This 100 Amazon Bow Blew My Mind

That's why everybody's talking about this bow. This might be the very best thing that you can get. All right, guys, welcome back to Live at Your Love. Today, I'm answering one of y'all's most commonly asked questions. You wanna get into archery, you see some of the trick shots, you see some of the videos, and you ask yourself, man, I really wanna get into that, but I don't wanna break the bank, I don't wanna spend $500, I don't wanna spend $1,000 to get into it. What the heck do I do, right? But you wanna go traditional. A lot of you guys, I get more traditional messages than compound messages, so this video is all about tread. Today, I'm gonna tell you, based on my own research that I did, as well as referencing other people's research that they've done on YouTube, cross-referencing those in order to get you guys probably the most accurate result. There's a lot to go over today, there's a lot of detail, so hopefully I can do a good job describing why this bow is my choice, my number one choice, for the best entry bow that you can buy. I brought with me my Bear Grizzly, and this is a bow that I've become very, very familiar with, very well acquainted with. I can shoot it really well, tight groups. This bow retails for about $500. I got it on sale for like 300. Now, for somebody that's just wanting to get into archery, a price tag like 500 will scare you away, right? So, what's kind of the next step that somebody that's looking is gonna go to? They're gonna go to Amazon, and they're gonna type in traditional bow. Some of the other honorable mentions, so I took notes as I was doing it. Top archery, that one is extremely noisy when you draw it back, and it goes, eee! So, skipped that one. It looks really cool, I know, and the riser looks worn, it's metal riser, and it only costs $79.99. That was attractive, but it makes a noise upon drawback, so don't get top archery. One of my other overall picks was this Sanlina Archery 60-inch Royal X8, but the thing with that one is it's a one-piece, and I already have my Bear Grizzly, which is a one-piece, so I kind of wanted a takedown for the next bow that I would be buying, so I crossed that one off. That bow retails for about $150, everything included. Now, Black Hunter Takedown Recurve, so this is not a Black Hunter Takedown Recurve, this is a Black Hunter Takedown Longbow, but it has reflex limbs, so it's not technically a recurve because the string doesn't touch the belly, but it does have its reflex to get that extra power, and this thing, we'll get to it when we start shooting, but it is snappy. It actually out-shoots the Bear Grizzly. Same poundage, same draw, 50 pounds at 28. My draw is actually 30, so I pull it a little bit farther. I feel a slight bit more stacking in the Black Hunter Longbow, but for some reason, most people have draw lengths of 28, 29 inches, so it would work perfectly for them. Another option that I looked at was LWANO, so L-W-A-N-O, and that was appealing to me because it was another archery takedown recurve, and like I said, I wanted a takedown instead of another solid piece. That retailed for $79. That's extremely cheap, but I have a note to myself. I didn't really like the look of it. Now, those are kind of the main ones that I looked at. There were a couple others. The Samick Sage is another one that I looked at that was very commonly looked at as well. The riser's a little bit beefier, and it's not really my style. I kind of like this pistol grip type riser, and if you look at these two side by side, this is the Bear Grizzly, the one that I'm used to shooting. You can see how much cut in it has for when you're holding the bow, right? And then this is the Black Hunter Longbow, very, very similar, very, very similar. And then if you look here as well, it skinnies out. It kind of fattens out towards the bottom, and if you look at this, skinnies. It kind of fattens out towards the bottom. It's a little more asymmetrical if you're looking at this brown part down at the bottom. But these two are very, very similar. Similar, so it was very easy to get used to shooting both. Now, when you buy this bow, the Black Hunter Longbow, it's gonna come with the riser, not connected to the limbs, and then you'll have the limb bolts and a little limb pocket. When you put it together, if you're not familiar with bows, the common nomenclature are where you put the writing for the stats of the bow, like 50 pounds at 28, that's always your bottom limb, and you wanna be able to read that. And there'll be a little plug-in, and it comes with the Allen key that you need to tighten it down. Now, the top limb is just gonna be the one that doesn't have the writing, and there'll be a plug-in and a hole that will guide you. It's very, very, like a third grader could put this together. It comes with fur. Now, let me show you the difference in the fur, because this is something that kind of bothered me. Okay, so this is what I have on my Bear Grizzly. I barely have any. It's almost level with it, all right? You see that? There's almost nothing on there. Now, the fur that came