Overall, I would say “yes”. I think most guys are drawing too much weight, but I think the underlying major problem is that they are not drawing the correct LENGTH with the proper form (using the back instead of the shoulders and arms), which causes instability in form and the shooting process no matter what the draw weight. Just a change of ¼” can make a bow that feels like a total bear to hold steady, suddenly lock in with no holding problems. And I don’t necessarily mean everyone needs to shorten their draw length, for some folks a ¼” the other way can make a positive difference too. With the older designs with very wide valleys, this was not too much of a problem, but rare is the bow today that doesn’t have a pretty narrow/critical valley. And because of that one needs to address the issue and be critical about draw length.

I know that over the past several years I have experimented over and over again w/ my draw length going down as low as 27.5” all the way through 29.5” (AMO). I’ve found that too short is just as detrimental as too long as far as accuracy goes. If your drawing arm/shoulder does not make it back far enough to allow your back muscles to take up the tension, you won’t hold steady enough to shoot ‘em down the middle. And if it’s too long and you have no “back” left you will not get a clean release and torque the bow: again making accuracy difficult to achieve on a consistent basis.

Being overdrawn/underdrawn automatically sets you up for being “overbowed”. You’ll notice the pro-shooters fiddle with their draw length until they get it absolutely perfect so they are holding steady as they can. I think more hunters need to do that (and more pro-shops need to be willing to take the time to help archers do so). Luckily we have more adjustable cams these days than we used to. One reason I love the Bowtech Infinity cam so much is that I can really fine-tune my draw length without going to the trouble of fiddling with string and cable length. I wish more cam systems provided a “micro-adjust” such as this (and it’s even better now with the ½” modules).

I think a large percentage (perhaps even a majority) of archers would have little problem with their current draw weights if they were to learn the proper from, and fine-tune their draw lengths. I see a lot more guys at the shop/on the range who can manhandle their bows than guys who have to point it skyward to get it back. But most of them also don’t have the correct draw length, so their shooting suffers anyway.

All that said, A 50 pound longbow is more than enough to cleanly zip an arrow through a deer. And most 45 to 60 pound compounds are also. My problem is holding weight. I shoot poorly if I don’t have enough holding weight, and even @ 65% letoff, 60 pound bows don’t quite provide enough holding weight for me. In addition, I’m a pretty big guy and I can handle 70 pounds on most hard cams w/ no problems. I generally don’t shoot hundreds of arrows at a time, so it doesn’t bother me. But I’m getting older too, and the days when I pounded my body lifting weights are catching up with me, fast! I eventually will need to work around the holding weight issue for the sake of my health. Smoother/easier draw force curves are fast becoming a priority for my bow selection if I wish to keep drawing 70 pounds.