Idaho Examiner: Bowtech’s 2007 Guardian Compound Bow"Common Sense News"

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Bowtech’s 2007 Guardian Compound Bow

Posted on: November 27, 2007

Bowtech’s 2007 Guardian Compound Bow
Dave Boyd

This bow is an absolute joy to shoot. I don’t believe I’ve ever shot a bow that was quieter or had less apparent recoil. With a brace height of a little over 7”, it’s also a fairly forgiving bow. At a retail price of slightly over a thousand dollars as a ready to hunt package, its not inexpensive – but then, quality rarely is.

At first look, the bow is a little different. There are braces coming off the riser to the center of each limb. Bowtech calls this their Center Pivot Riser/Limb Technology. They claim that it practically does away with torque and vibration. It apparently works as this is the first bow I’ve been able to shoot and follow the arrow’s flight all the way to impact through the sight window. The bow just seems to hang in the air after the shot. The shelf is wide and dished out, which really opens up the sight window. The design of the bow shelf also allows the shooter’s support hand to sit very close to the arrow’s plane of travel, serving to help reduce torque – another feature that aids in simplifying a good follow-thru. If I have any nits to pick with this bow it’s that, in my hands, it seems top-heavy. This may have been alleviated to a degree by attaching a stabilizer below the handgrip, but the bow shot so smoothly that we never felt the need.

This bow was set up from the factory with a 28” draw length, which made it a little difficult for me to shoot consistently as my draw length is normally 30’. It was ideal for the rest of our pro-staff though, so we left it the way it came. At 60 pounds of peak weight, it shot my 395 grain carbon arrows at a smokin’ 288 fps. This kind of speed made for arrows that covered the distance to the target very quickly with much less drop or wind correction required than I am used to. At the Rinehart 100 3-D shoot held here in Pocatello, hitting the kill zone on even the farthest targets was relatively easy (you can see the video of our shoot on our website at www.westernstatessportsman.com). For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Rinehart makes a great line of 3-D archery targets, including dinosaurs and aliens as well as more traditional earthly game animals, which you can see at www.rinehart3d.com . They travel around the country with these targets giving archers everywhere a chance to shoot them. They set up 100 targets which can be shot all in one day, or broken down into 50 per day for two days. We had a great time and the Guardian really impressed us all.

The Guardian is a heck of a bow; smooth, fast, and quiet. What more could you ask of a hunting bow? This bow just begged to go hunting so out it went. On an early season hunt for mulie does, my editor (Dave Langston) managed to drop one cleanly after a short stalk. Although no real test of the bow’s abilities at only 23 yards, the power this bow delivers was evident in the way the arrow blasted clear through the deer’s body on a quartering away shot that dropped the deer within 20 feet of the hit. He’s drawn for a late season whitetail doe tag as well, so I expect this Guardian won’t get to rest for a bit yet.