I've been searching for a bow for my wife and I have some questions regarding what I have seen.

She has a 27" draw length and needs 40-50lb limbs.

1.) Do I look for a woman’s bow or do I look for a "full size" bow that has 27" and 40-50lb. capabilities? Anymore, it hard to determine which is which. Our "full size" bows have gotten so small that a woman can easily handle them. On the other hand, "full size" bows are typically made to accommodate longer draw lengths and I am afraid that by reducing the draw weight and draw length by such a large degree that it will make the bow highly inefficient.

2.) Brace height and axle length– is it as critical? Most companies only carry one model for women, no between models like us larger folk have to choose from. Some of these bows look like ½ scale versions of the full size bows. It’s like they didn’t even engineer it, just made them ½ as big. Then on the other hand there are bows out there that looks like they were actually designed for the short draw yet still have what I call forgiving dimensions.

To me these sound like stupid questions but to be honest I don’t even know where or what to start looking for. Finding a bow for a woman is a lot harder than for me. There are not very many shops around here that have 40-50lb bows to even try and then definitely have no more than one model, side by side comparisons are out of the question. Anyone have any suggestions for me?

Thanks,
Toby

My wife loves here Parker Challenger. They you can get 30-40 or 40-50 pound limbs and I believe the cams are produced for the shorter draw length archers. Check them out at www.parkerbows.com

There are plenty of good one's out there in many brands.

One of my friends bought his wife a Mathews FX = 34 " ata ,7.5" bh, 3.3 # weight, 40-50 # drw weight, 25" draw length, 65% mini-max cam, $399 . She shoots it on 45# with Beman ICS 500 arrows at 230 fps. She almost out shot all of us after she had it about two weeks ,so look out !!

I would suggest getting a full size bow. I' m 16, but for my age I look and am the size of a 10 year old. Just look how small I am---> http://www.geocities.com/moderatorcup/Main_Page.htm I shoot a Mathews Q2 and absolutely love it. I have a 26" DL and shoot about 42 pounds. The Q2 is about 34" ATA and it feels great to me. Before the Mathews I was shooting a PSE Spyder and when I moved on to the Mathews my 3-D scores went up 65 points. I also have a Q2XL (38" ATA) on order for target so, I would go with a regular sized bow. Oh yeah, Mathews makes most bows that go down to 23" draw and 30# pound max. Just make sure you go to a pro shop and get a bow that fits her and she should be fine. Good luck to ya!

My wife also has a parker challenger, She likes the bow but damn is it slow. We have spent a lot of time tuning and making new arrows trying to get some speed out of it. so far we are getting 228fps @ 25" but I ran some tests in TAP and found if I was to cut down a set of Beman Carbon Club arrows we could get 240' s out of it but that is after a lot of work " Custom string" and all.

I didnt mean to bash the challenger, its a light bow and my wife loves the feel. But I think Hoyt and BowTech both make laides bows that shoot a respectable speed at short draws.