de109

This will be my first bow and I'm currently looking at the madness xs @ $399 or the stinger 3g @ $299. The stinger 3g reviews seem solid, but then I see a lot of users on this forum speaking highly of their madness xs. This will be for hunting only, as I read the xs is a poor choice for competition shooting, so that doesn't matter to me. The xs I read on this forum has an advantage for blind shooting, so that is an advantage, but the reviews imply the stinger had an overhaul of newer technology and the $100 smaller price tag means I could possibly get higher end accessories as well.

bronko22000

de, shooting bows for at least 50 years take a little advice. Don't buy a bow on what others say. Look at all the pluses and negatives of the bows. Find what you want as far as features. Shoot as many different models as you can. And buy the one that feels good TO YOU.
A couple years ago I was in the market for a new bow. I tried Bowtech, Matthews, Bear, Parker and a few others. I finally decided on a Martin Cheetah and never looked back. This bow is remarkably smooth, quite, plenty fast enough and accurate. I've since also bought a Martin Firecat and Monster Buck Hunter. (The last one is a 35-50 for my daughter-in-law cause she wants to go hunting with me.)

de109

My local pro shop doesn't have an area to test them, in fact they have a policy that if you dry fire a bow you just bought it which made me hesitant to even try them since I have 0 experience with archery, other than recurve bows when I was younger.

I'm mostly interested in getting into it to extend my deer season since my states rifle season is considerably short in comparison.

Id like to get something I will not only be happy with as a beginner but remain happy with after I'm more seasoned.

I don't know the tech aspects so I don't know which of the 2 has more advanced and/or higher quality features. I know there's a plethora of posts just like mine, which is why I tried to narrow it down to these 2 which are both reasonably priced with good reviews and recommendations.

bigbulls

I think you either have your prices wrong or the bows wrong unless you are looking at a discounted 2011 bowmadness XS.

2012 Bow only prices are
Bowmadness XS $499
Brute X $399
Stinger 3G $299

I just got done test shooting all of the 2012 PSE bows last week and the new Brute X is going to kill the bowmadness sales. That bow really does shoot well above its price tag and really better than some of PSE's pro series bows. This would be my pick.

If you can swing the extra cash the Bowmadness 3G would be my first choice.


BTW, get it in the skull works finish. Pretty sweet looking in person.

de109

Cabelas is the one I was talking about for 399, http://www.cabelas.com/compound-bows...xs-bow-3.shtml

And the stinger 3g from huntersfriend. I was told its better to get bow only instead of packages, and then piece the accessories you want with it, but if I got the stinger 3g I would probably get their package since it looks like huntersfriend puts together a better package than I've seen elsewhere.

bigbulls

Yeah, the one on Cabelas is a 2011 bow.

I would strongly recommend that you go to a pro shop to get your first bow. You will be much happier in the long run getting it done right the first time as opposed to fumbling around trying to figure it out all by yourself.