Free: Contests & Raffles.
When I bought my bow a good friend with a lot of archery bulls under his belt, told me not to exceed more poundage than I could pull sitting down. I practice that way and from my knees and I think it was good advice
Go with the 60-70 and turn it down to low 60's. Forget the 50-60 idea. Also, what's your current let off? Most newer models are 80%, which make it much easier to maintain the draw.
It used to be that compound bows were made with stiff limbs that bent very little. What that meant is the cables and limbs had very little pre-load. If you backed those bows off very far from the maximum draw weight setting the bow would become increasingly noisy while the cables went from an almost relaxed state to tight during the post shot oscillations. Most of todays bows are quite a bit different. We've learned that a lightweight limb pre-loaded to a higher poundage keeps strings and cables tighter and stores energy even before the draw cycle is started. We could not get away with that when wood laminations and old epoxies were used. Modern materials allow us to go to extremes never before thought possible ten years ago. And we now reach higher performance levels as a result. It also allows bows a good amount of adjustment without losing it's quiet nature and good performance level.Bows are designed to perform at their peak when shot at maximum poundage. Now while this is true, with todays high preload limbs is a point of complete minutia. As long as your cables do not become relaxed and vibration excessive the bow should shoot as well if not better than the human subject holding it. Especially if shooting a bow that uses a max loaded limb such as PSE, Bear, New Hoyts, McPherson, Bowtech and many others.It's far more important for you to be comfortable these days. Poundage is over rated by most. Take for example my older Hoyt I used to tag the majority of my animals. I shot that bow at poundage's between 68 and 70# with 2213's and 2115 shafts. I experienced some long range kills with this setup and almost always experienced complete pass through. If I was to try and use these same arrow shafts with my Bear or Bowtech bows today I'd have to be shooting about 50 to 52# of draw weight. And I would see about the same speed as I did back when I shot those at 70#. So does that mean my old setup would be inadequate if I used it today? Oh heck no! Dead then would be dead now! Symantics of a number means nothing. Hitting what you are aiming at means everything.I do not promote any certain poundage level. That is a personal preference. Just keep things well matched and tuned. You will be just fine. And I'd be much more concerned about what camera I chose to capture those images of a lifetime. That makes more of a difference than what you have your bow weight set to within the manufacturers stated limitations.
Some of the new bows have 55-65lb limbs as an option......that being what it is, myself and others I hunt and shoot with have all gone 50-60lb over the last 10 years. We ALL shoot better.I strive for a bow that I can draw easily in the cold in one slow fluid motion, being able to stop momentarily at any point as necessary by circumstance, and then continue to full draw.
