There are a lot of cb's out there. I personally like the Excaliburs. I have a Vortex and it's great. I like the recurves because they are easy to keep up and do string changes ect. I've heard a lot of good things about Ten Points. It depends how he will be using it too. Some people prefer the compounds for stand hunting because they are generally narrower. Some like the low maintenance of a recurve. I had a Horton Realtree HD175 before the Excal and it was a decent bow. Kinda heavy though. But now I think some of their CB's are made in china. BTW... Excaliburs warranty and customer service is second to none. I've only had one issue and it was my Varizone scope got kinda blurry and didn't want to stay focused. This was around 3 years from when the bow was originally purchased by someone else. They replaced the scope with no hesitation or problems.