RE: life expectancy of a bow?
The bow I had before my bowtech Mighty Might was a 2000 Darton Yukon with the CPS cam system on it. It was a mid priced bow, not really expensive, but not the cheapest bow you could find either. I think it was $350 just for the bow when I got it. I bet in the first three years I owned that bow I put over 100,000 arrows through it. Rain, snow, sun you name it I would shoot in it. And I didn't baby it either. Some of those arrows were under 5 grns per lb, some were over 500 grns. The bow was rated at 50-60 lbs and I shot it at weights from 45 to almost 70. I shimmed the limb pockets to get more draw weight out of it at one points, and messed with the length of the strings and cables.
During this time I dry fired it 3 or 4 times and it blew up on me once at full draw because my string was cut and I didn't know it.
When I got my Bowtech I tweaked the draw weight and length down on the darton so my girlfriend could shoot it, then just this last year I sold it to a friend and he is still shooting it. I never had any problems with accuracy or noise. I did use limb savers and large string silencers though.
Could you ruin a bow? Sure if you really abused it, but I don't think you would wear one out very fast with normal shooting, even if you didn't take very good care of it.
My buddy has an older Darton Maverick with round wheels and a cast riser that is like 14 years old or so and it still works fine, he just got a new bow last year. Its loud and slow, but it was like that when it was new. I also have a 90's Martin Cheetah that functions just fine, and it has hatchet cams and steel cables on it.
Paul