If you ever plan on going solo into the woods an LCD screen is a must and the bigger the better...............Also in my opinion shoulder mount cameras like the XL1s are not good to learn with, they are bulky and need heavy duty camera arms/tripods to support thier weight, also i don't believe the XL1s gives any better video quality than the PD170 (I think the pd is just as good and kicks the XL1s butt in lowlight). If I were just starting out I would stick with a smaller pro-sumer with a large LCD screen and XLR inputs for great audio.

I shoot the Panasonic DVX100p and you cannot beat the picture quality, manual controls are easy to use and it has a big LCD (3.5") the only downside is the optical zoom (10x) but for bowhunting it works just fine.