Bear black bear magnum brace height

[TRich]

Hey fellas,

I have a black bear magnum coming in soon, I got it on a decent deal. We'll see the shape of it. It's AMO 52" like a kodiak mag, but if you look at it closely it's hardly a recurve bow like the k-mag. I've looked through the catalogs and found the '77&'78 that has it in the lineup, and it's strung length is 51' advertised, so I'm assuming it really is more of a R/D than the recurve k-mag.

I can't find much information on them. Anyone here with experience have an idea on BH to start tuning when it gets here? Anyone have any experience with this particular bear bow?

[woodchucker]

To the best of my old memory, The Black Bear Magnum was a cheaper version of the Kodiak Mag, built for the "Big Box" stores. (K-Mart, Sears, etc.) It was built on the Kodiak Magnum form, with a solid piece riser, and no overlays. If it's a 52" AMO and listed as 51" strung, my guess is, it has the wrong string on it?
As for a brace height 8-1/2 8-3/4 inches should be a good starting point

[TRich]

Here they are from the same '77 catalog. You can see the difference in limbs, and the BBM doesn't have grooves on the limb to keep the string centered either. K-mag at 49" and BBMag at 51". I wonder if brace height would still be about the same between the two?

I know that the black panther models were for big box stores, and that they were never in the catalogs. I wonder if it was just a newer design that got rapidly overshadowed by the up and coming compounds? It looks a lot like a shrew bow to me when strung.

[woodchucker]

Definetly look different!? Still a recurve though. The shorter ones always seemed to have more "curve" due to the angle of the limbs coming off the riser.
 Like the difference between a K-Mag and a Grizzly.
I have a bunch of old Bear recurves and all of them seem to shoot best at about 8-1/2 inches

[woodchucker]

I had a Black Bear Hunter, and a Stag Hunter that had blonde maple risers, and didn't have string grooves or tip overlays