I am finally going to break down and try bowhunting turkeys this year. I have been practicing a lot with my setup which is a Mathews Switchback set at 68# and 28" draw length, a carbon express mayhem tipped with a Rage 2 blade. My question for you more experienced turkey bowhunters is, do you think I should back my draw weight off some....I have always heard that a little less draw weight is better for turkeys being that your arrow stays in the bird. Just wondering what you guys opinions may be.
If you are comfortable and used to shooting that weight then don't back it off any. You can always add an adder or similar product behind your broadhead to attempt to limit penetration.
Shoot what your comfortable with. But it wouldn't hurt to go down to the low 60's. I shoot my Bear maxed out at 74 for deer and for turks I drop it down to around 63.
Thanks for the info guys!
I don't have any way to check the poundage on my bow (aside from going to local sporting goods store... who has time?) but I recently cranked my bow down from its max draw weight. I hadn't shot for several months and found I had gone wimpy... wasn't able to draw the bow more than about 5 times in a session of shooting. Since I will be hunting from a blind, I will have to draw from a sitting position, so I needed to adjust the draw weight downwards. The speed is still faster than any bow I had in the past, but am now able to draw repeatedly from a sitting position and hit with good consistency at 20 yards. I hope to hold myself to that range and will have my decoys at around 12 yards. Man, I can't wait...
For deer i use a 75# which is a little heavy but its what i can pull. Ive never hunted turkeys with a bow before but if i were you i wuld put it down to about 55-60.
I use my OT2 Program to find the best set-up for my bows i shoot with a 60lb set up and use the program to find a balance between speed and kintec energy and when you run all the numbers you start to see how this all plays out, i am shooting about 54.5 pounds on my Z7 and the speed is about 255fps and if i move up to sixty pounds in puts me into a 400 spine arrow and i loose speed i traded all my 70 pound bows in for lighter bows and a rangefinder so now i know within a yard where i am shooting and it helped my groups and killing shots
I shot 5 longbeards so far this year.My bow is a Hoyt set at 70 lbs.27in. draw.NOT 1 arrow has passed through yet.I would shoot as much poundage as you can if shooting mechanical broadheads.
my Z7 is set @ 70lbs
I would not back it down if you are comfortable with the weight and shoot it accurately. Shot placement is more important to me than whether the arrow stays in the bird. The only bird I did not recover from a Rage 2 blade shot flew off with a foot of arrow sticking out of each side of him still climbing when he went out of sight. My point being I shoot 70+ lbs with a 31" draw length and experience more pass through shots on deer than turkeys. You will be happy with the Rage 2 blade on turkeys as well!