This is a bow that I finished a few months ago that I just now got around to taking pictures of. This bow was originally built as a backup bow for the PA bow trade. The bow was an excellent candidate for the trade, but another bow I built was just a little better overall so that was the one I sent.
After the trade was finished I decided to use this bow as my primary hunting bow this season. I have hunted this bow hard and did not baby it. It has spent over 40 hours on stand with me so far this season along with many early mornings and late evenings getting drug through thickets, briars,mud and everything else that comes with hunting deep in public land. The bow has been good to me so far, I have taken 2 deer with it as well as nailing a running rabbit. I will be taking this bow to Texas in February to chase some hogs and hopefully put sausage in the freezer.
So that is the background on the bow, here are the specs.
The bow is a bamboo backed osage longbow that is built in the hill style (ASL) string follow design. It is 65" NTN and draws 47@28.
The bow started as a 1/2" thick osage slat glued to a bamboo backing in a flat profile. The bow ended up with a touch over an inch of string follow when finished. The bow is almost 1-1/4" wide at the fades which is technically a little too wide to be considered an ASL longbow and would be closer to a flatbow profile. A true Hill-style ASL would be between 1" and 1-1/8" at its widest part. This bow also has a power lam which is not correct to the original design either.
The riser is laminated black cherry and walnut. The bow has stained osage tip overlays and a cordovan stained back.
The finish is 8 coats of water based spar. A deer skin handle wrap and arrow shelf finish out the build.
This bow is wonderfully quiet and a great shooter. It is very soft on release and is easy to put the arrows where I want them to go. With that said, this bow is not a fast high performance bow. it spits out my 11 GPP (508 grain) hunting arrows at 147 fps and 13 GPP ( 608 grains) arrows at 137 fps. I did not shoot a 10GPP arrow through it, but I would expect it to be around the 153 fps mark.
What this bow lacks in oomph it makes up for in handling and accuracy. It points very naturally and is a true pleasure to shoot. This bow has been great to me so far and has quickly became one of my favorite bows.
Cheers,
Taylor
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