Ultimate Budget Bow Showdown

Look at all these budget bows. Today, I wanted to go through all of these budget bows and figure out who is the king of the budget bow. I'm gonna go through them all one by one by one, break them down, see what feels good, and come out of this thing with a winner. It's gonna be cool. All right, we have cost and performance. And somewhere in the middle of cost and performance is the sweet spot for value. And that is what I'm trying to find today. Also, as cost goes up, at some point, we hit diminishing returns, where you're spending a lot more to gain a little. But this is where we wanna be. All right, and fighting in the left corner, we have the Bear Adapt 2 Hunting Public Edition. This thing is 31 inches axle to axle, 27 to 32 inch draw length, and a very good contender. 699 is a bear bow, 969, fully kitted out. The Mission by Matthews Range, their new, new to us, budget bow, 22 to 30 inch draw length, also 31 axle to axle. The Darton Consequence 31, 26 to 31 and a half inch draw length, very nice looking bow. And the Hoyt Enduro, 24 to 30 inch draw length, and 30 inches axle to axle. On paper, these bows seem relatively comparable, but I wanna get them in my hands, see what they feel like, see what kind of speeds they push out, and then figure out some features along the way. All right, check out this Bear Adapt Hunting Public bow. Kind of cool, they have rest integration. I've never seen a whisk or biscuit integrated onto the side. Picatinny on the front, and this is their whole hunting package. This is the only bow I'm setting up today that has the accessories strapped on, but that's the way it was shipped here, that's the way it was shipped to the shop. It's got this Trophy Ridge two pin sight, micro adjust, slider, which is kind of cool, 970 full kit. So, check it out. Bear Adapt 2, Hunting Public Edition, 70 pounds, 29 inch draw length, 440 grain arrow. All of these bows are set up the same, so we get apples to apples. Show you guys the speed here. 268.5. I want to shoot one more just for feel. I do want to say that their module system on the bow, super easy to rotate. You can see they're all labeled, all the numbers are on there. Very straightforward to change my draw length on this bow. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. Shoot through style rest. All right, I want to see how it feels particularly. It feels pretty good. I have spent some time with a bear in the past, and I would say in the box, a little limb stop comes with it. If you want your bow to come back and have a good stopping point, which I do think helps for accuracy, putting on the limb stop and taking off this grip. That was the two things I did to my bear that I felt like I got it shooting considerably better. I did want to mention, they put a Picatinny rail on the front of this bow. It'd be cool if every bow had a Picatinny rail on the front. It's been the gold standard on rifles and rifle scopes for a long time. We're seeing it on more and more bows. Not every bow has them, but at the price point, this thing features some pretty cool integrations and pretty modern stuff. So let's get to the next one. Matthew's Mission Range. New budget bow for this year. Pretty sturdy looking bow. I would say the main feature is that it's got these switch weight mods. So this bow can go from 30 to 70 pounds. If you had like a young kid that could start with this bow at 30 pounds and graduate their way all the way up to 70 pounds, which is kind of cool. This bow could grow with somebody for that long. Not the integration, no Pic rail, no integration for the rest. Sturdy looking bow. I want to see how it feels. And really all that fancy stuff is nice, but today's about seeing which bow feels the best in hand. Whatever bow I pick today, I would want to be able to hunt with and be fully confident with. And ultimately that comes down to making the shot. So let's try it out. See what we get for speed. I want to show you guys the speed here. 278.3 out of the Matthew's Mission Range. By the way, I have missed you guys' mugs. Your dirty little mugs. It's been a little bit since I put out a video and I'm excited for this upcoming year. It's going to be pedal to the metal from the start of it. And we're going to see how long we can keep that going for. But if you enjoy this style of video, hit the subscribe button, leave it a thumbs up. That stuff really does help. And it helps me figure out what kind of videos I should be making for the future. So subscribe, leave it a thumbs up. Thank you very much. Missed your mug. Also 699 MSRP. I want to shoot this bow once more for feel and see what I think. Seven inch braid side, by the way. The bow actually feels very steady when it's all the way back. It's a little stiffer to get back. Like the first half of the pull, there's more, there's more there. Nothing goofy with the draw cycle. It feels very sturdy in the, it feels very sturdy at full draw. So good feeling bow. Not as many features as our first one. And on to the next. Darton Consequence 31. This bow is super exciting to me because I had the original Darton Consequence. The original Darton Consequence was just a great shooter. Like I think it was the best shooting short axle to axle bow I've ever owned. In fact, I still have it in my collection. I don't think anyone will be able to pry it out of my hands. So I'm excited to