I usually buy a new one when something better comes along.

Around 1988, I got a hand-me-down recurve bow, some junk arrows and put a haybale at the top of the yard. You could probably catch the arrows coming out of that thing. I weighed about 32 pounds, so you can imagine. I played with it about every day anyway, and did manage to bag a rabbit and a tweety bird.

1990'ish, I got a hand-me-down Bear Whitetail Hunter. It might've been a Whitetail II. It was painfully slow and big and I wasn't very accurate with it. I could barely draw the blasted thing, but I managed. It fired Lincoln Logs and was quite a contraption. BUT, a lot of deer fell to the Bear Whitetail bow, and it has an integral part in the history of the compound bow as we know it. I still regret giving that bow away.

Around 1993, I saved up and got my first new bow,a plastic, round-wheeled PSE (metal cables) that spit arrows at about 200 fps at 60#. This was also my first exposure to the mechanical release. I got my first few deer with this bow.

In '97, I traded that off for a dual cam Pro Line that was a whole heap faster, shooting in the 250's. I had the New Wave, you guys that have been bowhunting for a while remember when that bow (or its cousin, the Riptide)was all the rage. This is, in my opinion, the bow that took compound archery to the next level. (or the High Country Supreme). I got a lot of deer with this bow, but it was big and over the next couple years, bows got a lot faster and a lot smaller, so I upgraded fairly quickly.

Sometime around '98, the Solo Cam was born, and they were a lot more hunter-friendly than my behemoth New Wave, so in 1999, I did some research and I bought what I thought (and still think) was the best one-cam hunting bow ever made, the Jennings Airmaster. With my hunting setup, I'm still shooting in the low 290's at 77#.

I haven't bought a bow since. The cam 1/2's have been out for a while, but I've played with them and found out that I wouldn't really gain much by buying a new bow.Besides, Idon't like switching bows. So, until something that's a whole lot better comes along, I'll be hanging on to the Jennings.

I do like theBowtech Allegiance, but I can't see spending that kind of money on a bow. I'll probably pick up a used '06 or'07 Allegiance sometime in the next couple years, because I truly believe it's a better hunting bow than the one I have.

So, I've upgraded bows after 2, 3,4, 2, and 7 years. That works out to every 3.6 years.