A friend of mine asked me to go to a archery shop in Jeff City yesterday. I had never been there but had heard a lot about it so I tagged along. I have decided to get back into archery after a few years off and I wanted to look at some bowtech and mathews bows. The bows in this shop all had tape around the string and cables that said "please ask for assistance". I waited for a guy to come over and I asked him if I could draw the bow. He said that they did not like for people to draw the bows but I was welcome to shoot it if I liked. I told him I really wasn't comfortable shooting it, I was just wanting to compare draw cycles between the two bows. He wouldn't budge so I just put the bow back and looked around at the other stuff while my buddy shopped.
I can see the guys point and know dry firing a bow is fairly hard on them but this is the first time I have ever been in an archery shop that wouldn't let you draw a bow. Is this common nowadays? The shop here in town let me rub all over the mathews he had on the shelf. I will probably keep that in mind if I buy a new bow.

935

The shop I go to not only lets you draw them but also encourages it.

Sounds like they maybe had an "accident" or two in their shop. Most shops in the DFW area let you draw them back. But at Bass Pro, they use cable ties so you can't draw them. I can understand their position. They don't want the liability of anyone getting hurt and they don't want to be replacing limbs every other week b.c some newbie didn't know what they were doing. As long as they let you shoot it, I don't see a problem with their policy. JMO

Around here, most smaller shops will let you draw back but the larger ones won't. Personally, if a shop allowed me to shoot a bow over a dry draw I would prefer taking the shot. You get more out of it and worst comes to call I'd rather trash a couple dollar arrow than a couple hundred dollar bow.

The two shops i frequent most keep the bows cable locked, but they are more than willing to unlock them for you to draw or shoot.

most definately, under sales person supervision. Just to keep people aware that some bows can get away from them.

Our local shop will let you draw them as much as you want, but there is a really big sign that says if you dry fire one, you just bought the bow, and that they hold no responsablilty if you get hurt. Sounds like a good policy to me.

I dont like people to draw the bow back because you never know when some one will axidentaly dry fire the bow.
I would much rather them shoot the bow than to draw it back without an arrow in it.

Most of the shops here will let you draw but insist that you use 4 fingers. Personally I like the approach that the shop you went to has. This way if you buy a bow from there you are virtually assured to not be buying a bow that was accidentally dry fired. Plus I think that it is great that they would let you shoot it, not many shops here will do that.

We let people draw, but we give them the bow. Lots of it is liability, plus, the actual cost of the bow. But, mostly its that we dont or they dont want anyone getting hurt.