Trad Gang

Let's say you owned the most beautiful bow in the world in your eyes, stunning wood, captivation design, a bow you got pleasure from both looking at and shooting. A bow that drew ohhs and ahhs at the range.

Then someone lent you a bow, maybe an ILF with a metal riser, that balanced perfectly, shot faster and smoother than your beauty and you just could not miss with it. You shot this homely beast twice as good as your bow.

Would you switch bows? Cast aside your lovely for this homely, but ultraperforming beast? Answer honestly and no cop out by saying your beautiful bow could never be outshot by anything.

Its like leaving your faithful, lovely lady for a well versed call girl.   :knothead:

Been there, done that, bought the Titan.  ;)

Why does high performance always mean it is ugly. I shoot an ACS that is almost all black glass with a little osage in the handle. I hardly think its ugly. Bows like a Hoyt Dorado have very pleasing curves despite its lack of exotic woods. With the choices available today you really can have it all.
Now so I don't sound like I'm copping out, I will take the better shooting bow.

Or said another way, life is too short to shoot an ugly bow!  If I was shooting the beauty well enough to be confident in a hunting situation, I'd NEVER abandon my love.

If I wasn't shooting it well, it would have been past on by then.

Oh, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so no hate mail!   :knothead:

Accuracy is a beautiful thing.

The bow is a means to an end if it is for hunting. (My bows perform, and would look beautiful if they weren't all camo'd up...  :D  )

I swear I was thinking of my beautiful bow while I was with the homely beast!!

Kidding aside. Ditto on Izzy and awbowman.

Oh Izzy!!!  
It's like leaving a ditzy model for the mother of your children.  
A pretty PITA, or someone who will pull in tandem with you and ensure success?

Guys...   :rolleyes:
Killdeer  
Lucky for me I shoot abysmally with all of them.    :p

I look at it like this,
a compound will outshoot any traditional bow. It is a designed machine that is made to make shooting an arrow very easy compared to shooting a trad bow. A lot of people who shoot compounds do exactly as you said. Why would they shoot a longbow when a compound will flat out blow it away?
A high end traditional style ILF engineered riser with complex limb designs will blow away any self bow out there in pure performance.

So it is very relative.

I have shot Olympic style ILF target bows for more years than I can count. I love the ease of accuracy. They are fun. I have camoed them and hunted all over NA with them. Enjoyed every second.
Now, I have some VERY beautiful custom built traditional bows. More than I should. If I feel one doesnt perform well enough to hunt an animal and be ethical,  it is out the door. This has rarely been the case. They all perform very well. I may have to adjust my own form to make them work for me, but I love that.
I have hunted with them all and have been successful with every one.

. Whether the bow is considered ugly, not too concerned. I have a well known custom wood recurve by a VERY well known bowyer and its hideous. Someone ordered it that way. I shot it once and said, gotta have it. I hunt with it a few times every year.

So, my answer is not necessarily. If I had to keep only one,in my life right now, I'd pick my favorite custom exotic wood recurve. Its plenty accurate to take game and win a few 3D shoots. I LIKE it. I appreciate what bowyers can do today with mother natures wood. I like the artistic talent it took to create THIS bow. When I pick it up I smile, whether anyone else is around or not. Is it as accurate as my scoped 30.06 or my best ILF tournament rig in my hands? No.
But since this is hypothetical, i will gladly keep and hunt with all my bows...ILF,longbows, recurves, takedowns, one piece, snakey,knotty selfbows....love 'em all.

That's why I have so many bows.....I like the pretty ones and the ugly ones. In fact some of my favorites are the not so good looking ones......

