Fixed crawl

[Mntrad_44]

Hey there, new trad guy here. I've been shooting a 35lb recurve for about a year and looking to buy my first hunting bow. I'm interested in the Black Hunter 60" recurve but would also like to try shooting a fixed crawl. Being a mass production bow, it's obviously not tillered for a fixed crawl and I've heard that trying to tune a bow less than 62" AMO for fixed crawl can be finicky. Wondering if anyone has experience or insight with shooting a fixed crawl on a 60" bow. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to give some advice to a newbie.

[EHK]

Welcome to the Gang!

I've tinkered with fixed crawl enough to know that I personally don't like the way it feels, so certainly not an expert.  I think you'd be setting yourself up for more success with an ILF riser so you can adjust the tiller on it. I don't think you'll be able to find an ILF riser and limbs for the same price as the black hunter, but you can get a wood ILF riser (or a metal one for that matter) around the same price and the limbs don't really cost too much. When I tried it on fixed tiller bows, they definitely got louder than what I would want to hunt with.  When I tried it on a Hoyt Satori, I was able to get it much quieter, and I have to admit that with an adjustable rest, tuning was insanely easy.  Shameless plug - that Satori riser is up for sale here (need to be a contributing member to access the classifieds).

As I said, I don't have much experience with it though.  I'm sure someone else will chime in.

[McDave]

Unless you have a very short draw length, I think you'll be happier with a 62" bow if you want to use a fixed crawl.  You'll probably have to use a high nock point, maybe up to an inch, to get good arrow flight with a fixed crawl.  While an inch seems very high, it really just offsets the amount you are holding the string lower than normal with the fixed crawl, so your drawing fingers end up close to the normal place you would hold the string.

This is easy to see if you bare shaft tune: your bare shaft will fly nock low, and you will need to raise the nock point up to get the bare shaft to fly level if you use a fixed crawl.  If you don't bare shaft tune, then your arrow flight should be pretty good on a 62" bow if you set the nock height at 3/4".

While the Black Hunter does not come in 62", there are plenty of good entry level bows that do, like the Samick Sage and the PSE Nighthawk.  They cost a little more than the Black Hunter, but not enough to break the bank.

Most people who use a fixed crawl don't shoot the bow any other way, in order to avoid mistakes and grab the string in the wrong place when your adrenaline is high in a hunting situation.  The shorter the bow the more important this becomes, because the difference in tuning for a fixed crawl vs holding under the nock becomes magnified the shorter the bow is.

[Rob DiStefano]

I've owned and shot many Black Hunter longbows and a few of their recurve models, with a barebow crawl (for a short distance) and have had no issues.  These bows were between 37 and 46 pounds holding weight at a 28-1/2" draw.  It can be done, but it's definitely not ideal with a 60" n-2-n bow.

For hunting a trad bow with a fixed crawl (meaning, the string nock point is below the 90* mark and not above it) it would need to be point on at all the distances you'd want to make a kill at and that can be a problematic setup that would typically require a fast arrow speed setup.  That's not a particularly good way to hunt, IMHO.  You'd probably be better off putting the time in to either shoot "pure instinctive" (not looking at the arrow or bow) or using some part of the arrow as an aiming tool coupled with a good arrow speed to your kill distance, all with a normal bow setup for 3FU, or get a longer bow in the 62" to 66" range. The longer bow will allow a fixed crawl much better and even barebow string walking if need be, though I would never advocate string walking for hunting.