Straightarrow--

You may be able to DRAW 70lbs and comfortably hold with 80%, but I highly doubt that you will be as consistent a shooter as you would if you shot a 60lb bow with 65%, simply because 1)You will have much less slop in the system which will help accuracy, and there is basically no need to be drawing 70lbs for anything but the largest of North American game nowadays anyway. 2) You can get just as much speed by utilizing carbon arrows at 60lbs, and enough KE at 60lbs to hunt virtually all game here in the States. Of course, if you want to hunt huge species, you will need heavier draw weights and more KE, but this is called "specialized applications".

Fact-- back in the 80's, more bows were sold in the 60-70 and 70-80 range.(and even some in the 80-100lb range were not all that uncommon!) Nowadays, more bows are sold in the 50-60, and 60-70 range, mostly 50-60. Few companies even offer the 80lb bows anymore, and only a few offer "African poundage" bows in the 100lb range for specialized use. 80% bows were the rage,(and still are to some extent) but manufacturers have quickly also developed 65% mods for them not only for P&Y issues but because they realized the shooter-error input was greater on the 80%. As stated, now some are dropping back to 55% options. Something to chew on.

I believe that 55-65% letoff greatly helps eliminate shooter error due to lesser slop in the system, however I do not know where the numbers fall off and go the other way, somewhere in the middle I would imagine. That would be the area where you would then have too much holding weight even though you could safely pull the max draw weight. In technical terms and theory, the lower the letoff is, the less slop in the system, so the shooter error aspect in relation to this would assumably be affected down to 0% provided one could control the max draw weight. (lower letoff would be better no matter what, in other words) Unfortunately most cannot comfortably hold that high of a holding weight, so there has to be a compromise somewhere, I'm thinking anything less than 50% and it would probably go the other way. Without true comparasons I cannot say for sure. (maybe grounds for some new testing!<img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>) I do know one thing, 65% is much better for ME than 80%, and I'm looking forward to shooting the 2002 55% option on the new Merlin Supernova when they are released! Good shooting, Pinwheel 12