Cam Hanes Bow Review - Hoyt VTM 34

Today we're going to review this bow I've been shooting. Hey how are you? I'm doing great, how are you? Doing good, did your puppy want a treat? Yeah, you need a treat. Ask him for a high five, that's what he does. Oh thank you Louie, that is so sweet. What can I get for you? 16 ounce americano, cold, no matter. Okay. Thank you. We are just going to the archery range, the archery range. Oh nice. It's just like south of here a little ways. Yeah. Here's this. All right, take care. This year I decided to switch bows, switch it up. Wanted to try some different stuff and I found a bow that I really like and enjoy. Want to share some of that with you, but also it has some quirks, things I would probably set up or change differently. You know that one dude, Cam Haynes? Hi Cam, shout out to Cam. The guy who runs a lot, shoots his bow a lot, lifts often, kills big bulls. Same bow he shoots. The same bow he shoots or is he shooting my bow? You tell me. That's probably what's going on here. Anyway, let's rip some arrows, talk about it and yeah, have a great day. World famous moose here. We can step out, get a little bit of range. How about that finish? One of my favorite all-time colors and finishes on a bow. It's called Battle Worn. Love it. All right, let's start with the rundown. Hoyt VTM 34. Aluminum 34 inches axle to axle. Battle Worn finish. It's a cool gray finish. Probably one of the things that immediately made me want to... It was eye-catching. It was something I wanted right away when I saw it. Set up. Hoyt one-piece quiver on the side. Pretty rad. Sticks nice and tight to the bow. You can remove it, which I'm a fan of. I do like taking the quiver off though. It's nice to shoot with the quiver off. Podium 15-inch bar out front with one, two, three ounces. 10-inch bar in back with four or five ounces. One thing you can see here is this back bar has actually kicked out quite a bit to the side and I just had to do that to get that bow to sit nice for me. It's probably the only thing that's kind of... I guess a little quirky with my setup. And I'm using the Hoyt direct back bar mount. Really clean and simple the way it mounts up in the back here. I ripped the grip off immediately. And this is one thing where I feel like there's room for improvement. I don't mind shooting off the riser here. Like it feels pretty dang good. But for my history here, I've shot Matthews a lot. Bowtech a lot. Hoyt a lot now. This grip, just this little bit of rounded part at the top. I like it but I don't love it. I just think there's a better version out there. The stock grip didn't feel that good. Shooting off the riser I would say is good but not great. My favorite grip to date is the Bowtech Reckoning grip. I would make this top edge a little more square and less rounded. My biggest bit of feedback is look how frayed up my string is. This bow hasn't even been banged around that much. So this is the stock Hoyt string. First time in a while I've left a stock string on. Man I'm just not sold on keeping stock strings on the bow. Basically like 150 bucks you can get a really sweet string like a Gasghost XV or A3 Bloodline fibers. And you're not going to see this unless you really really trash them. I wanted to shoot a few and talk about how it holds, draw cycle, all that stuff. And we're going to do a score today. I think that's something I got to do moving forward is just score this stuff. So we have a true like here's where it sits. 1 to 10 is going to be the scale. I can tell you I'm shooting it for a reason. It's because I like it a lot but we'll put a score to that. All right let's rip a couple arrows here. 84 yards. Ultraview slider here on the front. I do have an Ultraview slider video on the channel and I'll be shooting it in true cam hand style with the index. Stan Solex. I made a video about that too. I did get to drag this around on a 10-day hunt and beat up on it pretty good. And it still looks good. You can see there's a couple nicks in the battle worn finish. It's probably just me or whatever. One thing I really like on this is the draw cycle. I don't get any of any of this like funny business. Like maybe you've seen someone shoot before and the cams roll forward a little. I don't get any of that herky jerky business in the hole. The draw cycle back there's no it's just nice. There's no heavy rollover and the cams are really efficient. I think one of the most popular questions is should I go with the shorter version or the longer version? The more compact bow or the longer bow? And man that's personal preference. If you could shoot both a lot oftentimes that longer bow is going to hold steadier for most people. Unless you're a person hunting tight spaces where it's really advantageous to have a shorter bow smaller platform. It's really nice to have that longer platform. It's just going to hold a little steadier. There's more vertical mass on that bow. And because of that it's going to tend to want to hold like this better and get less of the side to side. All of today's modern bows you can shoot accurately. So it's not like you can't shoot accurately with a shorter platform. It's just a longer platform is going to be a little more forgiving. And that's really going to come down to your hunting style. Where you're hunting and how you're hunting. I've got a good little group going down there. I wanted to go through the setup with you today to give you my opinion. But also when you're setting a bow up it's nice if you can have some kind of starting point or platform. As everything sits here it's nicely balanced and really well set up for hunting. I think it's always pretty frustrating when you're first setting up a bow just to figure out hey how is this thing going to sit for me? How's it going to point? To give you an idea like here's where I got to to get this thing to sit. So maybe that'll save you some time in your setup. I'm going to go pull these arrows. A few considerations if you're trying to buy a new bow. It's really nice if you can go somewhere and shoot them. And just get a feel for what do they draw like? How do they point? How do they feel in your hand? And that should get you to the point where you have a good base. And then from