Never Thought I'd Shoot This Bow..

This bow right here is not a Bowtech Core SS and I want to tell you all about it. Do you know how when you meet someone for the first time, maybe it's a first date, maybe it's a co-worker, interview, new friend, whatever. Well, maybe not. Maybe not a co-worker or a friend in this situation. Let's pretend you're on a first date. You go on a first date, it's going pretty well. You want to get to know them more. So you go to the next thing, and maybe the next thing, and the next thing. You like them, but you just don't know until you know. Until you went for a little, let's say test drive, an extended test drive, because things change and it just takes time to really get to know something or someone on that level. So that's basically what happened with the Bowtech Core SS. I got to know it pretty well and after a few dates it just frankly didn't work out. Now the short of it is as often as I shot it, I never really felt like I could get it to shoot as well as I've had other flagship bows shoot in the past. I got the bow because I thought the tuning features were pretty incredible and I still believe that to be 100% true. But at the end of the day, a bow is built to be shot and I just couldn't shoot it as well as, you know, maybe some other stuff in the past. So cue in the Elite Ethos, the bow that got second place in my 2024 bow buying test review video. This bow really, I think, slept on me. I didn't know what I knew until I shot it. And the more I shot it, I was like, it's got a really smooth draw cycle for the amount of brace height it has and speed. That's kind of the secret sauce I'm not quite understanding is the brace height on this bow is six and three quarter inches, which is definitely at the high end of what we see in kind of this bow category, 33 inch longer axle type hunting bow. And the more I've shot bows with longer brace height, there's a little secret sauce going on. My Darton has longer brace height. This has longer brace height. That guy's racking his pipes. My Darton has a longer brace height. This has a longer brace height. And there's something about it that seems to just make the bow more shootable. Like my bad shots stay closer to the center. But typically the trade-off is you get more brace height, you get less speed. This thing has a lot of brace height and a significant amount of speed. So I don't know what's going on here. I've always considered Elite an interesting brand, but never one that's really caught my eye or separated itself from the pack. I was like, Hey, let's run it. Let's shoot it some more and see what we see. Learn what we learn. Date another bow. I don't want to be switching bows anymore. Here's my vision for the bow. We have a couple of things coming up. We have Total Archery Challenge. I'm going to go to Big Sky, Montana. Hope to see you there. And we have a local 3D shoot. That's Wanted to build a bow that can carry with me to those events. So that's what this is. I want to shoot a little bit and tell you more about it. All right. A little top to bottom tour of this bow. One thing that makes Elite interesting is similar to Bowtech, not the same, but similar. You can move the cam side to side using these little set screws. And what I found, what I was able to get is about, I was able to move a tear between like a half inch and an inch. So not like you're going to be able to move a tear a ton, but to be able to micro tune, that's pretty neat. You can move your cam side to side with this screw right here. It's very straightforward. You just crack it and move the other side. Cams. I don't know what to tell you specifically, other than that, these cams are pretty smooth drawing and the speed ratio is good. So smooth is typically not fast. And this is relatively smooth and fast, which is, I'm not sure how they're doing it, but you're able to change your draw length as well. And your holding weight or your lead off right here. You can micro adjust your drawing. And then on the other side, I should just flip it to the other side so you can see it. There's just a rotating module where you can change your draw length and half inch increments. And then you rotate back to this side and you can change your draw length even further as well as your holding weight, which I think is kind of cool. And I definitely seem to hold a little better with a little more holding weight at this stage in the game. I had this UltraView site. It wasn't being utilized. So I'm like, let's get it on there. Let's run it with a smaller housing because I'm going for accuracy. I'm going for accuracy at tack and this 3D event. I want to shoot as good as I can. UltraView just constructed a nice, simple, little clean setup. You can see I'm running a dual pin setup, but I will use the top pin for almost everything. And I'll only use the bottom pin in a bonus pin type situation. A lot of this stuff just transferred over. Hamski rest with podium bracket, podium bars, 15 inch podium bar on the front with four ounces of weight, 10 degree down angle, 10 inch bar on the back with eight ounces of weight currently. And I was able to sneak these Hoyt GoSticks on there and it is sitting on the cam, but I can lean it forward depending on the angle and get it off the cam. So it's not a perfect solution, but it is nice to be able to just set your bow down. One thing that is very simple, nice and straightforward on this bow is the grip. Feels fantastic in the hand. Very simple, repeatable, nothing fancy. Basically exactly how I would want a grip to be. Simple, straight up, repeatable. Now, knock on wood, I don't want to jinx it, but I have had this bow set up for about a week. I've gotten to shoot it every day and I've shot it pretty well. So maybe we've moved past the first date and we're feeling pretty good. Maybe even past the second date. I shouldn't even say it, but this might be the first sight tape that I made the first time and got correctly. I did swap to the handheld for these little tournaments, trying to be accurate as I can. You normally see me shoot a handheld, I shoot the stand clicker. I went