial hair. That's true. You got to check in the box. Except for the flannel. You don't have it on right now. I had my flannel on. Hey, we're going rogue. You're going rogue. Not bad. Not too bad. Oh, yeah. All right, guys, what we're doing here, for lack of better words, this is kind of like what you, when you're compound bow hunt, would almost be like a peep, although you're not looking through this. We're just tying a piece of bright colored thread on here. And what that does, when you come back to anchor, you'll see this bright thread. On me, it's right in the corner of my eye. And that way, I know when I come back, that thread is lined up with the corner of my eye. I know I'm anchored right. And it also just gives you another point of anchor when you're shooting your bow. And it kind of helps a lot. But we've noticed, you can actually use a nock for this. But the whole thing dropped off there. But to me, just having something a little bright colored in your peripheral vision, to me, helps a lot. And especially, I mean, that's one reason we use a little bright colored thread, especially for low lighting hunting situations, where you can still see that. The pink, to me, the pink works good over the white. It's just something you can see like in the low light. Yeah, and I think what I've got on mine is like a bright yellow. Yeah, you do, you do. And basically, when you're after this, you just want to build up some thread there. And when you get done, just put you a little dab of super glue or something on there to lock it in. This is a little old tip that we watched watching old Clay Hayes. Yeah, yeah. Them guys know what they're doing. They're really good at it. Some of your hardcore traditional guys may frown on this. We're kind of novice, so any little advantage we can get to help us, the better. Especially in a hunting situation, we want to make, try to have every advantage with this we can to make a good, clean kill. Yeah. Just tell me how far you want to go. That's good, that's good right there. And once you thread it, you take your little tab in here and tie her off again. You really, on this traditional, you want to take every advantage that you possibly can on it because it's hardened up. And like I said, a lot of your hardcore traditional guys, they may be cringing right now. Yeah. But when you're new to it, like I said, you want every advantage you can to make good shots. And you've seen that come back right in the, right in the corner of his eye. That's where you want it. All right, here we go. Once again, I can build something up for about three or four months and just tear it down in one video episode. Here we go. You'll see where this anchor point is again on Randy. That's better. Get one more there. Billy, that peep, man, that helps me so much, man. Oh yeah. It just helps line everything up. Yeah. Because as we've said, you know, compound hunting, you can, it'll forgive a little bit more, but this right here, it won't forgive none whatsoever, will it? No. You better be. You're off on your anchor, your form or something, you'll tell it in the target. Yeah. And that's why I sold them for a good group. Not too bad, is it? That's more out of the box. That's not too bad, is it? I'm well pleased with it, man. Well, we got the old black hunter out, put it together, put it through the paces, shot quite a few times, and what'd you think, Randy? Billy, I'm gonna be honest with you. I love it. And I thought there would be some learning curve to it, because we went from a recurve to more of a longbow. I know it's kind of a hybrid, but it's still a longbow. But I thought there'd be a learning curve to it, but I'm gonna be honest with you. I am well pleased with it. The price, all the research that you, you really did most of the research on it, but the price for it, and you know, like you said earlier, you got nothing against people paying big names for big name brand bows. There ain't a thing against that. But now, if you're just gonna try something and see if you really like it, this would be something to try, and hey, you know, you could pass this down to your, whoever, you know what I mean? If you decide to go with a bigger name. But I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm tickled to death with this and that. I'm just gonna. Yeah, and I'm like you. If you're looking to get into it and don't want to spend a fortune, I really don't think, as of right now, now down the road, I mean, we may have issues with these, but out of the box, like I said, mine, I've had it, been shooting with it the last few weeks. Zero problems, zero problems a day. I would recommend this to anybody looking to get into traditional, to see if you like it. And as far as hunting with this, I mean, I wouldn't have any hesitation. No, sir. Not at all. They shoot pretty accurate, as accurate as I can shoot it. I'm sure there's a lot of guys out there that can shoot it a lot more accurate than me. And, you know, right now, about 20, 25 on in, I'm pretty good, preferably 15 or 20. Of course, a lot of that's, we've only been shooting traditional for, I guess, seriously, for the last, what, month? Month and a week, maybe. So we still have a few flyers. We've got to tighten our groups up, but it just goes with repetition. Try to get out there every evening. You get home from work, if you want to do this, maybe put about 20 minutes in. Shoot you a dozen, two dozen hours. Put it up and just keep doing that, but. I think you'll find, too, Billy, if you do that, like, and I know many of you have talked about it with a bunch of, even though if you're shooting by yourself, now, shooting with a bunch of