George from CA asks,
Bill, are you still shooting Hoyt and if so any of the newer ones? So far nothing has really tripped my trigger to get me away from my 2018 Pro Defiant and Carbon Defiant…They just shoot for me! Hope all is well and good luck this season! G-
Bill responds,
Topic: When to Upgrade Your Bow:
I will be shooting the Hoyt RX7 Ultra this season. Hoyt sent me the bow to test and play with a few months ago and I believe it is an upgrade to what I was shooting before – their RX4. However, I don’t think you need to upgrade bows as often as the manufacturers would like you to! I think that every three years the improvements in design and materials have accumulated enough that you will notice a difference. It is definitely worth considering an upgrade, as a whitetail hunters, as the bows and integrated component systems get quieter and more reliable.
George,
Hoyt sent me the RX7 Ultra a few months ago. I really do love it. I was still shooting one of the early RX bows (4, I think) and I do think the RX7 is an upgrade to that bow, but really, all the modern bows are light years better than the stuff we used back in the 90s and even early 2000s.
We killed deer with those bows too. So it isn’t really about whether you need to upgrade to kill deer, in some ways it comes down to whether you want something new. Also, I do think that every three years small tweaks in design and materials makes bows enough better that it is worth at least considering upgrading.
For me, three years is the threshold – by then the improvements have accumulated enough that you will likely notice a difference in tunability, arrow flight, accuracy, smoothness and reduced noise and vibration.
In other words, the newest bows tend to be a bit more pleasant to shoot and very slightly more consistent because they are just made better with better materials. Also, some of them have very nice integrated component systems that make them more reliable too. That alone can be worth the upgrade. Reliability is a huge thing in the whitetail woods. Good luck. (7/17/22)
