Martin Firecat poundage

[Buckem]

Folks curious about draw weight and hunting. This 2009 firecat with the Cat 2's is way better than my old (12 year old) compound, so I was curious if I could safely reduce the draw weight (currently at 60# on a scale) to about 50# and still be confident on whitetail kills (assuming decent shot placement) using Eastman 400gr carbon arrows with Rage 2 100gr broadheads, out to about 30 yards. I would like to draw from seated position and also to save my aging joints

Sorry if it is a redundant quesiton but my search returned too many hits to troll through

Great forum teaching me a lot

[Hutch~n~Son Archery]

Welcome to the forum! To answer your question yes. Many guys shoot bows with lower poundage. The average poundage that I have seen is 53lbs to 63lbs. I am currently shooting 63lbs but wouldn't hesitate to turn it down to 50lbs and shoot a deer.




Hutch

[elkslayer4x5]

A word of caution here, shooting an expandable broadhead at lower draw weights can sometimes cause the head to not operate as nornal, I'd recomend stitching to a fixed two blade, several flavors to choose from, I prefer a Muzzy 3 blade but that me. Some folks have a little trouble gettting Muzzys to fly for them, but I hunt with an X system ( shoot thru ) and its very easy to tune.

[bfisher]

There is certainly nothing wrong with shooting something about 50# if that's what you can handle well and shoot accurately. You did mention good criteria though---"assuming good shot placement". I do agree with Elkslayer though. Lower poundage and mechanical heads are not a good combination.

I'm a bit anal about which broadheads I shoot and tune for and if you can decently tune your bow/arrow combination there is no earthly reason to shoot a mechanical head. Choose a good, sharp fixed or replaceable blade head, tune well and shoot with confidence. Some guys say two blade, but I have never had a problem with 3 blade heads and much prefer them in some of the narrower cut configurations---1 1/8" or so. With an arrow weighing around 350-400 grains you should have very few problems, IMO.

[Jake-the-snake]

Of course you could easily take deer sized game with that setup out to 30 yard...ditch the expandables...as Barry said "no earthly reason" to shoot a mechanical head. not even with high poundage bows...I shoot 64 lbs. out of my 2010 Warhog pushing an 85 grain buzzcut...passthroughs everytime, no deer made it farther than 40 yards this year...I had a passthrough on a smaller deer at 40 yards, two holes will always be better than 1