How Dangerous are Compound Bows?

How dangerous are compound bows? Well to find out I got some of the most unique compound bows on the market, from a bow that's also a slingshot, to a pump action compound bow, to the fastest and most powerful carbon fiber compound bow in the world. The plan is to review them all and measure how accurate, fast and lethal they are. Moreover for each test I'm also going to compare the results to a traditional recurve bow and the most expensive and powerful crossbow in the world. All right, I want to test the three bows I got going from the cheapest to the most expensive one and so I'm gonna start from this one. This thing is not only one of the most compact compound bows on the planet but it also has a very unique feature compared to all the other bows on the list. It's called booster fireball and I paid about 460 dollars for it. This bow has an adjustable draw weight that I set to the max by screwing this bolt all the way in, making it now about 55 pounds which is not extreme but definitely not light. For comparison my fighter's recurve bow should be about 25 pounds. Now I feel like the look of this thing doesn't match the power at all. I was kind of expecting the performance of a kid's bow but in reality I can already tell this thing is so much more violent compared to the recurve bow and so much more accurate. To be fair the last time I shot a recurve bow was like four years ago but it's also true I've never shot a compound bow until yesterday so I feel like this comparison should still be quite objective and so I think all this kind of begs the question how how is this so much more powerful and apparently much more accurate while also being so much smaller than a recurve bow? Well the answer lies in this beautiful chart right here and it's actually pretty simple. You see a traditional bow works on linear force meaning the further you pull the string the harder it gets and so since this bow has a draw weight of 25 pounds at maximum draw length I'm holding 25 pounds and that means the moment I'm struggling the most it's also the moment I gotta try to stay perfectly still before taking the shot. All this makes it very hard to be accurate and especially consistent with a recurve bow and that is probably why at some point around 1960 a man named Hoss Wilbur Allen with one idea revolutionized an industry that went on for literally thousands of years by inventing the compound system. The first prototypes looked like bows with pulleys and then with time compound bows got lighter more accurate and more powerful but the principle has basically remained the same and it's fascinating. Now there are mainly three advantages the compound system brings compared to the classic bows at least on paper and the first one of them has a lot to do with the shape of these pulleys. The reason these elements look like circles when I draw them is to fix the inconvenient draw force curve of classic bows. Because they are not perfect circles the leverage changes during the pull you hit peak weight almost right away storing a lot of energy at the start but at full draw the cams roll over flipping the leverage in your favor so suddenly this 55 pound bow feels like 12 pounds. This phenomenon is called let off and it makes it much easier to stay still while aiming at the target. Now the second advantage is how cams increase the efficiency of the limbs to generate more energy and more speed. In a traditional bow you need long flexible limbs to reach a decent draw length but long limbs have to travel a long distance to snap back making them relatively slow like a long flexible stick while cams given a mechanical advantage allow to use very short and very stiff limbs so when you draw the bow the stiff limbs barely move they only bend just a few millimeters but they store a lot of energy because again they are very very stiff so when you shoot because these limbs have almost no distance to travel they snap back instantly basically like a stiff short stick increasing the speed of the arrows. And then for the last advantage if a recurve bow is basically a beautiful stick with a string compound bows are more like platforms. On this first bow i've got a five pin sight for different distances and an arrow rest and then i've also got a pip sight which is this tiny ring in the string while aiming aligning this ring with the sight housing kind of forces you to be consistent with your shots and then if to release a recurve bow you just use your fingers for a compound bow you've got a trigger on the string there is this thing called the loop which is where you attach the release aid it could be a thumb release or an index finger release but either way it's another element that increases accuracy and consistency compared to recurve bows. All right that was the theory of compound bows but now let's test the first one once again this is one of the smallest most compact compound bows on the market another cool feature though is the riser instead of having a single one like most bows it has two and you shoot the arrow through them this should help remove torque and make the bow less sensitive to grip mistakes but the most interesting feature of this bow which makes it pretty unique compared to the other ones on the list is the ability to shoot steel balls not just arrows it's basically a sort of compound slingshot now the reason it can do that is this magnet here that keeps a steel ball in place while drawing the bow and so before running all the tests for this bow with the arrows i want to try to shoot the steel balls mainly because i'm very curious to compare the speed of the steel balls