see what this feels like. Can you see all those little numbers on that cam? Well, this bow coming in at 799. So a little more expensive than the other two. 799 MSRP. This bow has quarter inch draw length adjustments, which is pretty cool. We just started to see that in the flagship bows and they put it in their, whatever you want to call it, budget or mid price bow category. Quarter inch draw length adjustments, rest integration. Also mods that come with the bow that you can change, either regular mods or speed mods. It'll change how the bow feels. This bow actually has the speed mods on it. Typically with the speed mods, you'll get a few more feet per second, a little more aggressive feel. And with the other mods, a little smoother feel and less feet per second. But let's see what we got here. Coming off at 278. Also this on the Darton grip, that little line going down the middle of the Darton grip. I think that is just such a simple game changer because it makes it very simple for your grip to be repeatable. I just rest my fingers on that grip and I feel like I have one more point of contact to just be consistent. So here we go. Check out that speed. Here we go. So that kicked us up to 285, which is very impressive for that bow. Also seven inch brace height on the bow and these little marks on the cam as well, right down here. Those little marks on the bottom of the cam give you a reference for timing. If your bow comes out of time, it's really easy to see at that mark. It's pretty cool. Anyway, that speed for a seven inch brace height is pretty impressive. So I wanna do one more for feel here. There's a little bit of stiffness to the front half of the draw cycle. I think that's probably because the speed mods are on the bow and that kicks it out for a little extra speed. This is probably how I would shoot the bow right here. It feels good at full draw. If you handed this to me with say five other flagship bows, I wouldn't know this wasn't a flagship bow. I'm not sure how Darton did it, but it seems like very high quality components in the price range. Feels good. Hoyt Enduro 849 price point. They also made this bow in a 999 hunting package, like ready to go, pick up from your pro shop, ready to go hunting package. They have the integrated rest feature, the Picatinny on the front. I think all of the Hoyt accessories are compatible with this if you wanted to get like the go sticks or their quiver. But to the hand, it kind of looks and feels like a flagship Hoyt. Like again, to the eyeball, I look at this bow and I don't see anything that's like, oh, this couldn't be a flagship bow. It looks nice. Components look sturdy. Let's try it out. Hoyt Enduro 278.4. One thing I should mention too on the bottom of their cam is they put this little nipple of destiny. And basically that's so when you rest your cam on the ground, you're not damaging the cam or the string. They make a little go sticks product that looks like a bipod that will go on the front. All right, one more shot for feel. The draw cycle feels very nice. Hoyt has always done a really nice job. At least the bows I've shot of theirs, their draw cycle to speed ratio. It's pretty awesome. I wanna show you the cam. There's half inch draw length adjustments. And for some reason they have a torque screw in their module. And I've seen this before with demo bows where the torque screw looks like it's starting to wear out pretty quick. I would love to see them just use a regular Allen screw like most companies do. Something that's harder to strip. This is the most expensive of our set. I gotta do some thinking here and we're gonna eliminate a bow. Hey buddy, hey buddy boy. All right, before I eliminate one of these bows, I wanna say I don't think there's any stinkers in the group. Like there's not one where it's like, oh, that bow should be out. I believe these are the top four bows in the category right now. And they feel like it. So if you were to tell me that you were gonna go to your archery shop and try all four of these bows and pick out any one of them, I don't think there's a bad choice on the table. But right now I gotta eliminate the Mission range. It felt good, it felt very sturdy. Just comparatively to the other bows, it has none of the features when it comes to integration, pick, rest. It's very much a bare bones setup. Solid feeling bow, but one's gotta go. This is it, Matthew's Mission range. Out of these three, I'm gonna shoot him one arrow, one arrow, one arrow, get a feel for him, see what we think, and eliminate another one. Bum, bum, bum. All right, here we go, round two with the Bear Adapt. Two, ready to hunt, hunting public edition. Honestly, I think archery is in a very good place right now. Depending on whatever price range you wanna come in at, you have some very good options. So here we go, Darton Consequence 31, round two. There is just a little bit of stiffness in the front side of this draw cycle, but once it's full draw, it feels incredible. Like the way it wants to hold out here, the way it feels pulling into it, it feels very, very nice. It would be interesting for somebody who didn't know the difference, like brand-wise, to shoot these bows and mix them in with flagship bows because I don't think they would know a difference. Just speculating, but I don't think so. And now the Hoyt Enduro, the most expensive. It's got that Hoyt look with