There are local classes on building your own traditional bow...

Cabela's in lacey has a nice variety of bows, and they have a shooting range indoors too. wouldnt be a bad idea to take a trip in there.

I would reccomend against it. Buy from a Pro shop, its a much better expirience and you'll get much better customer service down the road. Plus they won't sell matthews, hoyt, and others who are pro shop only. The best archery shop I have been too is pacific crest in salem followed by bowrack in springfield OR. go to a small shop in the winter when the shops aren't crowded, the pro staf should have alot of time to spend with you helping with all aspects of your purchase, form etc. Stay away from big box retail where some dumbass kid most likely is going to try and see you the bow his best friend shot a deer with.

While I cant offer up too much in the way of the Parker bows, I can tell you that the other bow to look into is a Archery Research. I cant remember for sure but I think they are a subsidiary of PSE. Anyway, I picked one of those up last year after having shot a Hoyt since I was a little lad and I am pretty happy with it. The Hoyt's are really heavy and the AR was a nice relief from all the weight. The axle to axle length is way shorter too. Real nice for when you are pounding through the thick stuff and you keep getting stuff hung up on your gear. Hope that brings to light some stuff you did not know.

Shawn...out

pug, archery reaserch's are nice bows but kinda spendy last time i looked, they still expensive?

yes parkers are very high priced for what you get...i have loved every single one i have shot. and my drives tacks at 40yds (farthest i will shoot).

but i would never pay the price i did again for one of them. i would never get even half of that back selling it...

When I bought mine I paid a little more than $400 for just the bow. So the bow itself was not spendy. Now the $600 that I spent on bolt ons and arrows and a new release, that is another story.

I picked up the AR31 from the year before, makes no sense to me to go buy a brand new bow when everyone is just doing the same thing as the other guy.

i love bow hunting to death, id never give it up. but bows are just money pits in a way. with the price of arrows, and all that what not that u need for them. broadhead, sights, quiver, rest, stabilizer. its crazy. my setup on my bow costs more than the bow itself.

oh yeah, ive went through 4 sigths, 7 quivers, about a donzen arrows every season just getting back into the grove of shooting. countless sets of broadheads and different arrows trying to find that setup that shoots the way i like it.
different stabalizers, rests, the lists goes on and on.

i love my bow to death, everyone who has shot it has wanted it. BUT man i cant afford a new one for the life of me. thats been the only reason i ever back out of selling it. its works perfect, and gets the job done. so its pointless to get a new bow even though i really want one.

I went down to Broken Arrow. Shot a few and talked to the guy there and bought a Bowtech Gaurdian. Now it is time ot start practicing.

I'm with Stam! Lot's of good recurves and longbows out there! Real good shooters too. Good luck!

CAPTAIN

i have two rytaras both shoot very well build my arrows from the raw blanks pretty resonable same sight and all for the three years doesnt cost all that much less than 100 dollars a year would spend more on ammo if was rifel hunting by the time i was done target shooting

Egghead is right on the money with his advice. I live in Seattle so finding a bow shop other than the nock point is difficult. I bought a Ross bow and had the guys at the Federal Way Sportsmans Warehouse set me up. I pulled down the bow reviews from bowsite and archerytalk and picked several within a given price. When it was all said and done I shot close to a dozen bows and it came down to the Martin Bengal or the Ross 331. The Ross won because it felt just a little bit better than the Martin.

After you get your bow set up properly its not like you need to run to the bow shop every other week. If it were me I wouldn't worry too much about buying from a shop out of the area. If you need service go back to them or bring it to a local guy who will work on it.

Firedog - Archery World is located in Vancouver on Grand Blvd just south of Mill Plain in a little strip center. I used to live up the street from their shop and stop by on occasion when I'm in the area.

A great info site is http://www.huntersfriend.com/bowselection.htm

Go to Technical Help, then in the drop-down menu to Bow Specification batabase. At the bottom of that page, you can organize bows by draw length, then brace height, speed, whatever, then narrow it down to see what 5-10 have the specs you want. Great web site.

Little Fish, I stoped into Archery World the other day. Niceshop and will probably get most of my business since they are a lot closer than Broken Arrow. If archery World carried Bowtech I would have looked there, but wanted to shoot the Bowtechs along with the Mathews and others. Settled on the Bowtech because it was extremly quiet and also comfortable to shoot, the Drenalin was about the same. At elast to me, went with Bowtech since they are out of Eugene.