when i shoot them with this thing to a very powerful slingshot i built a while ago now i'm certain that to shoot steel balls i need to remove the arrow rest otherwise the balls are just gonna bounce there and back to my face but i'm not entirely sure about the sight so just in case i'm gonna use a face mask all right i've got a steel ball loaded i can't aim with this thing all right i'm just gonna use safety glasses and hope for the best okay and with this shot i got a speed of 117.8 meters per second which is almost identical to my slingshot actually that was 119 meters per second in any case i want to try to hit a metal plate with a steel ball and see what happens that's so cool though looks like a bullet went through there the only thing i'm worried about is the damage to the bow itself dry firing meaning shooting a bow without an arrow is pretty bad especially for compound bows and since steel balls are very light and seeing how the bow and the string shake after each shot i'm guessing on the long run something will break but because the steel balls move so fast they also probably do a lot of damage so besides the arrows i think i'm also gonna use the steel balls for the penetration and the damage tests later on now to see how these compound bows stack up against each other's the recurve and the crossbow i'm putting them all through the same exact tests and the first one of them is about energy i'm gonna measure the speed of each bow and based on the weight of the arrows they shoot i'm gonna be able to find the energy they generate and well the booster fireball shot arrows with an average speed of 72.6 meters per second and since these arrows weigh about 22 grams that is 58 joules of energy that is almost twice the energy of my father's recurve bow that i'm testing as well to use as a first benchmark for all the others but anyways now how accurate is this thing now to measure that i'm gonna shoot three times from 20 meters then three times from 30 meters and three times from 50 meters yeah 50 might be a stretch and then i'm gonna sum all the points to get a final accuracy score the only problem is that i think i got the wrong target because the 10 is like tiny all right cheapest bow on the list accuracy test from 20 meters then i took three shots from 30 meters and i completely forgot to turn on the second camera but i somehow got a 10 a 7 and a 6 and then i moved to 50 meters well i used the first two shots to adjust the sight and now i'm starting with the actual test actually all on target that's that's a win well the grouping is not the best but i got an 8 so the first compound bow gets a total accuracy score of 58 points far more than the recurve bow which got literally just five and then i had to stop because i was breaking all my father's arrows but i mean this one doesn't have a sight and i'm very bad at using it all right the next test is gonna be penetration now i remember watching a joe rogan clip of him shooting a tesla cyber truck with a very powerful compound bow just to see if an arrow could go through the door panels and it didn't but i want to try that myself now it wouldn't be the best financial decision to buy a tesla cyber truck especially to shoot it with an arrow so i'm gonna try to recreate a tesla cyber truck door now what makes this truck very tough is apparently stainless steel layers on top of the door panels and so i got two stainless steel panels of 0.8 millimeters making it 1.6 in total and i'm gonna shoot them i'm gonna shoot from 10 meters because i'm scared of of ricochet all right i gotta aim lower so he went through the first one clean and also the second one what it just didn't stick into that's insane i mean this is the cheapest bow on the list so if 1.6 millimeters is gonna get too easy for the next bows i also have a two millimeter steel plate by the way i also ran the same test with the recurve bow which also damaged both plates but with much less penetration than the compound one now the last test is damage i want to see what happens to a ballistic dummy head with bones in it if i shoot it with all these compound balls from 30 meters now since this bow also shoots steel balls i'm gonna try those first if i hit it i gotta rush there to stop the ultra slow motion camera okay and well it took a while the bow is not set in to shoot steel balls i just kept trying adjusting the aim based on where the steel balls were going you see just next to his face and then after a while i think i hit it i'm not sure well i did hit the dummy head but just barely so i kept trying oh my god and then after a few minutes i hit it again but once again it wasn't clean it was just kind on the side of the school and then finally with the next shot i got it okay so he hit the nose here and then bounced into the eye so i think unless you hit one eye these things would not be deadly all right damage test with the arrows and for this one i'm also gonna use very mean tips obviously i didn't take into account this tip's weight a lot more than the standard ones and so the first shot went straight through the plastic bucket below the dummy but then at the very next attempt i hit it and somehow the arrow didn't penetrate the skull so yeah left a deep scratch here but it didn't penetrate very interesting very curious to see if the next ones are gonna do more damage than that and so these are all the results for the recurve bow and the first compound bow now the second compound bow is very special because it fixes one of the biggest flaws of compound bows and boats in general the reload time it takes a while to reload the bow you gotta grab the arrow load it onto