Here's a story that explains my currrent opinion of the Ripcords.
Hunted a remote, gated Washington State area 2-5 September 2014 on MT bikes with my hunting buddy Duke. Were into elk daily but the first good shot opportunity presented itself WED evening in an unexpected way. My buddy and I were walking down a cat road that splits several two-three year old clear cuts. We were heading for the bottom of the cuts that has a patch of mature trees (we’d seen elk there before on our scout trip a few weeks ago, and, earlier during our hunt). Before we made it down through the cuts and to our destination, we saw 4 cows feeding left to right, across the road we were traveling on at the bottom of the cut, probably 150 yards ahead (70+ degree temp; 4:30ish PM; wind blowing right to left across the road). Out of a ravine came a very decent little 4X4 feeding behind the cows. Cows went across the road and the bull continued to feed behind them. We were pretty much pinned down on the road above them and I figured we’d wait till the small group moved out of sight to the right and then move down and plan a stalk where the wind would be in our favour. This bull obviously wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He curiously left his cows, went back across the road, and started feeding below the road in my direction. He obviously wasn’t tweaking too hard yet and was not concerned about leaving his group of cows. I couldn’t move (way too open and very noisy on the gravel road) so I sat right on the edge of the road between two 3 foot saplings to see how things would develop. Bull moved to 90, 80, 74, and then 60 yards below me and continued to feed, dropping his head and coming up occasionally with a mouth full of salad. Quartering to me, quartering to me, quartering to me, broadside with head down in the salad bowl! I touched off an arrow and my arrow flew his back by several feet! The Ripcord Code Red arrow rest failed to drop and caused my arrow to sail the bull! Wait, it gets better. Two more shots with the same result (dumb bull wouldn’t leave; he appeared to be very hungry)….closest shot was 45 yards with same end result with my normally very accurate projectiles flying feet over Bullwinkle’s back. Put me into a state of ticked off like you’ve never seen (ever heard of a conniption fit?). Here’s the clincher. I took my bow to my archery shop twice over the previous month because the rest seemed sticky and not dropping properly all the time after he’d installed a new string for me. Each time he tinkered with it a bit and said it was fine even after I told him the cord seemed to be sticking inside and the rest wasn’t dropping completely each and every time. I went to Cabelas the day after I got back from that hunt and put on a nice trophy taker rest that seems to work fine. Just my opinion, but too many moving parts in the Ripcords (and QADs for that matter) for me. I also had a buddy have a Ripcord failure on a Montana hunt 3 or 4 years ago. I’m not a fan.