with this, you can see that's about a centimeter high, right? So, I was having concerns about if I shot through paper, what it would look like. Now, let me show you some other weird stuff. Now, if you put your little T-square right up against the window where the arrow would lie, and you look, my top knock falls right about where that top hash is, okay? So, when I knock an arrow, you'd think, oh, you have to knock the arrow perfectly in the center of the string. Like, you're knocking points off. Your arrow should knock here, right? I shoot three fingers under, so all three of my fingers are underneath here, which means my knocking point is always gonna be a little bit higher. Okay, I just wanna hammer this point on. You can see how, if I hold this bow straight out, it looks like the knock of the arrow is way too high, and it's not level. This bow, I shoot three fingers under, so right there is where my fingers would be, and that's how you have to knock it up pretty high if you're gonna shoot three fingers. That knocking point could change if you're gonna shoot split fingers or Mediterranean. Just keep that in mind. Now, with my Bear Grizzly, I put silencers on here. I have a video on how to make it. All you need is some, like, twine or string or whatever. Just do 20 to 25 wraps around your hand. Unstring the bow, open the string up. You put the wraps of yarn through there, and then you just cut them where the lips are coming out, and then you just frizz it up. I have a video on how to do that. I've done that on both bows. My biggest complaint with the Black Hunter Longbow is that when you shoot, it has a twang, and there's some slow-mo videos online you can find where the lens, you can see them just going wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, but these dampeners did help, but keep in mind that if it's wet outside or these get wet, it's gonna slow down your strength, and it's gonna carry a lot of water. Okay, so now, besides that, a $500 bow is not that much different than a $100 bow. It has the capability of being a takedown. So, takedown longbow that can fit in a backpack for $100 or a $500 Bear Grizzly bow, where the only reason I got it for that discounted price is because I argued for it, but you don't know if that would happen for you or if you'd find the discount. That's why I'm arguing so heavily for this might be the very best thing that you can get. Now, let's start with the fun parts, right? So, I'm gonna tell you the story of how this happened. I have some Gold Tip 400 arrows that I shoot through this Bear Grizzly, and I like my traditional arrows, doesn't matter what it is, they're always Gold Tip Traditionals. They're carbon, but they're made to imitate and look like wood. So, the Gold Tip 400s shoot through this Bear Grizzly exceptionally well. I can shoot straight through paper bullet hole every single time, boom, boom, boom, right? So, that's what any of these blue fleshings, that's a Gold Tip 400. So, that's what I have to shoot with this bow here. And now, whenever I knock it in, I knock it at the top, so I have a little bit of space in between my knocking points, like more space than the width of the knock, and I knock it at the top always. You see that? So, there's more space here than the width of that knock, but I always knock it at the top. I'm gonna do the same thing for the other one. If you are not familiar with how to find where to put your knocking points, I can do another video on that in the future. I'll give you like a 15 second rundown. Don't use brass knocks right away, because you're almost definitely gonna be wrong, and you're gonna shoot a really, like a huge tear. You don't want a huge tear, you want a bullet hole. But these brass knocking points are really hard to get off, and they tear up your serving. So, before you use a brass one, tie on some serving of a different color, or some fishing line, or something like that. And then just, you'll be able to move that up and down, as long as you have it tied pretty loosely. And that can be like your intermediate marker until you're shooting a bullet hole every time from that tie-in reference point that you've been using. And then you're ready to put in your brass knocking points, which are gonna be much more permanent. And just make sure you don't put them too close together, or else when you pull back, you will get a knock pinch, and that will affect your arrow's accuracy. Sometimes it can even be so bad that it will pinch, and your arrow will lift off the arrow rest. So we do not want that. That's the reason for that, a little bit of extra space. So, what I was saying, goal tip, traditional 400s fire fantastically. Those are full length, out of the Bear Grizzly. And we're gonna get a speed here in a second. Now, I was thinking these are gonna be pretty similar bows, and especially because this bow, this is also 50 pounds at 28, not a heavy bow. It does feel like it stacks a little bit more than the recurve, oddly enough. This bow, I tried with the 400, with the 400 spine, and I tried shooting it through paper. That's kind of my go-to. I figured out where