In my ongoing saga of trying to rationalize and justify keeping my Diamond Hornet a while longer, I set about on a quest to see if add-ons could reduce the level of recoil/vibration to that of the Mathews Outback I shot. Say what you want about Mathews. The Outback is one seriously fine bow, with only the itty bitty valley as the main "flaw" in my opinion.

Loved the way it held on target and simply sat there without movement after the shot. A pure joy to experience. However, one of the benefits of being a cheap bast, er, skate is you force yourself to ask lot's of questions. Well, not really force, after awhile it becomes second nature

Like, Yeah, it draws smooooth, but what poundage do you have it set on? 60# you say? Well, let's bump that baby up to 70#.

How heavy is this test arrow you're having me fling? 550 grains you say? Well, let's have something sub-400, thank you.

Granted, even with these changes, the bow still shot superb. A bit not as easy to draw, but still smooth. A bit faster, but still just sat there with no noise and almost imperceptable movement. A worthy weapon, not doubt, and the kind of modern day characteristics many manufactures seek to deliver.

So coming home, wrestling with spending the cabbage for it or one like it and equally as expensive, I decided in order to be fair, I need to tweak my Hornet to get it as close to apples to apples as possible.

I put up my testing results with the NV system, they (or my bow tune/set to spec or a combination thereof) eliminated the last tad bit of recoil the stealth didn't. I was happy with the result. However, I was still getting an amount of recoil, so on to test #2-

The bare bow mass weight of most bows that report low to no recoil hovers around 4#. The outback is 4.3#. My Hornet is 3.2#. Big difference. Thinking it would be easy to add 1# to my bow, I went looking for my wifes 1# each ankle weights from a life of working out that never quite developed , only to find that they'd been sold at a yard sale. Damn the bad luck.

Another thing about being a cheap bast, er, skate is you become resourceful. Remembering the last time my brother and I melted lead to mould our own shotgun slugs, he had poured the balance of the melted lead into and ingot tray, so I thought I'd grab two 1/2# ingots and tape them securely to my bow. Unfortunately, he had long since turned the ingots into sinkers, but he had some that were 3 oz, so I grabbed 6 of them.

I took three, and enclosed them in duct tape. Did the same for the other three, then weighed them. Each bundle came up 9.6 and 9.5 oz respectively, close enough for me That gave me 19.1 oz of mass weight, which would bring my hornet up to 4.4#s, close enough to the Outback for my purposes.

I shot three shots to get a feel for the recoil imbedded in my mind. I then used electrical tape to secure the two bundles to the lower part of my riser. I used electrical tape as I figured it'd leave less residue when/if I removed it. I wanted to keep the weight low as I figured it would enhance the pendulum effect to keep the bow from canting, and be closes to the power release of the cam.

From the first shot I released post weight gain, I started smiling. Recoil was WAY reduced, and the bow aimed like a rock. 4 shots later I noticed I was drilling the same hole, accuracy was definitely enhanced. The bow did still have just a tad of jump to it, but the hornet is a higher powered bow than the outback.

I had previously calculated that to match the energy output of the Outback, I would need to back my limbs of 2 turns, putting me around 64#s (wish I had a scale... ).

Bow was very easy to draw, comparable to what I remember from the Outback at 70#s, almost as smooth. Released the arrow, and the bow hardly moved . Several more shots to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and it wasn't I can only imagine if I backed the Hornet down to 60#, to match a 65# Outback's performance. The Hornet remains extremely quiet, even without any string silencers.

The hornet probably has just a little bit more recoil than the Outback, but I suspect that's a function of the little less vertical limb angle it has, and was entirely expected. Certainly not a deal breaker by any means.

So, in the end, I am plenty satisfied shooting my Hornet for awhile longer. Once they make a bow with the Outback's characteristics but with 20-30 more fps, I'll need to look again. Maybe Just a matter now of fancying up my weight addition and discussing the NVs with Frank