ORIGINAL: Wyvern Crossbow
"I guess you do not understand what Excalibur is about."
Sorry Tom but I think I have at least half a clue about what I am doing and I sell quiet a few Excals. You are missing my point here, I am not questioning any aspect of Excal other than what happens when I as a retailer have to deal with a customer that is missinformed about a product. I am not ticked off, just frustrated. You have the advantage of being one person who has done his homework and understands the advertized speeds on this bow are correct with the 350gr arrow...................... Here is what I have to deal with all the time:
"I was looking at either an Excal Phoenix or the TenPoint Profusion. They both shoot the same speed so which one should I get?" I now have to follow with "Well, they really dont shoot the same speed. If I custom make really light arrows for you and upgrade your string they will, but out of the box the Profusion will be faster". At that point I end up selling the Profusion because the customer generaly feels that they were lied to.Quality, dependability, whatever, at that point it matters very little the customer feels that Excals performance was fluffed (even though it can be achieved safely) and he then questions whatELSE may not be "correct" with Excalibur. Was the information on the string upgrade and light arrows there? Yes. Did they READ it??? NO!! Welcome to retail where the lowest common denominator sets the standard. Many people will not read that little footnote.
Now with vertical bows the IBO speeds are such crap that it is a joke. No "human" will shoot what they claim without either breaking the bow or making it so loud and shock filled as to be useless. Crossbows however have the advantage of being consistant in the way they launch an arrow.Crossbow customersseem to have more of an expectation that crossbows will shoot what they claim than vertical customers. That is where I have run into issues.
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Wyvern
Your correct that I am one person that does his homework on a product. When I got my first Excalibur crossbow (the orginalRelayer) a long time ago, I did alot of quick research into this company. I bought it dirrectly from Bill & Kathy and picked it up dirrectly from the Farm, where they first started out building the bows. Yes I paid more money then if I bought it from a store, but I wanted the personalcontact with the company which to this day still comes from them.
I can understand some of your frustration. You see, I have been putting up with novice questions on crossbows for a very long time. Some of these questions are lazy questions (not doing research or the proper reading) and others can be attribuated to the nonsense coming from the anti-crossworld which people tend to believe. I feel that I have the responsibility to teach because I know because I have been around this sport for a long time. I have said this before,
The only dumb question is a question not asked! I have been trying to educate people on crossbows for many many years, even before I came onto the internet.
I still think that you are missing what Excalibur is about. They are not about Speed bows, they are about dependable, safe hunting equipment. Yes they say that their bows can achive a certain speed with a certain arrow and certain string, but they feel dependability and safety is more important so they sell standard equipment wich is on the safer side of things so you get a slower speeds.
This is not saying that using the 350gr arrow or other string is not safe, IT IS. It is just that with the standard equipment there is more foregiveness if the user makes a mistake like a dryfire. Believe it or not ..... many people do dryfire their crossbows, even the exterianced shooters, not just the rookies. Maybe you should explain this to the new purchaser not just sorta misslead them yourself by saying
"Well, they really dont shoot the same speed.
because I know that Excalibur can achive their quoted speeds with hunting arrows.
It is unfortant but with crossbows being new (but only to a few, they have been around alot longer then compounds) but there will be those that either do not understand or do only believe what they hear from others (which many do not understand what they say). Because of this, we (you , me and others) have to educate people to the truths on crossbows. This includes not only the speed factors (what is needed to achive the fastest speeds safely, if speed is the factor) but the safety factor in maintaining a bow for an extreem long period of time. If this means explaing that the dacron string, heavier arrow will cause less stress on the equipment, then we need to state that.