to four fingers on a button. It feels great. So it's four fingers, it's got a little bit of travel in it. I like it. I will say one thing about the timing of me getting the Bowtech that I didn't really jive with. And just to be honest with you for a second is right at the beginning of the year, right around that same time, all this news started coming out with Bowtech dropping Tim and Kyle in Gillingham and Kyle Douglas to their professional archers. From what I could tell, it seemed short notice. It seemed kind of out of the ordinary, kind of a weird time of year, weird timing. I don't know. It just, it seemed like there was a cleaner way to handle it. I don't really like politics, politics of bows and bows and arrows and stuff like that. In that situation, it just seemed like Bowtech fumbled the ball. At the beginning of the year, I shot all the bows side by side by side, made that video. When I circled back to saying, hey, the Bowtech's not working, what's next? This was my first choice, but I still wanted to shoot a couple of the others just to feel them side by side. To be straight with you, this bow, this bow is not, it's not light. Not like the other bows, like the lift or whatever. But in the grand scheme of things, one thing, one little secret, weight is cool. It is. I think it is very innovative to be able to shave down the weight. Don't get me wrong, but we're still going to, we're still going to put weight back on the bow. So that to be said, I didn't really let that detract me. It is kind of built like a tank go to your local archery shop, try the bows, figure out what's important to you. Cause that is important. Are you hunting out of a tree stand? What are you trying to make out of it? Like for me, this, I want this to be a long bow because I want it to shoot as accurate as possible. That's kind of my criteria. Hunting bow as accurate as possible. Something I can shoot bombs with, with the friends that tack, hold my own. Something I can shoot with at a local tournament. So that's kind of my criteria. Figure out your criteria, what's important to you. And then try the bow side by side. What features are important to you? What's, what are the things you're looking for? One thing I will say that I've changed my tune on a little bit, draw cycle. The draw cycle, you're going to get used to no matter what, which is pretty true. But when it comes to shooting a bow year round or shooting a bow a lot, you want to like the draw cycle. And this has a great draw cycle. If anything, it's a little stiff in the front and then smooth all the way back. It feels really good that way. I actually pulled, pulled my friend Joel's dart and consequence back because we have the same bow specs. And I was like, man, your bow feels light, Joel. And his bow was at 66 pounds. This was at like 69.5 and his bow felt light. So all that to be said is like that a little bit of lightness is like, this is a little stiffer in the front end. A little stiffness never hurt anybody, didn't it? I've shot quite a bit with it. I've shot quite a bit of 3D this week. We've been shooting a lot of unknown, which is really fun. If you guys want to see us shoot some unknown in a little match against each other, let me know. Unknown Now, if you've been following for most this year, I can understand why it looks like I'm playing like musical chairs with bows and I don't want to be switching bows. I think it's, it's more work to set up more bows. Hear me on this. I want, from my perspective, I want to be able to give you good opinions about them. So I kind of, part of my thinking, I was like, why not? Why not try any of these? Why not have reps with most of the different vendors so I can be educated on them, have time with them and yeah, just be able to give good opinions and stuff like that. The other thing is I have Spokane Valley Archery basically in my backyard, a great support system to be able to build these things, get them tuned, get them set up, bounce questions, help me out with things. Yeah. From that perspective, I'm, I'm really lucky. Uh, yeah, really lucky. So for me, that's 70 yards, not my best, not my worst. I definitely knew one broke high and yeah, it's just kind of an honest, Hey, here's where I'm at. A couple of things I did to set this bow up for me, kind of make it my own. Firstly, I started at 29 inches on my pretty standard for me, 29 smidge over a smidge under and 29 just felt long. Felt overextended. Didn't really feel like I get a lot of pressure into the bow. Dropped down to 28 and a half. Sucked up my ego. 28 and a half feels so good right now. It might be the best draw length I've ever had. And for me, the big test is shooting uphill and downhill, like shooting uphill. I'm able to keep pressure in the bow really well. Shooting downhill. I'm able to keep pressure in the bow really well. My bow feels like it's holding well uphill. When I pointed uphill and downhill, I did the third axis trick out of Josh's draw board. Basically his draw board, you can tilt. Tilted it down at like a 45, set my third axis. You know, you never really know until you shoot it a lot, but I've shot it quite a bit this last week and it feels pretty good. I moved the camera because the sun was bleeding through the back, but I think I can move you guys back. Check out my draw length here. See what you think. I think the Core SS can still be a great bow for a lot of people. It just wasn't the bow that I shot the best. And ultimately that's the test, right? Shoot these things as well as I can. An archery is hard enough. I don't need to make it any harder. Road to 100,000 subscribers guys. I'm doing my best every week to bring you the best content I can make. So if you could hit that subscribe button, give me a little, that helps a lot. It really does. That's a pretty good little group for me. I knew I missed one right. Feeling good. I'm going to sign off today. Hit the subscribe button. Leave a like if you enjoyed this style of video. That stuff helps more than you know. And go shoot your bow. Go shoot your bow. Go. Give it a little. Give it a little. Go shoot your bow.