there you can soup it up however you want. Add your stabilizers. Add your quiver. Set it up for your hunting style. Make it dangerous. Make it custom to you. And particularly when it comes to sight tapes. If you have time to get on a first sight tape and then spend some time shooting that sight tape to confirm it a couple weeks. That's definitely best practice because it just takes a few few hundred arrows to really dial it in. Basically Justin. Justin's the dude here and I don't tune my own bows. I'm working on learning but I'm just I'm just entry level. So Justin I wanted to get Justin's feedback real quick on what's it like to tune a Hoyt? Outside of just making sure that you have the proper arrow setup for your given draw weight. Draw length on the Hoyt VTM series. Any lateral tears that you're going to experience from a tuning standpoint. You're left using their shims that are going to space the cam in between the limbs. Left right a little bit at a time. I know Josh has done a video on just how much this moves tear laterally. But this is effectively doing what you would do with systems from other manufacturers that allow you to reposition the strings orientation in relation to the riser. That's a really cool and simple way to do it. Hoyt has made some preset sizes that work really well and cover most guys individual hand torque into the bow. And they also have a really nice tool that as long as you have even pressure from the fingers and your press onto the limbs. It's really easy to pop this axle out. Reshim the cam and have a guy going pretty quick. So I really do like that. Outside of that things I'd like to see them do. Plenty other manufacturers that have some sort of adjustable cable containment system. And that could be a nice add-on to what they already have set up here. And it's kind of hard to work on the rest, right? Yeah and that's a tech riser. I will call it an issue. But it is a limiting factor on where you can position the rest near far from the grip of the bow. If you want to do torque tuning. If you're tuning your own bow at home you'd have to have a press. Not the most user-friendly. Bowtech, much simpler. More friendly. Don't have to press most of it. If you're going to set it up at a shop. If you're going to set it up with someone who's got some experience. It's kind of a one and done type deal. Because you shouldn't have to reshim ever. Nope. Eventually on bows where let's say we had to shim one of these cams real heavy left or right. Say top and bottom. It does put a little extra strain wear and tear on the bearings. And if you're a Hoyt owner I'd say every... Depends on how much you shoot too. Every two to three years probably want to swap your bearings out. And if you have an authorized retailer they can definitely do that for you. But that's a good thing to do. And how far can we swing the draw length on this? Their new system the HBX cam. There's two modules that cover a variety of ranges. And if you look in your upper limb here. You've got K through E which is effectively module in and of itself. The closer you fall to the top of either of these given modules. So on this bow at 29 and at 31 you're basically maxing out that module's efficiency. Two mods to control the length. One base cam to put it on. It's a really nice system. I was just talking with a customer right now about the difference between their newer cam setup and their old cam and a half systems. I love these bows. I like them. 26 inches through 31 inches draw length. So that's pretty sick when it comes to just one cam. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No definitely to not have to buy their old system. You had to buy an individual module that covered your exact draw length. If you want to go half inch one way or the other you had to buy some more. Thank you dude. You got it. There you have it. Tuning tips with the dude. I'm not the dude. The tuning dude. To close this thing up. If you're doing some bow shopping. This is a bow I would consider. Shoot it. See what you think. See if it works for you. It's been a great hunting bow for me. Take 37. I'm trying to do a good job here. I titled this video something like Cameron Haynes bow setup review. Cam does shoot Hoyt the VTM 34 battle worn finish. That's cool. I just wanted to say that I am very appreciative for Cam. I got to spend time around him about a year ago filming hanging out a little bit. Had interaction with him on social media. Cam is always nothing but positive and what you see is what you get. All the stuff you see on socials. He's doing that. He's working hard. And I know he hasn't set out to be a spokesperson. That's not necessarily his goal. He's become a really amazing spokesperson for hunting and archery. Just wanted to give a quick shout out to him. I'm very thankful for having positive voices. As my reach has grown on social media. I'm very appreciative for the positive voices we have in the hunting industry. It's not necessarily the easiest thing to put yourself out there to you know the critique of however many people you reach. But we need it. We need those voices and good representatives of what hard-working, ethical hunters, archers, sportsmen, sportswomen. We need all the voices we can get because let's face it we're a minority not a majority. For the people that are putting a positive light on archery, hunting, being outdoors. Thank you for what you're doing. Big shout out to Cam for just being a positive spokesperson. I'm gonna close it there today. Thank you for hanging out. Subscribe to the channel. I'm chasing up that road to 100,000 subscribers. Means a lot to me and we're gonna do a big bash here right at Spokane Valley Archery when we get there. Let's get a cranking. Subscribe. Leave it a thumbs up. That stuff helps more than you know. I will catch you back here for the next one. I told you I would give this bow a score. I'm gonna go with 7.8. It's a great bow. I like it. To bring it into the 8s or even maybe a 9. Better string. More user-friendly to tune. Maybe a different grip. Overall, it's a great platform. I'm glad I have it. Pros and cons with every bow you choose. Yeah, that's where we're gonna sit with this one. 7.8. Beautiful bow. Beautiful finish. That's a wrap.