the arrow rest lock it to the string attach the release aid to the d-loop cock the bow aim and shoot and even though you can get certainly faster with practice unless you are an elf or Lars Sanderson who could be an elf it would generally take at least a few seconds to reload and shoot a compound bow while this thing has a six round magazine making it basically a pump action compound bow now i'm also happy to feature this bow because it was invented and designed by a fellow creator and a friend of mine Jorg Sprave from the slingshot channel now the design is very simple but also pretty smart as i said before i have a six round magazine that holds this kind of arrows they are basically a mix between crossbow bolts and compound arrows so i'm very curious to see how they're gonna perform in terms of accuracy and damage during the test in any case the arrows are kept in place by a spring powered lever like this so anytime you draw the bow a bolt slides in front of the string which is then held by a sort of crossbow hook then by pushing this lever you move the hook out of the way so the string is now free to snap forward picking up an arrow and shooting it towards the target and then by drawing once again you simply repeat the process this thing is actually kind of different from a normal compound bow instead of a normal bow sight have a red dot for example there is no clear anchor point either at least for me at the maximum draw length and no pip sight on the string it's really something unique entirely that kind of looks like a compound bow but at least apparently it seems to work pretty well also the maximum draw weight is about 50 pounds now having a heavier draw weight would certainly make the bow more powerful but it will also probably defeat the purpose of this mechanism because having a heavier draw weight would also make it much slower and much harder to load anyways this is how it looks like when i'm trying to shoot it as fast as i can well it's not bad besides whenever that went just there i don't know why but that is pretty nice in any case let's test it now since this bow comes with three different bolts i'm gonna use the normal ones for the speed and accuracy test the sharpened ones for the penetration test and the hunting ones for the damage test now i tried to get to the place where i filmed the tests this morning but there is mud on the road so my car just got stuck there and it's not gonna move so i'm walking this happens so many times by the way but since you guys insisted in the last video i just put a cash deposit down for a pickup truck so hopefully this is the last one speaking of cash the sponsor for this video is free cash and i know the name sounds bold but let me explain how they and how you get paid and then it'll make sense basically brands usually spend big money on ads that interrupt whatever you're doing so you cannot pay with your attention and time watching the ad but you get nothing in return and this is not the case because you're gonna get ten dollars but we'll get there and here's where free cash jumps in basically brands pay them to get real people to test their app and free cash pays you to try them out moreover free cash matches you with brands games and app you'd be genuinely into so you still have fun but you just get paid for it for example i'm trying royal match a candy crush style game for a few minutes a day and i'm actually earning while doing it to be clear this is not a replacement for a real job but if you already play games on your phone you might as well get rewarded in real life for it and then when you reach the 25 minimum you can cash out using a bunch of different payment options such as paypal gift cards cryptos whatever now free cash has a 4.6 star rating on trustpilot and strong ratings on app store and google play store as well all right i made it so download free cash clicking the link in description or scanning this qr code on the screen and try it out for free moreover you're gonna receive a 10 bonus after completing your first offer which takes like four minutes so check it out all right the first test of the whip shot is gonna be accuracy and well this bow shoots arrows with an average speed of 69.8 meters per second and since the bolt weights about 18 grams it generates an energy of 44 joules i'm very curious to see how accurate this bow is gonna be especially because of the sight it's the only bow on the list with a with a red dot instead of a multi-pin sight so let's see how it goes now from here it gets a little bit problematic because i just see a red dot there that's set for 20 yards so i just gotta kinda guess where to hold my aim all right well that grouping was very nice now i would love to adjust the sight and try again but i gotta take into account that in a real world scenario i'm just gonna have to guess where to shoot so let's try from 50. i'm gonna shoot the third one just guessing what that's not possible like this is literally impossible i was aiming like right here somewhere this doesn't make any sense well i would say that grouping is just pure luck but it happened twice in any case the whip shot gets a total accuracy score of 43 points now for the penetration test i'm using these bolts that have sharpened steel tips that should increase performance and the whip shot gets the highest penetration so far but still the bolt didn't stick into the plates so the tip is basically fine it was really just power now the remaining test for the second bow is damage and for this one i'm gonna use these very mean razor blade looking tips and i had to try a few times but after a while i hit the target the