I wonder how much our predecessors in our sport worried about how pretty their bows were!  Just when did we get so wrapped up in cosmetics of the tools of our trade? Oh, and to answer the question, no I would stay with the bows I want to shoot and seek to shoot them as well as I possibly can.

this is a deep well.

wood v.carbon?
d v. r/d?
spanky new screw-in stainless shaving-sharp broadheads v.
buy-'em dull, be a man zwickeys or grizzlys?

when i 1st wandered in here, i stuck my entirely unneeded nose into a thread on lighted nocks.  didn't like 'em.

got my head handed to me,  and i deserved it.

learned from it.

if it suits you, it suits me.

still wood for me.

for me.

joe


joew

This is a great question...!

I shoot my Bob Lee's very well. Sometime coming off the practice course or up from the back yard, I can feel a bit of a bounce / strut in my step... Kinda like:

"I'm a sniper with this bow, I'm going to smoke everything that walks by me this season!"

Well, I was at K-Zoo this January, and shot the new Bob Lee Ultimate... Uh Oh!!! I KNOW that I am more accurate with this set up than my go to Bob Lee Classic which I shoot very very well.

Now, I've decided to buy an Ultimate in the next couple months... Forget about if it looks better or more ugly than my current bow. Can I really set aside old faithful, and allow another place in my heart for a "new bow"?!?!

Not to mention the nestalgia of taking every big game animal with the same bow, the same Bob Lee Workhorse...

It sure would be hard to be walking out my back door with a new bow in hand, heading towards the whitetail woods, just to look over my shoulder to see old faithful staring back at me from the bow rack, with those big sad droopie limbs!

Well I don't have an answer for you right now. I'll have more to report in a couple months. But something tells me from the months of September to January that Bob Lee Ultimate will probably be collecting dust on the bow rack.

I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic!

I'm going through the same thing right now.  I have shot longbows for years and have a lovely Horne Brush bow that I just loved.  I shot a Hoyt Buffalo at the local bow dealer.  I then ended up buying one on the classifieds here.  I shoot it better than my Horne, but I'm still having issues with shooting a bow with a flat black aluminum riser!!!

Toby

I like to hit what I am shooting at more than anything else; so if I shot it a lot better, my answer would be YES.

Do it like I did my last one..just put a sack over it.

Well , since one of my shooting buddys said I suffer from C.H.S. or can't hit s--- the exotic wood bow lets me look at something exciting. Really, I have 9 bows in the rack now-shot a 900 round w/ a Titan and the Commonwealth 3-d w/ a Hummingbird longbow. When one gets boring I just try another style or type bow. Also have one Mathews Drenalin just in case. Thanks, Roy

For those that think ILF are ugly, dress them up!
Metal risers take paint well. Use your imagination! This was a flourescent red riser. Camoed it then painted deer tracks, buffalo skulls, buffalo tracks, turkey tracks, feathers, antlers all over it.  The limbs were all decals of bright colors. Put Bullsnake on the limbs and put antler limb bolts in the stabilizer bushings.

You can do crazy stuff and if it doesnt work out, strip it off and there is your metal riser again. Limb skins too, I have one ILF that has limbskins covering everything but the site window.

Although I'd never paint over my exotic woods, going over alloy is cake!

(http://i868.photobucket.com/albums/ab246/yornoc/bows/deerburrs003.jpg) (http://i868.photobucket.com/albums/ab246/yornoc/bows/deerburrs009.jpg) (http://i868.photobucket.com/albums/ab246/yornoc/bows/deerburrs008.jpg) (http://i868.photobucket.com/albums/ab246/yornoc/bows/deerburrs004.jpg)

That's a very real and timely question..............personally I would not switch and likely would not even pick up an 'ugly' bow.
David that's a very tasteful job of dressing up that bow!   :thumbsup:    :thumbsup:

I guess I should answer my own question. I was a dyed in the wool classic bow guy since the mid 60s. Never owned a true custom but had some really pretty Howatts, Bears and others.