I need to be vertically by pretty much doing what I told you guys. I had a little impermanent tie-in, and then I used that as a reference point for where to put the arrow. I fired a bunch of times, and moved it up and down until I found that perfect place, and then I put my brass knocking points in. So, then I'm ready to shoot. So, by doing that, I'm pretty much getting rid of the vertical tear. So, then I only have a left-to-right. So, I was ending up, when I was shooting the 400 spines, I was ending up with a hard left tear. And I'm using normal nomenclature, where if I say left tear, that means that it's tail-left, field-point-right, however you wanna say it. The right nomenclature is tail-left. But I was getting a tail-left, which means my arrow was coming out, and it was coming out like this, of the bow, right? So, tail-left, through that paper. And if you're shooting with what's called an underspined arrow, so each arrow that you're gonna get, you kinda have to pick the right arrow for the bow that you're choosing. Now, this arrow, my traditional 400s work absolutely perfectly for the Bear Grizzly. Now, for the $100 bow that's a takedown, that you can get in a couple of days, that looks freaking awesome, and it comes with everything you need, like, I'm not gonna stress it enough, it's amazing that you can get this bow for the price that you can, and for the performance that it delivers. I took this bow, took the 400-spine arrow, shot it through paper, huge left hair, which means, so, a huge left hair would also mean that if I'm aiming at a target downrange, I would hit to the right of the target that I'm aiming at, because my arrow is underspined, so it would bend too much as the string is returning to its normal state, the arrow would bend too much, and then it would end up following the head of the arrow, which would be too far to the right, right? So that means I need to go up in spine, I need to increase the strength of my arrow. Now, I asked if they had any 340s with the, I went to my local pro shop, which is The Outhouse, if you're ever in Waco, Texas, go check them out. The man behind the counter has quite the reputation, but I promise he's a sweetheart if you get to know him. Don't let him scare you away or anything. I asked if they had, I knew 400s were underspined, I thought 300s would be too much of a jump, and I just had 300s in black, and I wanted them to be carbon but look like wood. That's what I like for my traditional setup. So I asked if they had any 340s, and they said no, but then he went in the back and he found some old school 7590s, and they told me those should be pretty equivalent and it should cover that gap zone where we're looking for about 340. Now, he gave me just the shafts yesterday, but I bought some feathers and stuff before I left, and I made these 12 purple arrows. So if I shoot any of these purple ones, which, honestly, I haven't shot a single one yet, but I'm very excited to see how they perform. If I shoot any of these purple ones, these are 7590s, so about 340s. Okay, I know, I know, a lot of you guys are probably like, just shoot the dang thing, but we're almost there, we're getting there. Oh, another add-in, the string. Whenever you get this, the string is kind of odd because it's all individual fibers. You can get rid of that, just put one end of the loop on your Black Hunter longbow and then just twirl it and give it about 20 or so spins so that it kind of unifies and you can see that it's spiraling or helixing down the length of your bow. Also, you need to do that so that you have those twists so that you can open your bow and put in the silencers because you are gonna want those silencers. That twang is no joke. Now, the last thing that I wanna do is, because we had to go up in spine, obviously, that's gonna increase the weight. Now, I have 100 grain broadheads on both of these. Both of these arrows are full-length. This is the, let me move these, this is for the Bear Grizzly, about 440 grains, okay? 440 for the blues. Now, for the purple, it should weigh slightly more because it should be stiffer, 502. So, from 440 to 502, so we added about 60 grains and hopefully, and they feel pretty stiff. A lot of people like to think, so that they can compare different bows across the board, you'll do grains per pound of bow weight. So, bow weight on both of these is 50 and 50 and this is pretty much exactly a 500 grain arrow, these ones with the purple fletchings. So, that's 10 grains per pound, which is what a lot of people like to speed test their bows at. Now, with the Bear Grizzly, the arrow weighed about 440. We're gonna call it 450, just to make the math a little easier. So, grains per pound would be 440 over 50 pounds. So, that's roughly nine grains per pound. Ideally, with the weight, this being a recurve, the nine grains per pound instead of 10 grains per pound. In all those respects, this bow should shoot faster, but we're about to find out. Let's go down to the chronograph and see what these two do. Now, our control in this whole thing is kind of gonna be the Bear Grizzly. I'm not gonna lie to you, I