I love my reckonings! Both my Gen 1 and Gen 2 but I have fallen in love with my Gen 2 officially! I’ve been shooting it consistently for about a year or so and I definitely prefer it over my Gen 1, now the changes are not drastic no, but for one if you like a hard back wall once you come to full draw the Gen 2 will definitely give you that. One of my favorite parts about the reckonings and bowtech in specific is the ability to work on your bow without a press, because for the most part you don’t need one if it’s not something you want to invest in, but from personal experience the way the bows feel are almost identical except for that back wall.

 

I just sold my Gen 2 36. Bowtech has just done so many distasteful things in the past 2 years I just can't support them anymore.

 

The only thing I'm really aware of is letting Tim and... I always forget the other guys name, he doesn't do a lot of social media, which may be part of why Bowtech let him go.

What are the other distasteful things?

I can understand that sentiment, Mathews supports poachers, so I wouldnt buy their product, though there are other reasons.

 

So Bowtech decided to cut Tim and Kyle. Which is fine if that's your business choice, but to cut them in the middle of the season before their contracts were up was dirty. Tim and Kyle then had to try and find a sponsor after all the other brands already built their prostaff teams and filled thier prostaff budgets for the year. Luckily Mathews has unlimited money and signed both of them. But Bowtech did the two of them dirty. Which I as a target archer do not appreciate.

Another thing Bowtech changed was the target contingency. They are basically paying shooters 1/10 of what other brands are paying for shooters who place top 3 in their event. For instance, you shoot for days and beat hundreds of archers from all over the world for the Vegas shoot. Bowtech will pay you $2000. $2k doesn't even cover travel costs. That's such a spit in the face to target shooters. For instance the same exact win from Mathews is $50,000. Bowtech payments are an absolute insult and a joke. I want to shoot a brand that supports and grows all types of archery. Bowtech just spits on the target world.

Bowtech also decided to do a carbon bow that weighs 4.5lbs without dampeners. It's pushing 5 pounds bare bow with orbit dampeners. Like, what are you doing. Then charges $1800 for it cause it's made of carbon and they can justify that price because other brands like Hoyt have done it. I'm a dealer and while I will not disclose cost but it's almost exactly the same as the aluminum bows. Refuse to follow? Not so much. More like follows behind but worse.

Then Bowtech holds their first Rally last month. It costs non Bowtech shooters more money to attend the event than Bowtech shooters. So your discriminating archers now off of what bow they shoot? Archery events should be there to promote the sport for everyone. Not charge non Bowtech shooters more with less VIP treatment cause you shoot a Darton or Elite. What are you doing? Imagine if you went to an ASA event and it's $50 to shoot, but NO WAIT you shoot a Hoyt so it's $90 for you to enter and you don't get to do any of the team events. GTFOH with that.

Then the Bowtech Honor comes out. It's a full package and it's also a Folds of Honor donation program. That's fine. How much goes to Folds of Honor? Bowtech will not tell you. Why? That's shady as hell. Why would you release a $4K package during bidenomics?! Bowtech only made 250 Honors. They just might sell all 250 but it was close. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a $1200 bow only and sell 5,000 of them and bring in more money to Folds of Honor?

Bowtech once they were bought out 2 years ago also made the choice not to support parts past 4 years old. So if you have a 2020 Bowtech bow and your flx guard bearings go out or your limbs have an issue good luck. No dice. They will not produce the part for you. No support. So what's the point of a lifetime warranty if it's only good for 4 years if something goes wrong? Mathews will make and stock any part. Any limb or cam or bearing going back 30 years. Have a 25 year old Ultra Lite and the limbs cracked? No problem Mathews will get you limbs.

I just don't understand Bowtech anymore. I love the technology but the brand is a joke now since new ownership. I sold my R36 Gen 2 and until something flips the company around I will probably never but another Bowtech product again.

 

Eh, most of that stuff I don't view as distasteful.

The Tim and Kyle thing, yeah bad move, but it's buisness, Bowtech went a different route.

I don't care about the target payouts, I personally wouldn't see a check from any manufacturer, and the vast majority of people who own bows wont either. Target archery, in it's current form, is dying. Heck we have trouble getting more than 4 people to show up to shoot league.

Carbon bow was heavy, and pricey, the only reason why I'd buy a Carbon bow would be for late season hunting, but I don't like the way things are attached to the Carbon. Lightweight will come with the Magnesium allow risers. Or if you want light and cheap Bowtechhas the Carbon Zion (they should add all the new tech to that bow)

The Bowtech Rally was a Bowtech event, to celebrate Bowtech. Put on by Bowtech for Bowtech owners. I don't get your problem with it.

The honor, I don't care about, companies do this crap all the time and you rarely find out what or how much they're donating. The bow is neat, they'll probably sell out, the package deal isn't crazy out of line with what each thing costs. If you dont have 4k don't buy it. I haven't bought a new bow in years, I want to buy a bow next year, every paycheck I stash $200 so that when the new bows come out I can afford it. Even in the Biden economy. I suspect I'll need roughly 2.5-3k and I won't get a case, bowstand, and other stuff the honor came with I dont care about. If they hadn't sold the honors it could be a bad buisness decision, but supposedly they sold a bunch of them. They're collector items.

The 4 year support thing does suck, didn't know about that. Don't know what caused them to change that policy, I wonder if it had anything to do with Mathews suing them, and winning, over their cam designs pre Deadlock, that was 4 years ago on hunting bows, so that could very well be the case, who knows what was involved in the sale, when BEA bought Darton they didn't get all the patents Darton had.

Thanks for your response I don't mean to be combative against your point of view just wanted to provide you with a different perspective.

I like Bowtech because I can work on them, they make it easy, and I live in the middle of nowhere and can't afford to take time off and drive 1.5 hours to my nearest proshop, spend whatever amount of time there to fix work on it (provided the work can be done that day) and drive 1.5 hours back home.

So I'll keep buying Bowtech because they're the only company that allows me to do this.

 

I should add an experience similar to yours though.

Gas bowstrings, I won't ever buy a set again, not because their product was bad person (although a cable did snap on my dealer when he was working on my bow, didn't do any damage just delayed me getting my bow back for about a week which ended up not mattering since I promptly derailed it somehow and had to send it back to get fixed)

But because last year they ran a promotion around Christmas, buy a new set of strings get entered to win a bow.

Cool, I was going to order a new set anyways for a backup, except in order to get entered into the drawing you had to order from a proshop, the nearest Gas Bowstring dealer to me was 4 hours away. So a set of strings would have cost me (with taking time off, and gas) around $800

So I commented on one of their posts and said hey this really isn't fair, that I as a GAS customer am excluded from this because you don't have a dealer within 4 hours of me and I can't afford to pay $800 for a set of strings and cables. I never got a reply back.

I know as one person who buys a set or maybe two strings a year that I don't matter to them, but at the same time I don't think you as a buisness should be telling me I don't matter to you.

So I won't buy Gas strings again, ever.

Doesn't bother me, doesn't effect them.