RE: New to traditional bowhunting
 

That sounds good to me, but you have to think of other things too. Like will you be doing alot of treestand hunting, what kinda stand will you be using, Spot & stalk, pop-up ground blind, still hunting, etc;different kinds of hunting might throw you off at first. What I mean is at first it felt funny for hunting from my tree stands, but now after shooting about 50 or os arrows it feels better. I started out with a bear TD hunter 60" 55#@28", now I have a Highlander 62" 54 1/2#'s at my draw of 27". My recurve has a crack in the riser so I got a used bow, I tryed 5 or 6 bows before buying the highlander. I know I will be still looking for "THE" bow but for now I am HAPPY. Good luck and Happy hunting... for the Bow and Big Game.

RE: New to traditional bowhunting
 

I just got back into recurves after a 30+ year abscence this summer. Ebay does have some great deals - I bought a 70lb(actually 74 lbs at my arrow length) Bear Kodiak Magnum, new, for a lot less than a new one at a store. I would advise you to get the nock point set correctly though. I mistakenly thought my arrow should be perpendicular to the string when nocked. However, I noticed that the bear hair and ledge itself were getting damaged along the free edge, well away from the arrrow track, with this arrangement so I called Bear bows. They informed me that the nock should actually be set one quarter to three eights of and inch above this point. Good luck!

RE: New to traditional bowhunting
 

the advice about going to a lower weight, well i wished I had followed it. I went with 55 lbs and it was alot more than I thought. I was used to shooting compound bows set around 70, but that let-off is more a factor than I realized. If i could do it over, i proabably would have got a 45lbs. But I shoot 45- 70 times a day now so I don't shake or anythng anymore, but at first it was rough. I was extremely careful about form and anchor point etc. so as to not form bad habits or develope incorect muscle memory, but it was stupid of me. I should have went lighter. It would have been too much I think if I had not had alot of time on my hands to practice, and I'm still very newbish and green so I may have developed problems I am not aware of yet.

RE: New to traditional bowhunting
 

Update- Well, I've been humming and hawing about recurve vs compound. I've heard good things about Ben Pearson bows so I went ahead and purchased this one off of Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...e=STRK:MEWA:IT

I got some good comments about it from a couple of people and to get started I figured the price is right ;) .

RE: New to traditional bowhunting
 

Try www.gilalongbowco.com the guy's nice and will tell you anything you need. He makes good bows at a reasonable price. his "Eniglish Hickory Longbow" is right in your price range.

Robert Jantzen