How to Buy a Bow

Video Transcript

"How to buy a bow? The first and most important aspect before purchasing a bow is to determine which eye is your dominant eye. Your brain only uses one eye for the most part when you are seeing. The method used to check for eye dominance is to take both eyes open and I'm going to do this with the camera lens for purpose of demonstration. Look at something across the room with your two out hands out in front of you. Put your hands in slowly, both eyes open as critical, make the smallest hole you can, the camera lens should be looking at one of my eyes. If you're working a hole then bring your hands back to your eye and you will very clearly see which is your dominant eye. My case, my dominant eye is my right eye. So, I would be required to buy a right handed bow, meaning the bow is held in the left hand then drawn with the right hand which will put the bow string behind my dominant eye. I will then be able to shoot with both eyes open utilizing more light, a better field of view and I will be using the eye that my brain uses to shoot with. The hand you're right will draw with is not as important as the eye you actually see with so you don't choose your bow based on hand you're right with, you choose your bow based on the eye that you see with. The second important aspect of buying a bow is the proper draw length. Advice from a competent pro shop is very helpful in this but a rough rule of thumb is a 6 foot tall person should start with about a 29 inch bow, see how it fits, adjust from there. Every inch of height affects draw length by about a half of an inch so a 5'8 person would require two inches shorter than 29 or a 27 inch bow. That is a general rule of thumb to get you close to start. And just an example, this bow here is way too short for me. I am 6 feet tall, I require about a 29 inch bow. This bow right here, fits me well. That being said from behind the shooter, the full draw position, this part of your arm should line up fairly square to the arrow shaft at full draw. If your elbow's behind you, the bow is probably too long. If your elbow is pointed inside over here, the bow is probably too short. The elbow should be fairly pair out to the air off the room. You behind the shooter, from the side, you, it should look roughly like this. Another sign of too long is wrist bent down, elbow down. You won't have a good anchor point and it'll be hard to shoot well. When you're over extended you tend to miss that raft because you already have nowhere to go except for outward. The properly fit of a bow, you should have just a little bit of room to go to the target, straight away from the target before the outward motion. So, first most important is your dominant eye. Second most important is the fit of the bow and a pro shop can help you best with that then your third selection purchasing a bow is how many pounds you would like to shoot and that has a lot to do with your end use. The target shooter typically will shoot a bow or poundage bow. Easier to shoot, a lot of arrows with and you can aim a long time. But bow hunter typically wants a higher poundage bow for good penetration and are faster, flatter arrow, making your adjustimation a little less critical. Pro shop is probably the best place to start when looking to purchase a bow where you can get fit properly and everything can be set up for you personally as opposed on to taking an off the shelf bow home and trying to shoot it yourself which you can do but fit does reflect your ability to shoot well and your accuracy."