First of all, bows need to be precisely fitted to your draw length and weight. If you don't get those right, your accuracy will suffer.

If you know your propper draw length and weight, you can pretty much order a bow out of a magazine if there aren't any good pro shops in the area or if you want to save money.

I once was told of a way to get your propper draw length measurement. If I remember corectly, it goes like this.
-Put your hands flat together and extend your arms out away from your body.
-There is a "v" in the bone between colar bones in the base of your neck.
- Take a yard stick, and rest one end in the "v" at the base of your neck, and hold it between your extended hands.
-Your draw length will be where the tip of your middle finger indicates.

That ought to give you your draw length. Now as for draw weight, go draw your friend's bows to give you an idea of what you can comfortably draw. It is important that you don't get too heavy of a draw weight because your accuracy will be impacted. Don't worry about penetration because a 45 pound bow will get a complete pass through on whitetail deer size game. Just get a draw weight that you can comfortably draw and hold for a couple minutes. I've heard stories of guys who ran up a hill after animals and didn't have the strength afterwords to draw their bow. I guess their draw weight was too much.

Next thing you need to decide on is if you want to shoot high speed light arrows, heavy arrows, or mid-weight arrows.

Personally I prefer mid-weight arrows. I get about 220 fps and my first pin is good out to 20 yards 2nd is 25, 3rd is 30yards. Fairly simple. The Easton Hunting Arrow Shaft Interactive Selection Chart at http://www.edersbow.com/catalog/easton_chart.htm and that will give you a good mid weight shaft size.

So what are you looking for? A high speed / high tech set-up, a finger shooter set-up? A a mid weight simple-but-accurate set-up with sights and release aid?

I like PSE bows but the Reflex Prowler is also a good bow. In the Cabelas Archery Catalog, The Prowler comes with a package for $269 wich includes the bow, quiver, arrow rest, Sights, peep sight and more. It's a good finger shooter set-up but any arrows you get should have feathers instead of fletching because the type arrow rest that comes with it doesn't allow for perfect fletching clearence. The AMO Speed rating is 226 fps which is pretty fast. That is the speed you will get if you use the arrows suggest in the Shaft selection chart linked above. With light carbon arrows, you can get 293 fps with this bow but if you plan to do that, you would also have to get a different arrow rest. To start out in archery, you would probably be looking at around $300.

If you want to be as accurate as possible, your gonna want an arrow rest that allows for perfect fletching clearence, a release aid, and a peep sight.

My friend has that bow and it is fairly quiet, fast and is a good bow for the price. There are many cheeper bows out there but that bow is a good one. You can order bows right off the internet too from Cabelas, bass proshops and other online archery catalogs.

All you need to know is your draw length and draw weight. Some people don't like to buy a bow unless they can hold it and shoot it to compare how good it is so if there is a good archery stores that you have access too, it might be better to buy from them.

You won't be able to hunt this season because archery takes some practice. Thousands of shots.

You could always just start off with a traditional bow too. They take much more practice to achive great accuracy but they are simple. Low end Take down recurves aren't too pricey either. And the satisfaction you get from taking an animal is much greater. And they are fun to shoot. I like to roll tagets with my foot and shoot them as they roll away.



Nic