One of my goals for 2014 was to shoot some other bows. Not just one bow, but a few. Over the past few months I have shot a multitude of bows from Strother Archery. I met up with local Strother rep Dave Diekmann over at Field Time Sport and Guns to shoot them again, and also shoot the newly released Vital, which is brand new for 2014.
Overall I think the bows are pretty awesome. I am going to share some brief thoughts on each bow and keep in mind that these are my opinions based on shooting them. I’ll share a review with more content on a few of the bows soon. None of the bows I shot had any vibration dampening except for the string stop.
Starting with the 2014 Vital, this bow is fast and you can feel the power when releasing an arrow. The draw is smooth and you can feel the power as it hits the valley. The thing I did not like about the draw was the last 10% seemed to hop a bit into the back wall. If you watch close in the video above, you can see that each time I draw the Vital, it skips just before the back wall. While it is slight, it bothered me. It might be the set up and can probably be adjusted to a degree. I felt no vibration in the grip either. At 32″ axle-to-axle and 4 lbs., the bow was very balanced in my hands. I really like the way this bow shoots. I would like to revisit it again and see about that draw cycle.
The Wrath felt very light in my hands and the draw cycle was very smooth. It shoots faster that you would think and would make a great target shooting bow. It has an astounding 8″ brace height and is 32″ ATA. It shoots really smooth and there was no vibration felt. It was well-balanced in my hands, too.
With speeds up to 335 fps, the Rush XT was fast. No doubt about it. The draw cycle felt smooth on the way back, but was a bit spongy past 50% and into the back wall. I prefer a hard back wall and this bow did not have that. I also felt more vibration in the grip than I did with any of the other bows. Like the other bows, this was also very quiet when shooting. I did notice the slight weight difference, too. The Rush XT may only be 4.25 lbs., but it was noticeable after shooting them over and over.
The Wrath SHO was by far my favorite bow to shoot, next being the Vital. The Wrath SHO has a smooth, but strong draw and a hard back wall. It felt like the compact bow that it is at 30 3/16″ ATA, but it offers the same speeds as the Vital. It also weighs the same as the Vital at 4 lbs. Out of all the bows I shot, this felt extremely comfortable in my hands as a bow hunter. I was shooting it with the peep being slightly off, so I had to adjust for that (see video), but I had a blast shooting it.
I did shoot the Moxie once, but we didn’t have it fully set up the way we wanted to. Plus, I didn’t shoot it as much, so I am leaving my opinions on it out of this post.
Strother Archery has some pretty rad bows. I was impressed with the lineup and thankful to Dave for again taking the time to meet up and allow me to shoot the bows over and over. While Dave may not have been shooting a bow for very long, he’s a natural and I truly enjoy when we get together and destroy targets at the range. Have any of you shot Strother bows and what are your thoughts?
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