A guy I know had a "Diamond" brand compound bow for sale.
Note: I know NOTHING about a compound bow....I have a 30.06.
This guy wanted $350 dollars for it and had a lot of accessories with it.
He hunted only once with it during the season and went back to his rifle.
He was going to bring it by the mill for me to see and if I like it I was gonna get it for Paul.
Well he couldn't come so he sent his brother today.
Note: His brother knows NOTHING about a compound bow.
When he was showing me the bow I asked him things about it.
He hooked up the strap around his wrist and hooked the thingamajig to the string and pulled it back.
There was 80 pounds of pressure...and he dry fired it DOING $189.00 worth of damage to the bow. :o :o :o
We found this out when we took it to the hunting store to get the string put back on.
Neither of us even knew the bow as damaged until the bow tech showed us the damage.
He called his brother and I could hear it hitting the fan from the speaker phone.
Needless to say, I didn't buy the bow and the guy had to order the new parts to fix his brothers bow.
**** Never dry fire a compound bow. ****
David,
Glad nobody was hurt. Same is true with traditional and crossbows. They even make dummy arrows for crossbows as easier and safer to shoot a dummy arrow than try to pull back and slowly release pressure on an empty bow.
I had a string come apart on me one day 77# draw weight at full draw. Carbon arrow broke into 3 peices, bent the wisker biscuit rest, ripped of the quiver, the grip stayed in my hand and the bow landed about 12 ft away from me. I only had a small scratch on my cheek from my thumb. Its on my list to get the bow repaired and set uo for bow fishing, I replaced the bow with a Fred Bear Encounter.
Dry fires are no good with any type of bow. Without an arrow to absorb the stored energy it will have to go somewhere.
WOW, I did not know this and I have messed with bows some, don't guess I ever dry fired one, even as a youngster.
OMG, Thats like the golden rule of archery, never dry fire, it will "Bowsplode" every time. Cables pop, strings go bang and limbs self destruct. He's lucky the limbs didn't come around and meet him in the face with a haymaker. Very dangerous.
One of my buddies got a brand new compound he ordered from Bass Pro Shops when we were about 14. He took it out of the box, and as we admired it, his older brother came up and wanted to check it out. He drew it back and "Kawang!!" let er go on my buddie's brand new bow! Amazingly, nothing was damaged. There's a reason all of the bows in an archery store have their strings cable tied together.
A friend of mine accidently dry fired another friends bow when we were target practicing. It popped the string but luckily no other parts were damaged. I partially dry fired my Mathews several years back, it was only about half drawn and the release apparently didn't click all the way but it let the string go. It didn't hurt anything but it's probably good it didn't happen at full draw, even at just as far as I had it drawn it still had an impressive recoil. I still don't 100% trust releases to this day :D
There are a ton of good used bows out there. Look on the net to help set values then go to you local shop. Hunting season pretty much over. I see Mathews bows like mine I paid over $1k for a third.