arrow managed to crack the surface of the bone and penetrate a little bit but i believe that even if i hit the forehead it would certainly hurt but the zombie would probably still be alive i mean it would move i am very surprised that so far none of the bows managed to get a clean lethal blow to the dummy head but i'm also pretty sure that with the next one the outcome is going to be pretty different in any case these are all the results for the whip shot and if you're interested in getting this pump action bow you can find it on gogan both from europe and the us now the last bow is the most expensive most powerful and in my opinion also the most beautiful bow on the list and it's called psc sicario and even though it's definitely overkill for me that i literally never shot a compound bow until three days ago i wanted to get something top tier to make a fair comparison later on with a crossbow in any case this thing is beautiful it's lightweight but you can feel the quality it also uses a pretty innovative cam design called fds that should reduce micro movements and eliminate torque at full draw the draw length is fully adjustable as well as the draw weight which is 65 pounds right now moreover i also keep this bow with a few pretty cool attachments first of all i get a multi-pin sight for different distances i currently just set it in at 20 meters which only took a few shots micro adjusting windage and elevation by screwing these bolts you see here and then i also adjusted the sight for 30 meters but later during the test i'm gonna have to sight in at 50 and 60 to properly compare it to a crossbow at long range this bow also mounts a quiver that holds five arrows one of them that i already broke after hitting it with another arrow so it holds four arrows in my case and then there is a shock absorber to reduce vibrations after the shot even the arrow rest is quite interesting because this one holds the arrows in place and then it drops away when you release so the arrows have less contact and less friction with it so the question is is it really worth the price difference compared to the previous bows and also how does it perform compared to the most powerful and most expensive crossbow on the planet well to find out i'm gonna run all the tests with the psc sicario and also with the crossbow by the way both these bows have been sent to me by tacticalarchery.uk they've always helped me out when i needed material for these videos and as a plus they've always been extra fast and super kind so if you are in europe and you need anything related to archery really just check them out all right then as usual the first test is gonna be energy 83.4 meters per second let me try one more time and 3.6 and since the arrows i'm shooting weight 28 grams it means the psc generates an energy of 98 joules which is by far the highest one among the compound bows now the crossbow certainly takes longer to reload but the power is on a completely different level 146.3 meters per second which with bows the weight 31 grams translates to an energy of 331 joules that's insane now this is what i'm very excited about i want to see how accurate is this bow you already know how it works three shots from 20 yards one i think i pulled it a little bit i'm not sure i pulled this one i clearly felt it let me just try again all right nine nine that was an eight but it became a ten so nine nine ten then i tried from 30 meters i pulled it three and then from 50 meters had to try a few times first to setting the ball from here but i'm only gonna show the official shots one all right so the psc sicario gets a total accuracy score of 77 points making it by far the highest one of the list now i also wanted to try the accuracy test with a crossbow but at the first shot the bolt disappeared now it just went through the target and that damaged the vein and since i have only one bolt left and i want to keep it for the penetration test i decided to abandon the accuracy test actually i already tested the accuracy of this crossbow in another video so if you're interested in crossbows you should definitely check that out as well in any case the next test is penetration i'm gonna start with the two 0.8 millimeter steel plates and the compound bow first yep this one went definitely through and it went through quite a lot so now i want to try with a two millimeter plate and the arrow only managed to dent the plate and look at the tip of the arrow it looks like a flower and now i want to try with the crossbow so for some reason the tip of the arrow is gone i have no idea what it is but i mean this was the compound bow and this is the crossbow and it actually smells like something burned all right damage test i already know what happens when a crossbow hits a ballistic dummy head so the real question is the compound bow especially because so far none of the previous bows managed to get a clean lethal blow to the zombie head and the first shot went slightly high the second shot went slightly left and well the third shot there it is while the third shot was terrifying and well i think the last bow is really worth the price difference compared to the others it was so easy to use and so accurate while the crossbow it's very hard to compare because it's probably a different category altogether but what i'm really taking away from this experiment with bows is how nice it is to use them in nature you know you gotta be focused when you shoot bows so the entire process kind of helps you be here present which i found out in the past months that is probably one of the keys to a much more interesting and fulfilling life so give it a try