people is a lot more fun, but even coming home from work, it's kind of one of them things where you're looking forward to getting home so you can shoot. And I haven't felt that way in a long time. Dude, I look forward to coming home and shooting this, and it's almost like a stress reliever from the day, and then you go out there and you're just, it's just you and the bow and the target, and you really feel primitive. I mean, you're basically shooting a stick and a string. And just to be able to shoot accurately, that's an accomplishment to me. I mean, granted, I'm not the most accurate by far, but I'll have times where I'll have good tight groups every now and then you have a flyer, but some of that'll be cleaned up over time and with consistency of shooting, but I couldn't be more pleased with this bow, honestly, for what we've got in it. Like I said, you can get these all day long on Amazon. I think these are, what, SinoArt? Yeah, yeah. There's different manufacturers. I think Mandarin Duck makes it, too. There's three or four other people, distributors that sell these, but they're all the same. It's the Black Hunter, they're all the same, just maybe sold by some different companies, but. I'm thinking you could do this with this. I mean, even if you're not gonna plan on hunting, just if you're looking for a cheap hobby and you like being outside and doing things, you could buy one of these right here and just see if you like it. I mean, just not even hunt with it, just go out and just shoot some with your friends or whatever. You could even, we'd even talked about maybe doing some fishing with them, some turkey hunting with them, some deer hunting with them, some small game with it. So we're, I'm just really looking forward to making some good memories with it. We'll definitely be out in April this year chasing around some golfers with these. Whether it pans out or not, I don't know, but we might try to get one under our belt with a shotgun first and then break these out and see if we can have some fun. And then, like I said, just between now and then, seeing how much more proficient and accurate we can get with it and right now, about 15 or 20 yards is probably how I'd shoot at a bird right now. And I would be very, I'd be very confident at 15 and pretty confident at 20. So the more we shoot, the better we'll get. Like I said, guys, I would recommend it. Yeah, buddy. Everything looks good on them, shoots good. And if you're looking for a cheap way to get into tradition, we'll see if you like it or not. And for a decent shooting bowl, that's, I mean, overall, the quality don't look bad, neither. So for what we've got into. The quality's not bad and what really, what really caught your eye was the speed, wouldn't it? Oh yeah, a lot of the reviews I watched, I mean, they put these on the chrono. Of course, a lot of it's gonna depend on your arrow weight and different things. And of course, we do have a little, probably a fast flight string. These will use a fast flight string where some of your others won't. But some of these guys I've seen was getting anywhere from 182 to 192 foot per second, which in the traditional world is pretty smoking. That's smoking. So they shoot pretty fast and as accurate as I can shoot it, they shoot pretty good. Well, I read an article one time, it's been a long time ago in Field & Stream or something, where it said a lot of people go out and they buy a $2,500, $3,000 rifle where a lot of people can't out-shoot a Walmart rifle. And I feel like the average hunter, like me and you, can't out-shoot this bow right here. No, right now, at my skill level, I can't out-shoot this. Yeah. And, you know, I've seen these other guys on there, Big Traditional says you can't buy accuracy. That's it. You know, once my accuracy builds up, my consistency, you know, I'm sure later on I wanna get into something with a little bit better quality. Yeah, yeah. But at this point, I can't out-shoot this bow, so there's no need in dumping a bunch of money into something that I can't out-shoot. No, no. So, but, I would recommend it if you're looking to get into it. And I also recommend, if you're new to it, go to YouTube, watch the movie or the show, The Push, and you will learn more in that two hours and 15 whatever minutes about traditional archery than you ever thought was out there. Very informational, I can't. That has changed everything for me as far as shooting traditional. Bow hunting, I'll just say it changed your life. Your bow hunting life on it. Oh yeah. Watching that video. Oh yeah, it's motivated me. It has, it has. And it's broke it down to where, layman's terms, like. Very simple. A person that's got no experience with traditional shooting, none whatsoever, can watch that video, put some things together, and be shooting in a month and a week. Oh yeah. Shooting good groups. Yeah, and I come away there with a, what I felt like a pretty good understanding on how I needed to set up, how I needed to aim, what I needed to do, and I think you will too. And that's, having the information to set these up and know what you're doing means everything. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's made a difference. So yeah, if you want one, get on Amazon. They're there all day long. Swap right. It'll be right there at your doorstep. My wife loves that. And if you don't know anything about traditional, while you're waiting on this bow to get there, get on YouTube, watch the push. Time it gets there, you'll know what you need to do. Yep. So, CNO Art, Black Hunter, I'm giving it a thumbs up. I'll give it a thumbs up too. Good deal. We'll see you in turkey season. All right.