BowCast Blog

As many of you know, I have been shooting a Hoyt for many years now (and I hopefully will continue to shoot a Hoyt for many years to come). Anthony and I and the rest of the BowCast team made a decision this year to shoot and hunt with some of the latest bows out there.

With that being said, I made the decision to commit this year to the latest bow on the market. About 3 weeks ago I purchased my new G5 Quest Bow. I am going to shoot a Quest 33 with 80lb limbs for big game this year. Since I am still fine tuning the setup, I will get back to my Hoyt this weekend while I am out chasing the gobblers around.

Many of you may not even be aware that G5 has now officially entered the market as a bow manufacturer. And some of you, may be aware of some of the "ugliness" that has surrounded G5's entry into the bow manufacturing arena.

The ugliness you ask? Well, it is not by accident that the G5 Quest bow looks similar (some would say identical) to the Ross Cardiac. In addition, those of you who keep up on this type of stuff know Ross experienced some severe financial troubles while engaging G5 to make some engineering enhancements to the Ross Cardiac, and eventually, close to going out of business were recently bought by BowTech.

As far as what BowTech plans to do with their acquisition of Ross Archery, I have no idea other than the speculation I hear and read about out there. As far as the new Quest bow, let me detail some of the engineering enhancements that were made above and beyond the original Ross Cardiac design:

1) The Quest cam looks dimensionally similar to the Cardiac design, however, G5 engineers have slightly changed the geometry and have manipulated the cam to increase the efficiency and provide level nock travel.

2) The string stop design has been improved. On the Ross Cardiac there was a flat rubber bumper that the string would slap against. G5 modified the design to have some "capture". The string stop is "cupped". This is mostly important for the guys shooting lightweight/highspeed setups. In this situation, the string would have the tendency to slip off to one side of the bumper due to side-to-side oscillations of the string.

3) G5 has improved the cable slide design. They partnered with Alpine Archery on this. Alpine Archery makes a great cable slide and G5 made the decision to not overlook or re-invent the wheel...so the AA slide is what you are getting on the new quest bow.

My resources tell me that G5 will completely redesign the quest bow for 2009.

So, to say the least, I am pumped. I am still dialing in my Sure-Loc Max ST sight on that bow. I am overall impressed with my decision to try out the G5 Expert II rest on this bow. From a non-engineer perspective I look at that Expert II rest and marvel at how simple the design is. I have also noted how considerably more quite it is when I draw an arrow back. I thought my NAP quicktune was relatively quite on my Hoyt, but the draw noise on this Expert II is non-existant. In addition, the Quest riser feels great in my hand (something I am extremely picky about), and the draw cycle is smooth and packed with energy. I can't wait to run this baby through a chronograph.

So, I wanted to give you all an introduction to the decisions I have made on equipment this year. I plan on blogging quite a bit as I fine tune that bow to get ready for 3D tournaments (right around the corner) as well as the big game seasons that I am already getting pumped about.

As a note, there may be some very strong opinions about the "ugliness" that has been portrayed by the failed Ross/G5 relationship to improve on an already great bow (the Ross Cardiac). I encourage you all not to try and dig too far into these outstanding companies' business. Ross is going to be just fine now that Bowtech has acquired them. G5 did nothing other than improve a great bow using the great engineering talent they have in house.

I suggest we put the ugliness aside, and all focus in on how well this new bow from G5 performs. I will be the judge, and I look forward to all your quesitons and comments as I provide you with my experience with the newest bow on the market.

In addition, stay tuned to some updates from the other BowCast team members (Anthony, South, Dan, Jason) on some new choices in bows that they have made this year. I think you are going to find a wide variety of manufacturers and reveiw in the upcoming months on BowCast.

Heading back out to chase the thunder chickens. More on that soon.

Shoot Straight.

Aneal