11 BOWS UNDER $200 (don't get ripped off & lose your money)

I'm gonna go over each bow and describe them, and maybe you can guess my description, because if you've seen the bow reviews, you'll probably know exactly what I'm gonna say. The best bow is... So the first one is the SAS Maverick. Now, this bow is as comfortable as biscuits and gravy, and it's as effortless to shoot as it is to watch this video. Thank you so much for your time today. It's an honor that you're here. It's been a while since I've posted, but family comes first, everything's well, everybody's healthy, and we are good to go. The Black Hunter Longbow is as steady as the news is negative, and it's as valuable as your thumbs. We're gonna cover 11 bows total today. I've reviewed 10 of them on the channel, three bonus at the end. In this recent series, I've reviewed eight of them and gave them a shatterproof score based upon different categories that we just made up to try to give us a framework. Now, I find myself reaching for bows that aren't necessarily the top of the shatterproof score. The Top Archery Recurve Bow is as comfortable as Death Valley or Hypothermia, and is definitely as noisy as Humpback Whales. So we've got 11 bows, all under $200 each, and I'm gonna tell you the three that I would buy again. The Deer Seeker Bow is as smooth as butter, and the specs are as inaccurate as Shaq's Free Throw. Also, I had two of my brothers shoot all of these bows, and their preferences were pretty similar to mine, but there are some slight differences, so I wanna let you know those as well. The Aerial Bow is as compact in the woods as an arm guard. The compact arm guard, of course, I wouldn't be talking about any other. And it shoots very similar to a peregrine falcon diving for its prey. The Folding Bow is as unique as Trickshot Trevor, and its poundage is as off as the lights. Now, the Horse Bow, this Hungarian horse bow. It's pretty good. And finally, the SAS Pioneer. It shoots like a stick with a string. No, seriously, I'd rather put a string on my tripod and shoot that than the SAS Pioneer. So here's a list of the bows in order of how they ranked on the Shadowproof score. And this list right here is actually my preference of which bow I've been reaching to pick up first. Now, these three, I would buy again. The top three in both the list. The bottom five, I would not buy again. It's good to keep in mind that this is my preference on bows. And not only so, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bows out there, and I can't get them all right now and test them. But I can do a few in order to maybe help some first-time archers get into the sport. So that's the goal. This isn't comprehensive. This is my opinion, but I hope it's beneficial in some way. And if not beneficial, hopefully somewhat entertaining. I'm so glad this bow's looking so good. As I cover these bows, I'm gonna aim to just hit the high points. And if you want the full review, you can check out the playlist below. Let's start at the top. The worst bow on the Shadowproof score is this folding bow. And there's a few reasons why it is the worst on the score. Number one being that I ordered a 35-pound bow. It came in at 23 pounds. If that factor changed, this bow would be much higher on the list. But as awkwardly as it is, it is a really smooth shooting bow. It is low poundage, so that helps out. The handle's not super comfortable, but I actually kind of think this bow's really cool. And so I moved this up to the fifth one on my list. It'd be the fifth one I would buy, where on the Shadowproof score, it's number eight. The horse bow. Now, this bow is clearly a different style than the traditional archery I shoot. Ideally, I would have a thumb ring for this. Ideally, I would have a good protector on my hand to shoot the arrow over it. Because those are two of the factors that probably made this bow not as fun as it should have been. Now, I don't have experience with a thumb ring yet, but I think that would have made this bow a little bit better. But shooting it normally as I do, with three fingers, shooting it off the hand, this turned in at number seven on the Shadowproof score. Yet, I moved this up to number six for me because there's two bows I just really don't like that are worse than this. The 68-inch longbow. This one's the SAS Pioneer. Fantastic reviews online. I get this bow, I shoot it, and I am highly disappointed. I don't know if I just got a bad apple. That could be the case. But based on my experience, this bow was not so fun to shoot. Now, on the Shadowproof score, this one got the sixth spot. On my preference, it got the eighth spot. The absolute worst bow. Here's why. The grip twists like crazy, super uncomfortable. It's 100% basically flat, and so it doesn't feel good in the hand. It's just big and bulky. I might actually refinish this bow later on to try to make it better. But for $179, you shoot it, and your arm just shakes like crazy. It's like just such an unpleasant experience. Now, this company has produced my favorite bow, but this one is my least favorite. Moving on to the Top