About a year and a half ago I bought a Hoyt Buffalo which I shot better than any of my classics although cannot be considered a thing of beauty. I've been shooting it ever since. I also have been dabbling in ILF and have a Morrison wood/phenolic handle with Samick BF Extreme limbs. Another great shooting combo but not what I'd consider ugly. These two bows are great shooters and you can catch me shooting one or the other and the pretty wood classics gather dust.

QuoteOriginally posted by David Mitchell:
I wonder how much our predecessors in our sport worried about how pretty their bows were!  Just when did we get so wrapped up in cosmetics of the tools of our trade? Oh, and to answer the question, no I would stay with the bows I want to shoot and seek to shoot them as well as I possibly can.

I like pretty bows.  A bow doesn't HAVE to be ugly to shoot well.  Shoot what makes you feel the best.

BTW, the more I shoot only one bow, the more I think ONE BOW shooting is the way to go for consistency.

QuoteOriginally posted by reddogge:
I guess I should answer my own question. I was a dyed in the wool classic bow guy since the mid 60s. Never owned a true custom but had some really pretty Howatts, Bears and others.

About a year and a half ago I bought a Hoyt Buffalo which I shot better than any of my classics although cannot be considered a thing of beauty. I've been shooting it ever since. I also have been dabbling in ILF and have a Morrison wood/phenolic handle with Samick BF Extreme limbs. Another great shooting combo but not what I'd consider ugly. These two bows are great shooters and you can catch me shooting one or the other and the pretty wood classics gather dust.

Heh, nothing wrong with that Richard. This is how such great bows end up in the classifieds here. Everyone likes something different, which keeps that beautiful flow of used bows moving at our fingertips.  :thumbsup:

For hunting, we owe it to the animals we hunt to be the most accurate that we can be, so the new bow.

But owe the beauty, we owe it to ourselves.

Keep both! and enjoy both in their own way and times.

I don't think I could stray from my old wood bows. To each his own but I still have not seen a ILF that I would consider pretty. My .02

I'll just state the obvious. You can have beauty and accuracy today. So why have only one or the other?

You can make a very functional home in a concrete bunker. But I'd sure miss the beauty outside my windows.

While sitting in a blind or tree stand, it's pure joy to hold and admire your bow made of beautiful woods.

A large part of going to traditional bows was the wood and the beauty of said bow just the feel and looks of a well made bow make me happy. shoot what you like for me the bows looks are a large part of the experience.

For me, I spent years shooting a compound, nothing wrong with them as hunting implements.  But I got into the traditional world 20 years ago.  About 3 years ago a buddy and me was hunting and he had a new metal riser recurve and he wanted me to shoot it.  I did, for me it just wasn't the same.  It shot fast and accurate, but the natural feeling was not there and to me didn't feel right.  So, I still use a traditonal bow, untill my body will not let me.

Just like I prefer wood arrows over carbon for aesthetic reasons moreso than practical ones, I would keep shooting the sexy bow. And, thanks to Big Jim, I do have the most beautiful bow, at least in my mind.

I have too many bows for different reasons some shoot good some I have had too long. When I see or shoot a new bow that interest me I can build something similar in my little shop, put my spin on it and most times it shoots great. Always looking but not trading up, just adding to the collection

James

Mr. Carl,

You have been afield a decade before my parents reached adulthood (based on previous post).  If you have no problem blurring the line between what is excepted as traditional and technological advantage I see no reason I should.

The culture I live in very much believes in the concept of filling the freezer with fish and wildgame and bucking the out of state beef prices to the point where traditional hunting is mostly for hobby, at least for me.  We have places so far off the grid that without embracing a subsistence lifestyle a family could face the ultimate sacrefice.  Of course that is not me or the majority of people I know, but it somehow brings me spiritually closer to the salt of the earth that is no longer found throughout North America.

So with this in mind, I guess when we evolve to minning materials off Mars whose properties allow for bows to push the velocities of my .338 Lapua I will have no hesitation instinctively filling my freezer.  Until then it just has very little meaning for me to pronounce exclusivity to any one thing???  