love this bow. It's very quiet once you put silencers on, and once you get used to shooting it, it's very, very, it just feels good. I feel like I'm very in tune with this bow, so I think it's a great control to have for the one that I'm recommending to y'all. Maybe it's y'all's first bow, because I sure as heck, my first bow was, I started making bows, because I didn't wanna spend any money. So, if you wanna go that route, I have a whole bunch of videos on how to make bows, survival bows, Osage orange bows, whitewood, quickly fire-hardening arm, all that kind of stuff. I go into all of it. But today, let's get back on topic. We're gonna use the 440 grain arrow as our control first. I'm gonna shoot through the chrono and see what we get. This is Bear Grizzly, it's 50 pounds at 28 inches. 177, and that's at roughly nine grains per pound. It's 8.8 if you wanna be precise, but roughly nine grains per pound. I'm gonna do one more. So, 177 was the first one. 182, I'm not gonna lie, I pulled a little harder on that one. So we'll stick with, I think 177 is pretty accurate. One more. 175, okay. Let's say, let's exclude the one where I pulled back more. So, 177, 175, let's call it 176 average. Now, before I shoot the 10 grains per pound arrow through the Black Widow, I wanna shoot the 8.8 grains per pound through the Black Widow. All right, so, still blue fletchings, 440 grains, 50 pound bow, 8.8 grains per pound. Let's see, just for a direct comparison right away for the speeds. 184, dig? I'm telling you, 184 on a bow that's 100 bucks, that's a takedown, that looks freaking wicked. That's why everybody's talking about this bow. So 184, and that was like normal draw. See if I'm gonna normal draw again. 186, so you can see the difference between 176, we called it, and 186. So that 10 feet per second is making these underspined. So when this is shooting, it's bending this arrow so much that it ends up coming out to the right. So if I were to aim downrange right now at a target, and I say I release perfectly, it's a bow that's tuned just to me, and it should go right in the center. But it's an underspined arrow, you're gonna hit to the right. If you're overspined, you're gonna hit to the left, because your arrow won't do the archer's paradox as well. Most of these bows are center cut, which really will minimize kind of the idea of like old school bows, it was a stick, and you have had an arrow, and the arrow, if you looked straight down, would be like this. And then you'd shoot, and as the arrow went around, it would bend around your riser. But modern bows are all cut in so that they're almost all center shot. So the amount of deviation that you're gonna see from one spine to another has been minimalized just because of modern bow design. So you can shoot a wider range of spines. Like I could shoot these blue ones, sure, but I wanted some that were fit just for the bow. I was excited about the bow because I could tell this is the first time I've chronoed it, and 186, 186, that 10 feet per second extra, I could tell it was faster. I just needed the proof. Now, let's see what it'll shoot with a 10 grain per pound arrow. So this arrow weighed right about 500. This is a 50 pound bow, so 10 grains per pound. My guess is, so we're going from 8.8 grains per pound to 10 grains per pound. I think it'll still be 170, 178, 173. Speed-wise, this bow is crazy. I really like the aesthetic of it. I think the riser design is absolutely beautiful. I wanted to go with purple fletchings with the black. I just thought that it kind of blended really well. I think these arrows are gonna fly super, super well once they get everything absolutely tuned. Another thing that I wanted, like I said, I wanted the ability to take it down, put it in a backpack, go haul off, go camp and hunt as much as I want. That was a necessity for my pick. Also, money. Obviously, that's like the number one kind of decider. I didn't want to spend 500 bucks. I didn't even want to spend 200 bucks. Pretty much every person that I've heard talk about this bow, get this bow, and start shooting this bow, is just blown away because it's $100 and it shoots like a $500 or a $700 bow. It's outshooting my Bear Grizzly, like easily. Now, the thing that, the last thing that we need to test is shootability. So I can take that Bear Grizzly, and given this isn't a completely fair test because I just got this bow, but I'm gonna shoot this bow and I'm gonna aim at the same spot and I'm gonna put a little card down there and I'll aim, we'll do like three shots, five shots, whatever it is. Pretty much the goal is, can I go pick this bow up right away, pull back, hit my anchors like I'm used to once I have my knocking points in the correct place and have that arrow go where I expect it to go? See that little card down there at the bottom? Put it right in there. All right, it's time to put up or shut up. I'm gonna try three arrows. If we get in the vicinity of our kill zone, that's, that'd be good. Okay, so that was first shot. Check this out. Okay, yep. I think that we're dialed. Okay, so what does that mean? That means that, I