Archery Bow. We've got aluminum handle, $86 bow, or at least at the time when I purchased it. And this bow scored fifth. I like it a lot less than fifth. The reason it scored fifth is because it's fast, because it's cheap. Those are the two reasons it scored fifth. Now, for me, under $200, I'm not caring so much about the speed. So for me, this was the second worst bow. The negatives to this bow, aluminum handle, I don't like it. It actually feels heavy, even though it's not that much heavier than a normal bow. The air rest is bad. I could put a new air rest on. You could make this bow a little bit better. But how this bow comes, I'm not a fan, and I put this as my seventh. Okay, moving on to the Deer Seeker Bow. I love this bow. This bow is awesome. It comes in fourth on the Shatterproof score. It also comes in fourth on my preference. This bow would move up. It might move up to third if they sent me what I ordered. I ordered a 35-pound bow at 28 inches. Testing it at 28 inches, we've got a 23-pound bow. 12 pounds off won't cut it for me, but this is one of the smoothest shooting bows. It's got kind of a reflex-deflex design, and I think that helps out with the smoothness. I really do like this bow a lot, just the poundage is way off. This is now my wife's bow. It's her favorite bow. She shoots it, she loves it. It's a 54-inch bow, and I just wish the specs were correct. That's the only thing I dislike about this bow. And honestly, with specs being off, if you order a bow from a company and the specs are off, you let them know, you can show them proof, they're probably gonna be happy to send you the right one. I'd probably consider buying this one again if the specs were accurate. Okay, moving on to the bows that I like. The Aerial Bow. This is a 54-inch bow at 40 pounds. I shot the best right out of the gate with this bow. The snaggability test, this one scored the best for me, which is odd as a 54-inch bow. The handle is extremely comfortable for this short of a bow. It's slightly more comfortable than the Deerseeker bow, but it's not a big difference, and it's gonna depend on your hand and how it fits. This bow gets third on the Shadowproof score. It also gets third on my score. Now, the situation where this would move up to number one is probably a hunting situation. If you're going out hunting and you're in the woods and you want a shorter bow, I would definitely consider this bow if you're on the budget. $179 bow, really enjoy it, recurve bow. I've got no complaints about it. Tune your arrows to it and you'll have a fun time. Okay, the SAS Maverick is the next bow on the Shadowproof score, and I'm not showing it to you here now because I gave it to my brother because he liked it so much. And actually, I would come into the garage to grab a bow to shoot, and I've been shooting these bows for a few months now just to get a lot of experience with them so I can tell you guys an honest opinion without just taking one shot. So I've been taking my time with it for this video, and every time I come to the garage, I just wanna grab the SAS Maverick. I just reach for that bow every single time when I wanted to go have fun and shoot, and I didn't even realize I was doing that until a little bit later, and then I was like, goodness, I've shot three days in a row and I haven't shot any other bow but this bow. And I think the reason is I like it so much is because it's just the user experience is so good for the price range. It's a smooth shooting bow, it's a comfortable shooting bow, and that's what matters to me. And because of those factors, it's the top of my list. I put the SAS Maverick at number one, but I have zero complaints about the SAS Maverick, $179. Again, SAS Maverick's at the top of my list, the SAS Pioneer's at the very bottom of my list, and it's the only two bows from the same company out of these eight I got. Now the number one is the Black Hunter Longbow. This handle feels pretty stinking good as well. It does depend on your hand. I like the SAS Maverick's handle a little bit better. This bow is faster than the SAS Maverick, even though the Maverick is a recurve. Why did this bow score higher on the Shatterproof scale? The reason is the price. Talking under $100 bow. I think it was 98 bucks at the time of my purchase, where the SAS Maverick is a bow that's $179. You can't go wrong with either one, although this bow is longer than the SAS Maverick, and it's just as smooth. So I would go with a shorter bow if I can, if I have the same user experience. But literally, this bow scored identical to the SAS Maverick except on the sacrifice scale, meaning this bow is just cheaper, and so you spend less money to get it. If you're looking for an entry-level bow, you can't go wrong with the Black Hunter Longbow or recurve bow. I'll tell you where I rank that in a second. So just to give you a second person's opinion, we've got my brother, Kazdin. He is an employee of mine. He's been working for me, and he does a fantastic job. He's customer service. He takes care of all the emails, everything like that, ships out products. He's amazing. But he shot