Just how important is the speed of your bow?

Its as important as you want it to be. Some guys could care less. I like a very flat shooting arrow, so the speed is important to me in my set-up. I like a single pin set-up thats sighted in to 20 yards. My self imposed limit is 30 yards and at 30 yards my arrow drop is about 3 1/2 to 4". Under 20, I'm right on. If I was shooting a slow bow and a heavy arrow my single pin set-up wouldn't work out very good, you'd be guessing all the time because of alot of arrow drop. Not saying my set-up is the best, but I love how it works!

Good Luck!

Probalby about 1/50 th of what we and I make it out to be.

Though on this years buck 25 fps slower and I do believe I would of missed him - I sorry testiment to my yardage estimation that morning.

If I would of done my job better it wouldn't make a hill of beans.

Speed saved my arse once - hopefully i won't need its help again

I still like some good speed though - its just me

You can kill them just as dead slow

Is speed important? Yes, in my opinion it is but not necessarily for just the reasons that most folks use.

A flat trajectory is definitely useful when yardage estimation is lacking but other than that what does speed do for you? In and of itself, nothing. However, a bow with a high speed rating can be utilized to produce very good KE and momentum numbers with a moderate to heavy weight arrow. Utilizing the moderate weight arrow not only gives you that high level of KE/Momentum but yet still gives you a reasonably flat trajectory to boot.

At least that is my take on it anyway. As the others stated, other factors such as noise level, comfort level, etc... are all as important in my book.

Speed is nice if you can still shoot accurately and comfortably--accuracy is the key!

Not as important as many want it to be. Speed ranks way down on my list of imprtance of things in archery hunting. Granted it usually doesn't hurt to have a bit more, but to rely totally on it is foolish.

To me speed comes at the end of a long list of other factors. They start with quietness, then accuracy, then kinetic energy, then speed.

I shoot a martin tracer mag set at 60lbs with 28.5inch 6075 carbon express terminator hunters. 125 grain broadhead. It shoots at about 240 FPS giving me KE of around 66 ft-lbs.

I have never had any problems with pass throughs, shoot 1 pin out to 25 yards. and have a second pin set for 35 yards.

I would be less than honest if I said that I don't consider speed when looking at a bows performance. Like many here, I'm sure it is over rated, nevertheless as hunters we need an acceptable amount to make our set ups effective. As it turns out, what that acceptable amount is varies from person to person.

I'll take as much speed as I can get without giving up anything in the process. In other words shooting a bow with a harsh draw cycle, and low brace height on a frigid midwest morning is part of a great recipe for disappointment.

I think the flat trajectory that you get with speed is important. My first bow was SLOOOW, and I accually missed two deer because they arrow hit some branches above the line of site. That doubled with lack -O- experiance and can hit broad side of a barn in the brush.

I can prove speed is important. How ?

If I have a bow for sell that feels and shoots EXACLTY the same way your current one does .... but gets you an extra 35 fps .... would you buy it for about the same price ?

I'd think everyone would say yet to that (assuming the bows both shoot the same) Why ? Because extra speed = extra KE and Momentum, and it also equalt smaller margins of error in range estimation. All good thing.

JMO