HuntingNet.com Forums - My gear review

Hi all,

I am a very new archer/hunter and have asked a few questions on the various Hunting net forums and received some good advice and some other advice.

I've decided that I also want to make a contribution in my own small way (as a newb) and review my recently acquired setup. I've only been arching for 2 months. 1.5 months of this I started out with a club Genesis and for the last two weeks I've been shooting my setup. My scores improved tremendously and I even won a club competition after having my bow for only 4 days (novice division).

I shoot a Bowtech Liberty 70# 29" (set at 60# as I am not completely fit yet). The bow is awesome. It is fairly forgiving, has a really smooth draw (no clunk) and shoots as smooth as butter on a warm day. No vibration and no kick. I haven't shot many bows, but tried out an Xtec and an LX before I bought. Glad about the choice I made in the end as the Liberty suits me nicely.

For a sight I got a Spot Hogg Hunter. Awesome sight. Very sturdy and doesn't move an inch even through the bush etc. But I found it hard to set up though. Spent hours of shooting to try get the pins right. But I suspect it was just me being new at it. My pins are now set at 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 yds. The 20 pin works for 10 yds as well, so makes it fairly easy to shoot short distances.

I went for a NAP 4000 dropaway rest. Good solid rest with many adjustments. It set up fairly easily. The only problem was that we couldn't tie the metal cord to the cable slide on the Liberty. The relative slide/rest position resulted in an angle too large to properly pull the rest up at full draw. We eventually removed the metal cord and used nylon cord which we fed through the cable and mushroomed out. I didn't like this initially, but it worked fine and about 500 shots later I haven't had any problems. The rest can get a bit noisy when you draw the arrow back, but I plan to stick some felt onto it.

I use a Carter 2 shot release. Solid well built and easy to use. Just a bit noisy though. I also found a wrist release annoying when climbing up mud slides etc. It gets dirty real quick. My thumb release from Carter is on order.

Stabilizer is a NAP 5". More than enough for an already well balanced bow.

Using the Shurz-a-peep with a fairly large aperture. Always rotates perfectly and good in even low light conditions. I find as the light gets lower I tend to open both eyes. This seems to help a bit.....

That's my contribution to gear review. It isn't much, but thought that perhaps I can help someone somewhere. I'm sure that as I get more educated/experience my preferences may even change, but this is good enough for now.

Cheers,

Greg