Although a dyed in the wool exotic wood guy, if  Hoyt would make the Buffalo with longbow limbs I would, figuratively, pull the trigger...

 :campfire:

My wife says I buy the worlds ugliest running shoes.  I say who cares, they are comfortable.

So I say  who cares if it's an ugly bow.  If you can't miss, it's a beauty queen.

Bow is a tool. The best tool wins. Even if it's ugly. Lucky for me, my best tool is pretty.

Ugly bows don't bother me nearly as much as tacky bows do. Nothing wrong with keeping both bows, but the better shooter would be more useful to me.

Keith, I understand where you are coming from. I don't think Hoyt will come up with those longbow limbs for you but there are some good ones in ILF versions. But we covered that in another thread.

I'd hate to rely on my bow to fill my freezer for REAL.

I'd sell the beauty and look for another beauty that I could shoot better!Though first,I'd probably try to figure out what I was doing wrong with the bow.Most of the time the lousy shooting is the guy who's drawing the strings fault,not the bow. I really appreciate the woodwork is some of the "pretty" bows. I have a few beauties that also shoot great,my Timberline and JD Berry come to mind. I don't like the looks of metal risers,but to each his own.If you like them have at it.To each his own,whatever keeps you happy.
I prefer to hunt with a longbow.Maybe I would be  more accurate with a metal riser target bow,or a sight,or some wheels,crossbow?30/06?,like I said whatever makes you happy.

Deer don't care what your bows looks like

When I shot compounds I could drill a bullseye at 50 yards 9 of 10 times fairly consistently.  Since I switched back to the wooden traditional bows several years ago and I can probably only hit the bullseye at 50 yards only 1 out of 10 times.  But I still keep trying to.  This is not a distance I personally would ever consider taking game with either weapon.  I am effectively / deadly accurate up to 30 yards 99% of the time when shooting targets.  So, this is my maximum effective hunting range with any bow I choose to use, ugly or pretty.  I have to admit that I enjoy shooting my more aesthetically pleasing bows more though.  But I also agree with the statement that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and what looks great to me may not look so good to you. I have some rather ugly wood traditional bows that I shoot just as effectively as my pretty bows but I just don't shoot them very often anymore. I just prefer shooting the pretty-to-me all wood bows.  I just prefer all wood for the feel and the looks.  No carbon, no glass, just wood.  This probably a bit hypocritical of me because I also prefer to shoot carbon arrows and use modern string materials!  The bottom line is that it's your life and you should do what makes you the happiest.  It really doesn't matter what the others think!

Fortunately, with some effort, performance and beauty can be a package deal...just gotta find the right one.

What would you prefer,to shoot lights out or shoot a bow that looks good,seems like a no brainer to me.

Id keep my shafer!!! just not an Ilf fan

Absolutely. My enjoyment is to hit what I'm shooting at...Accuracy is most important to me.

I will go for function over form everytime. While none of my personal bows are ugly, they are SHOOTING bows, not showpieces. In fact, I think I would cover them in OD green spray paint but Ron LaClair and Gregg would hang me with a hank of fast flight  :bigsmyl:

yes...I really like hitting what I'm looking at, kinda the whole point ain't it?

I don't look at my bow when I'm hunting.  Plus I'll put a dull spray paint on the Prettiest bow if that's the one I'm hunting...tippit

My shooting has alot of room for improvement, but I can't imagine getting rid of "Old Faithful".  As long as WE can kill deer at 20 yds consistently, I'm sticking with my beauty.

Of course, I'd shoot the bow I'm most accurate with.

Your premise is biased, if not a bit fulty though.  Why assume/hypothesize that it's the pretty bow that doesn't shoot as well as the so called ugly bow.  Lots of ugly bows shoot that way, while lots of pretty bows shoot lights out.  As others have already pointed out, one doesn't have to give up one (beauty) to get the other (performance/accuracy).