this, that thing. It's supposed to, I'm told that's supposed to dampen vibration. Really, really nice feeling, stable bow. Draw cycle-wise, it's probably somewhere in between the Darton and the Bear. I think the Bear is the easiest to get back. This is probably second easiest, and Darton would be just behind this. It feels more similar to the Darton than it does the Bear, but it feels good. All right, so I want to share with you where my head's at. We have three very good bows here. Bear Adapt, ready to hunt, hunt in public, two. Darton Consequence, 31. Hoyt Enduro, 30. The Bear and the Hoyt both come in hunting packages. $969, $999. This probably has better accessories. It's got a slider sight. It's got a little longer stabilizer. This one comes with a drop-away. This one comes with a shoot-through whisker biscuit, which a drop-away is nice and fancy, but a whisker biscuit's also time-tested, and if you kitted out the Darton Consequence 31 on your own, you'd have to buy your own accessories, so potentially that comes in being more expensive. Also, if you get the chance and you can go to your local pro shop, please go try this test for yourself. It's pretty amazing when you get them side by side by side to see what they feel like, and really, I think the gap is narrowing between bad products and good products. Everybody's getting closer to being nice. So, that being said, this is tough because there's a price difference, too. I just think, for a longevity perspective, the Bear ends up getting kicked out. That said, if you were to shoot the Bear, you wanna shoot the Bear, try it with a limb stop if you can. Try taking that grip off if you can. I tested it, how it came to me today. Between the three, it definitely has the squishiest back wall and it's got just a little bit of crunchiness to how the cam rolls over. It's not a bad bow, it's just one bow's gotta go, and that's the deal. So, onto the final two, Darton Consequence 31 versus Hoyt Enduro. I wanna cycle a couple arrows back to back to back here. Let me know what you're seeing as well. I'm curious. You guys get to see me hold the bow. I think this is probably the best angle to show you guys how the bow holds. So, let me know what you see. All right, let's get down to it. Let's cycle some arrows side by side by side and pick a winner. By the way, this archery shop I'm standing in that I smuggled these bows from to make this budget bow shoot down video, puttymarcher.com. They put up with my shenanigans, helped me do stuff like this. So, if you're looking for any archery stuff online, check out puttymarcher.com. It's got way more stuff than I ever expected. All the stuff, arrows, bows, releases, you name it, it's probably there. I have a discount code, it's Tim C. It'll help you save a few bucks on most items. It's very surprising how much stuff they can sell and ship online now. So, if you can't get to an archery shop and you wanna get it online, check out puttymarcher.com, discount code Tim C. Let's get to it and pick a winner. All right, here we go. Darton Consequence 31. The grip feels absolutely beautiful and very sturdy at full draw. Hoyt Enduro. Really, really glad Hoyt decided to play ball in the budget or mid-range game. Very cool they came out with a product like this. It feels as good as it does. If you ever really get down to it and you can't decide and you can cycle your arrows back and forth, it'll really tell you a story. That's something old MFJJ Josh Jones taught me a while back. Cycling back and forth, see what you think. Hoyt Enduro. We have two really good bows right here. Very, very nice bows. I got some thoughts. Let's go talk about a winner. Two very, very nice bows here. I really believe the gap between the best and the worst equipment has gotten a lot closer. And that's why we're seeing such good equipment in this mid-price, mid-tier type budget range. I think we're pretty spoiled. That being said, there can only be one winner. And it really came down to how the bow felt in my hand at full draw. And that's the Darton Consequence 31. This is an incredible feeling bow. The only bit of feedback I would offer is I would love to see a Picatinny on the front like Hoyt put it, like Hoyt gave it. But it does have quarter-inch draw length adjustments on the cam. It does have timing on the cam. It does have a beautiful, simple grip with that line in the front, which makes it easy to be consistent, particularly for me. That's a wrap. It's the Darton Consequence 31 for me. I really hope that you could have the opportunity to do something similar. And know that if you're gonna pick any of these bows, you're picking something fully capable of going out into the field and doing a great job for you. But when it comes down to it, for me, if I gotta go hunt with a bow, this is it. It feels absolutely awesome at full draw. I can't believe we got quarter-inch draw length adjustments at the price point. Just a really nice feeling bow, and that's what it boils down to. It doesn't hurt that it kicked out a little more speed. That's nice, but that's not what it's about. It's about a bow that feels good, that I feel confident in. And honestly, I think a lot of people could confuse for a flagship bow. That's it. I'm signing out today. Subscribe to the channel. Road to 100,000 subscribers. It is going to be all systems go 2026. That's it. Catch you back on the next one.