mean, I shoot bows a lot and I shoot a lot of different bows. So for me, it's not as big of a deal to go from one bow to the next. But for you guys, I mean, that's dialed right off the bat. We did it once, but doing it once doesn't count for anything. See if we can do it again. Let's try. I was counting on hitting around the thing and then going and walking up, but the first shot, beginner's luck, I guess. I'm not a beginner, but beginner of this bow. Let's see if we can duplicate. I'm not gonna lie. That might be in there as well. It might be just high right. See if we can get one right in the middle. I think we got it. I think I got it twice. Let me see. Okay, so this is what we're looking at from straight at it. Looks like I barely missed the bottom, hit the left, barely missed the right. But that grouping is pretty insane from 20. Shootability, fantastic. As you guys have seen, those are all kill zone. And that zone is even smaller than a heart of a deer. So this thing's, if you put the time in, you're gonna be able to shoot like hell with this and hunt whatever you want. Spend $100, go on Amazon today, order yours. There's a lot of brands and there's a lot of people trying to do the same thing. And everybody kind of wants to source from China because it's cheap. And normally I'm very weary of that, especially with compound bows. Like for example, the Sanlita, they make an X8 or an X9 compound bow. Would I buy that bow? Absolutely not. Because that is gonna be some parts that are maybe plastic or too thin on aluminum or some kind of polymer or some kind of shortcuts where they could save money. On a bow like this, there's only really one way to make it. You have wood, you have two slats of bamboo that run the whole length. Then you have two slats of fiberglass that go over the whole thing. You put EA-40 or some kind of glue in the whole thing. You drill your holes and you put it all together. Making a bow like this is, there's not really that many shortcuts that can be taken, which is why I'm not too weary or which is why I wasn't very weary about buying it. Because it's like, okay, worst case, I lose a hundred bucks, get to shoot the bow. Do you think you still get a video out of it? Best case, I end up loving the bow. It outperforms my $500 Bear Grizzly. And I got a whole set of new arrows that I really like, fletching arrows. It's kind of a therapeutic thing. And I've got to fletch 12 new arrows and I think they look sick with this bow. The purple with the gray and the black, I think it's awesome. And the Damascus riser, I've already mentioned that. I love it. I can't really think of any negatives besides the twang. We already talked about that. I don't think you can go wrong buying this bow. So just by chance, the day that I'm doing the review on the Black Hunter Longbow, Jackson, who's 15, comes in with the twin bow. So what, tell us about the bow. Just got it and probably 10 minutes ago. And been shooting a lot and it shoots pretty good. Better than I was expecting. And for the price, do you feel like it's a great example? Oh yeah, most definitely. Would you recommend it to other people? Oh yeah. For sure. Okay, I feel the same way about the longbow. Now the thing I'm curious about is everybody says recurves are faster than longbows. That's a 50 pound at 28 longbow. This is 55 to 28. So five more pounds and recurve. So this should shoot slightly faster than that. Now that bow shot this arrow, which is 440 grains, about, let's just do it real quick so we get an exact number. Should be the best comparison. Okay, so 185. And then we're gonna pull. This is again, 440 grain arrow. Okay. 181. Okay, I gotta try to shoot your bow. Just for consistency's sake. Because I want to see our draws might be a little different. Because this one should be faster. It's five more pounds and recurve. Okay. So it's 185? Yeah. Okay. And this one? Yeah, 191. Okay, so it's not a perfect comparison. Thank you. But I mean, what are the chances that Jackson here walks in and he's got, like, thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. All right, Jackson. So you've shot that long bow about 100 times now. And that's no joke. How does it compare to the Black Hunter recurve? Feels smoother, honestly, and better. Smoother? Yeah. Okay, just the draw cycle? Yeah. Does it feel any different at the back wall? A little. And what grain arrow do you think is, like, kind of the sweet spot? Whatever this one is, I don't really know. That one's 440. Okay, then 440 on this one. You like those, right? Okay, so let's see what a 440 sounds like. Let's just shoot that real quick. Okay. And then shoot one of yours. I think those were 350, right? 350? I think 353. Yeah. So, twang. So, I guess if we're gonna use the long bow, you gotta use a heavy arrow. I would say minimum 440. Okay. These purple ones right here, those are 500s. Okay. And that's what I'm gonna use standard. But if you had to choose, would you choose long bow or recurve? Long bow. You just had that answer ready pretty quick, dude. All right, man. That's all I got for you today. Always remember, live what you love.