I was reading through the ' 03 Darton catalouge, and noticed they mention that the reason for their silky smoothness is during the draw their CPS cams build quickly to peak, maintain it for several inches to maximize stored energy then gradually taper off to fall into a solid wall, versus others who build to peak late in the draw cycle to then fall off drastically into the wall.

This may be common knowledge, but the little bell went off inside my head and I finally got it.

If you hit peak early in the draw cycle, you are still using your big back muscles more than your shoulder muscle. This is probably why people feel they can draw more weight with a smoother drawing similar speed cam, as they actually can as they have more big muscle group upper body strength at their disposal, and why they perceive similar draw weighted bows as one being lessor weight than the other. For bows that hit peak late, you are relying much more on your much smaller and weaker shoulder to get the bow over the hump.

Given Darton' s speeds, it seems the location of sustained peak in the FDC has nothing to do with the attainable speed. They' ll do very near (draw for draw) what my bowtech PF cammed Hornet will do, which hits peak later in the cycle.

Based on this, I wonder why more high energy bow manufacturers don' t place peak draw sooner in the draw cycle? Perhaps they do, and I just don' t know it? If so, who are some of these guys? Is this how bowtech " smoothed out" their ' 04 FDCs?