My take; Assuming you are bowhunting and not just target shooting......You want your bow as quiet as you can get it.

A few extra feet of arrow speed doesn't mean a heck of a lot in bowhunting. If you are hung up on that....you need to re-evaluate.

Speed of sound is 1127FPS...if you have a loud bow....the animal will hear it before your arrow gets there. Its counter intuitive...but the faster arrow/louder bow actually works against you.

 

Absolutely correct. I just saw A crossbow shot at 102 yards at a monkey in S. Africa. The shooter sat up in a blind with a bench rest. they had food out at 102 yards. The shooter squeezed one off. It took about a second for the arrow to reach the monkey. The monkeys all stopped looking for the feed, they all looked back to see what made the noise at over a hundred yards away, then the arrow hit its mark. The point of my post is this only. Noise and reaction time are both quicker than an arrow.:secret:

 

Has there been a decibel test done in the last few years?

I dont remember seeing one in a long time but I havent looked as well. I venture to say it doesnt make a big enough difference either way to really worry about it.

 

I do not personely know one person who still uses string silencers. Last one I had was on a 1988 Browning Mirage...not even sure it did anything back then

opps, I do have some one my Palmer Recurve....my bad

 

I won't have a hunting bow with out string silencers.
Necessary probably not. But for a hunting bow they can't hurt either.

 

Anyone can argue this but catwhisker do work and work well idk how so called silent they say a bow is.

 

I do not. My bows now are so much quieter than my bows from 10 years ago even and I've never had a deer duck an arrow. You're going to find this all comes down to personal preference. I don't personally believe that there is a string silencer on the market that reduces the sound enough to make a noticeable difference in the woods.

 

i went away from cat whiskers and monkey tails because i got sick of them breaking and hitting me in the face. i cant count how many times i got popped my those darn things.

i went to the pine ridge XL nitro buttons on my custom strings and simply adjust them to where the bow is the most quiet. i shoot a midweight arrow on a modestly fast bow (330ibo at 60#). i pick my bows based on their general quietness to start with, so they arent generating a lot of excess noise.

 

double post

 

I put cat whiskers on when hunting season gets close. I’ve gotten away from target bows and use the same bow for everything now. Sometimes I’ll leave them on during target season too. They work. Cat whiskers don’t have a dramatic effect on speed but the sound difference is noticeable. I don’t have a good reason NOT to use them.


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Cat whiskers work great.

 

I’ve got cat whiskers on all my bows. Some need them and some don’t. The Evolve 35 definitely NEEDS them. The two bows that I killed the most deer with back in the day, sounded like a .22 going off. The deer died anyway. The need for a quiet bow may be overblown.

 

I like my catwhiskers. Lots safer than string leeches and monkey tails lol. I run inside the string tho and don’t have a problem with em moving around or coming off.

 

 

Cat whiskers WILL make the quietest bow quieter

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There’s a few YouTube videos on how to tie cat whiskers in ball shape if your interested do a search.

 

If whiskers arn't tied onto an area with serving I'll usually run the piece of serving I tie them on with through the string so they stay put.

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Most newer bows come with speed nocks of some sort. Those do a lot to quiet down a string also.

 

I still use the string bats,small but effective.but if u ever have stood down range and to the side of another shooter(behind a safe spot)u will hear the arrow cutting the air very distinctly and I think that sound is what the deer hear before they duck or die!

 

It depends. All bows are not the same. Many are much louder than others. Then you have the arrow weight, draw length & draw weight etc to factor in. The string stops aren't all the same either. Some rubber stops work better.

Also you don't have to have a real quiet bow to hunt it's just can't be really loud. Also where you hunt matters. If you hunt nest to a freeway a cross bow is quiet......lol. If you hunt near a stream or in the wind that helps. If you hunt in the SE where it's clam as heck at dawn & dusk that is a factor as well.

Then you have to look at shot distance. The out west crowd seem to always shoot farther so noise isn't as big of an issue as it dies down over distance.

Here's what I do know. I love a quiet bow and I have gotten them more quiet taking the stop off and adding cat whiskers. Think about 63 pounds of string slapping that rubber...…..it' can only get so quiet. But if you add whiskers and take it away then you get rid of that pop.

IMHO the beauty of the stop is you get to keep that 8 FPS and they help with a lower brace height bows which are both trendy right now.....that's why 90% of the people use them whether they know it or not.

If you want a super quiet bow, don't have issues with the string hitting your arm or jacket and don't care if you hunt at 268 or 260 then the cat whiskers are the way to go....but my no means mandatory.

 

i was hoping you would have some input! hadnt seen you around in a few days

 

Go ahead and remove yours and take a coupe of shots. That should answer your question

 

I haven't ran them in 3+ years. Older bows they were practically necessary, but newer ones that are already very quiet bare bow they are more of an aesthetic preference than anything.

 

Whether I need them or not, I put cat whiskers on mine, mostly out of habit. Anybody have an idea how many fps they slow a bow down on average?

 

I haven't had string silencers on any bow string since 2007. And I haven't had any issues with animals jumping the string at ALL.

 

5MB: If you are hunting elk I can agree with ^^^^^^^^^^^ 100%. The reaction to sound between elk and whitetail is night and day.:wink:

 

+1 and like I said earlier the environment and the shot distance is a HUGE factor. I have bow hunted a lot of different animals (not pronghorns yet) but if you have a high pressured (5 mo deer season) whitetail in the normally dead clam winds in the SE at 10 yards you bet your bottom dollar you will be better served with a super quiet bow.


That's nothing like an elk in a slight wind at 30 yards.

 

Deer hear 8 times better than us. So your quite bow is very loud to a deer. Unless the string silencers make the bow completely silent the deer are still going to hear a loud sound.

So deer on high alert jump the string and relaxed deer get whacked.