Martin JauguarT/D Recurve off the shelf....

I recently acquired a Martin Jaguar T/D Recurve and to date the jury is still out. I am fairly new to traditional s but I already had the Hatfield and this was in deed a step back. All in all though the bow came complete, the finish was not great but not horrible enough to warrant a send back. Its kinda loud & the top of the grip will do a number on the top of your thumb knuckle. The biggest problem was that plastic elevated rest....trad bows, me, and elevated rests were not meant to be. So I ditched the rest after shooting the barn the 900th time and went back to what I knew. Sort of.....I currently have the shelf done up with an impromptu hair rest with a piece under it to radius it..... Now I just need to move the shaft over some to get the whole setup closer to my hand for instinctive shots. My groups at 20 are clicking shafts together but they are about 8 inches right.....my guess/gut is it is the launch happening with the arrow to the right of center shot on that huge shelf. I'm looking for additional Suggestions to correct this before I start trying stuff this weekend...so far I have numerous suggestions of other elevated rests which I am really not interested in ( I want to shoot off the shelf)and then the addition of pads or even wooded pieces to close up the shelf some (capped by leather striker pads). Anybody here on this forum shooting a metal riser bow off the shelf? If so what did you do? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

I have the springy rest on mine. It's a centershot rest so I decided to take advantage of this feature and go with a better rest. I also made up a better string for it. It shoots with my Hoyt gamemaster or any of my recurves. If you go with a rest it's more forgiving on arrow spine than trying to shoot it off the shelf. I sanded the limbs on the edges and the string notch area. The way it comes the notches are hard on strings.

But, all in all it's a great shooting bow.

I noticed a rest on another facory take-down bow that also had a flat shelf and it looked as if they used a piece of pop-sickle stick under a standard shelf rug.

I received a Jaguar TD bow earlier this week, and, so far, have had nothing but problems. To begin with, the bow and the instructions are obviously from different planets. To start with, the "manual (if one can call a single sheet of folded paper with generic instructions a 'manual') states that the limbs are marked T or B to designate positions, and it cautions against mixing the two. Then, it states that the AMO length is marked on the lower limb. Neither of these is true of the bow I received; there are only two markings on the bow--3372 50A (or H) and 3372 50B (or 8). These markings are on the limbs. I have, literally, been over the bow with a magnifying glass, but there are NO other markings. Because of the slashes through the 7's, I suspect the limbs were not made in the US, but Europe.

In an attempt to determine whether I had received mismatched limbs, I called Martin's customer support number (which is NOT toll free, by the way), and received a recording stating that they would "get back to me" in the order of calls received. I tried twice more; same thing! Who can sit by the phone all day waiting for a call which might or might not come?

Consequently, I decided to email them. Anyone else noticed that they don't list their tech support email address anywhere on their site? Apparently, one MUST use their onsite "Contact Us" feature to email them. That, effectively, prohibits the emailer from having a record of what was sent. As for the promised "acknowledgment" of email sent to Martin within 24 hours, FORGET IT! I emailed them several days ago and haven't heard SQUAT!

The bow looks good--aside from the possibility of mismatched limbs--but the company has left a VERY sour taste in my mouth. Either they are tremendously understaffed in Tech Support, or their products have so many problems and complaints that they just can't keep up (or maybe they just don't give a rat's as#?).

I'll give it another day or so before deciding whether to send the bow back or not. I'd hate that as I abhor compound bows and automatic transmissions; I am strictly old school recurve. By way of contrast, I emailed Bear Archery later in the evening (after emailing Martin) to inquire about parts for an older Bear bow. Bear got back to me within two hours, but I'm still waiting to hear from Martin days later...

Jim

passinthrough, i just recieved my jaguar about two weeks ago after a six week wait(not very happy),when i called the company internet company i ordered it from ,no help, so i called martin talked to a real nice lady on the phone and got my recurve the next week:D. i get it and i get this plastic piece of junk rest( not happy again). the finish on mine was fine,limbs looked good,had all the hardware but a junkie rest. i've shot off the shelf all my life so i figured i would on the jag, no luck! (not happy again ). so i put put the rest on and shoot a few times and i'm lucky if i can get groups to stay in 24 inches. then it dawns on me that i have the rest turned 90 degrees in the wrong direction,(stupid i know) but when you've never dealt with any kind of equipment like this you don't know.this is why i don't shoot a compound,to much "stuff" to go wrong,i like to keep it simple. but now i can say i couldn't be happier with this bow and i think i even soot better than with my old one,but that's not saying much,lol.

llrollins3,

Did your bow agree with the instruction manual with one limb marked "Top" and the other marked "Bottom?" What about the AMO length marking? Sounds like you did better than I did with your call to Martin--at least you were able to speak to a real person.

As a fellow off-the-shelf shooter, I'll probably put a BearHair rest on the bow (assuming that I don't send it back).

Perhaps Martin was more concerned with their bottom line and laid off the people who might have addressed these problems?

Jim

no docnprof, mine were not marked either. i just put the "a" on top and the"b" on the bottom.as far as my phone call, i've dealt with enought places to know that if you just keep pressing "0" long enough they will tranfer you to an operator. that was who i ended up talking to. and i agree with you and several other people on this forum that the manual needs to to be better,maybe more specific, to each bow. generics are not needed in an area like this,because some people may be buying their first bow and not be able to workout little problems. and with some of the problems i'm reading about with this bow and with martin they may end up losing a whole new set of customers. " you never get a second chance to make a first impression"

Appreciate your confirmation of what I've run into, llrollins3! I was starting to think I'd inadvertently annoyed a witch doctor or gypsy. Sounds like the problem is more systemic than individual.

Like you, I've mounted the "A" limb as the upper and the "B" limb as the lower. I've resisted the temptation to simply step through the bow and string it as I always have with recurves, instead opting to order--and wait on--a proper bow stringer.

Sad that a major player in the archery field would engender such animosity and uncertainty when a simple rewrite to make their "manual" more model specific could have avoided all that.

All that aside, this bow looks good and feels good in my hand. Guess I'll have to see where it goes from here.

Thanks, again.

Jim

You don't need to buy a stringer - take a 7 feet strong enough rope and 2 pieces of rubber or even better leather and your stringer is ready :) I believe you've done well with the A and B limbs. I guess you can put a whisker bisquit on the Jaguar and it'll work fine. Good luck!

What is the reason why people dont use a releases/d-loops with a recurve bow? Shooting tonight Im brand new I was thinking this would help gain consistancy for me but havent seen anyone do this yet. Is it frowned upon due to not being traditional?