these bows, and this was his preference. He got the Maverick, Black Hunter, Aerial Bow, same thing exactly as me, Deer Seeker. Now, this is where it changed. He liked the Horse Bow for number five. I didn't like it that much. He liked Top Archery for six. Not sure what he's thinking. And then Folding Bow and SAS Pioneer he had as the last. And then I had my other brother shoot them all. He has a YouTube channel, if you guys are interested in seeing my little brother's YouTube channel, Casey Outdoors, it's up there. But his preference, well, he didn't have an opportunity at the Maverick because I had already given it to my other brother. But Creed had Aerial Bow as his one, Black Hunter as his two. He assumed the Maverick would be in the top because me and Kaz liked it so much. Then he had Deer Seeker S3, which is the same. And then he had Top Archery as his fourth. So Creed and Kaz liked the Top Archery $86 bow in their top five. And I really didn't like it that much. Keep that in mind that that bow could, for a preference, be better. Throw a different arrow rest on it. They really liked how it shot. I didn't. So that's one that could be a wild card. And then he goes on with Folding, Pioneer, and then he disliked the Horse Bow the most. This right here is the Knight Traditional Takedown Recurve Bow that I think came in around $115. I did build my own riser and I took this one and destroyed it kind of in the process. But this bow was a pretty good bow. And it would fall for me right underneath the Aerial Bow. And with my new riser on it that I made really long, it makes it a really smooth shooting bow. And I actually might put this in my top three because of that and because I got a good string on it. It helps out a lot. And the next bow that I've reviewed before is the Black Hunter Recurve. This is actually the long bow. I cannot find the Black Hunter Recurve Bow. And at one point I said, I might have a bow problem. And I showed you some bows and you guys set me straight. You said, you don't have a bow problem, Kramer. You have a bow storage problem. And I agree because I cannot find that bow anywhere. So I need to organize and I need to store the bows better. But the Black Hunter Recurve would fall for me right above actually the Knight Traditional Black Hunter Recurve. It would be right under the Aerial Bow in fourth place. So I can actually say those five bows I would buy again. And I would buy the Deer Seeker again if only the specs were correct. So pretty much six bows I would buy. Now there's another bow that I've reviewed that I don't have with me. You might've heard of it. It's called the Samick Sage. And it's an okay bow. It's somewhere in the middle. I'd probably have it under the Deer Seeker on my list as number six or seven. That's basically what I would say about it. I like these other bows better, especially those top three. And lastly, I did a video on the cheapest bow on Amazon that I could find at the time. That's like the Kawanake Bow. Now that video has got a lot of views, near a million. But at the end of the video, I told everybody I would not buy the bow. And I would still stand to that now. Now I did give that bow away, so I don't got it with me. But I would put that bow right around the horse bow. The bottom three or four, it's not that great of a bow, but I did enjoy it. I want to tell you guys something though. I really wanna tell you this. The best bow, the best bow is the one you have. And this is something we forget. We're always wanting the next thing, the next thing. I'm notorious for this with camera gear. I think my videos will be better if I get new gear. Wrong. My videos will be better if I get better at talking and storytelling and talking to you guys. We think our shot will get better if we get better gear. Wrong. Partially. There is gray area because a better camera leads to better quality. But it doesn't make you interesting. A better bow might lead to a more enjoyable shooting experience. But that doesn't necessarily change your form. So, keep that in mind. If you're bad with the bow you have now, the new bow's not gonna fix your problems necessarily. It just might be a more enjoyable experience. That's my take on it. This has been a different thing for me to review some bows. And I get that question so much. Hey, I'm new to archery. I found your videos. What bow should I buy or should I build a bow or what should I do? The answer is yes to both of those. And I wanted to give you some options that are cheap enough that you can buy it and then you decide archery's not for me and not feel like you wasted a lot of money. So that was the purpose of this little series. I am dying to build some bows again. I'm coming out with a lot of bow builds here soon. I'm so pumped about it. I've got so many things planned. And due to all your support, buying products, watching these videos, hanging out with me, so encouraging, so fun. I'm so grateful for what I get to do. And it's because of you guys. So thank you. As always, be shatterproof. Stay positive. We've got a lot coming. I'll see you guys soon on the next video.