 I'm Ron Duker and today we're going to talk about different types of crossbows. We're going to get into traditional recurve bows, we're going to get into forward draw crossbows, and we're going to get into reverse draw crossbows. Let's get into it. We're going to start where crossbows traditionally started. Over 3,000 years ago, traditional recurve crossbow is where it all began. The Han dynasty in about 200 BCE, they had five to one archers or a crossbowman versus archers. What you're looking at here is your traditional recurve bow. The reason why they call that is, is if you see the limb, it bends down and then back out. Benefits of this, it's lighter weight, it's also a lot less moving parts. When we get into the other crossbows, you're going to see wheels, cams, you're going to see all kinds of different things going on here. This is very simple, very easy to operate. Challenges with it, very heavy draw weight. The other way mechanically to think about this crossbow is, it starts out light draw and gets heavier and heavier and heavier as you pull it back. And what that means is, is once it hits the trigger box, your trigger box is actually holding the entire way to the draw of the crossbow, which makes your traditional recurves much stiffer of a trigger box than any other crossbow. Reviewing the draw mechanism, again, simple as the way it goes with a recurve crossbow. You've got a simple string with a couple of toggles. In order to cock the crossbow, there's a groove somewhere on the back of the crossbow on the top of the stock. You put one clip on the left side of the string, the second clip on the right side of the string. Then all you have to do is pull it back up and your crossbow is cocked. Price wise, these bows range anywhere from starter bows. You'll see that are $29.99, $30, all the way up to a couple thousand dollars, all depending on how powerful you want it to be and all the features and benefits that you want. Next up, we have our forward draw crossbow. What makes the forward draw crossbow unique is, here you can see those wheels, which are called cams, that the traditional bow did not have. Inside of that, you also have cables that are constantly keeping this bow under pressure. The reason why they call it forward draw is because all of the limbs are mounted on the front forward part of the crossbow. The cams started coming out right around the 1970s when they started becoming popular with actually vertical archery bows. The key to that is that it allows you to have a valley or a let-off. With the traditional bow where it starts out light and that draw weight gets heavier and heavier, what happens with a compound bow with cams, either forward draw or reverse draw, it will start out and get lighter as you get to the trigger box. So what that means is, once you're here, your trigger is actually not holding as much weight or force and so when you pull your trigger, it tends to have a little bit better feel in the trigger. Not all triggers are created equally, however, if you were to put the exact same front end of a traditional bow onto this, it would feel a lot stiffer compared to what this is going to produce. The benefits of this are speed as well as you'll see width-wise, axle to axle from here to there is much shorter than what you're going to get out of a traditional recurve. So you can get a smaller profile, faster speed, or as fast as a traditional recurve, as well as a lower price point. This is going to be your affordable bow, $299 gets you out in the woods hunting deer, elk, anything that you want to hunt. You can go all the way up for features benefits and get things that are a lot better and a lot higher tech for anywhere up to $4,000. Some of the other challenges with having a compound bow is you cannot really maintain anything to do with the front end of this bow in the field. It also means that at home you really can't do that unless you spend money on a bow press and have the technology to be able to work on it. What that means and translates to is be prepared for a bill to be able to fix, restring your bows. They say every couple of years you should change your cables and strings, which can be as much as a bow is itself. So prepare yourself for that as you make this decision. The last one we're going to cover today is the reverse draw crossbow. The unique thing about this is it came out even more recently than the forward draw crossbow. Now inside of this crossbow, what makes it a reverse draw is that if you look at where it's mounted, if you remember the forward and the traditional, everything was mounted up here. Here the limbs are actually mounted back by the trigger box. What that does is it brings the weight of the bow to where your natural position is going to be. So what you're going to find holding this bow is that it's very well balanced and actually feels lighter than heavier bows that are forward draw because it doesn't have all the weight out here. Now what it also does is you don't have to have as much draw power to pull this back because it's time under tension, which means that this arrow is going to be touching this string longer because the string goes all the way up to the very end. So when you cock it back and it fires, you're going to get an extra one to two inches typically on pushing that arrow forward. Accuracy is also improved with this, not to say that it's better than anything else, just the fact that the accuracy when you have the weight in your hands and you have a stable platform on a bow that will help you maintain your scope so that you're not shaking around. So if you have challenges with your optic constantly shaking, I would suggest testing out a reverse draw crossbow. Now the challenge on this is mostly is mostly the price. So the price is going to be this is your higher end crossbow. So you're going to be paying mid $1,500 all the way up to $4,000 to get a bow like this. A lot of that has to do with all the technology that goes into it, all of the timing, the cams, everything that's inside of it, as well as the quality, the fact that it's mainly made by one manufacturer, and that manufacturer is USA, they're putting their time, effort and energy into into a bow like this. Now again, you're going to have the same hurdles and challenges that you have with the forward draw crossbow. It's going to be expensive when you have to have this maintenance, you can't do this in the field. You have to get a bow press, most likely a shop to do it, and you're going to have to pay money in order to get all of that done plus labor. One of the things to consider about a crossbow is its accessibility and ease to shoot. You have the ability to have cocking aids, which makes this extremely easy for any hunter really, anywhere from a built in cocker that has less than seven pounds of pressure to crank it back to one that attaches on and removes to one that is capable of just having a string by itself. And you can change these interchangeably. The other thing to consider is is that it's very easy to become good with it and proficient with it very fast. Three to five shots is what I would say is all you need to shoot any one of these crossbows and start getting yourself on the target and start getting decent sized groups. Vertical archery will take you months of practice, which is part of the love of archery when you get into vertical archery. If you don't have the time to put in for that, a crossbow could be an excellent way to go. As you can see, there many similarities as well as there's many different variations of these types of bows. What you will find is whatever works best for you is where you should go. A lot of folks, all three of these on the table, everybody hunts with them, they will all take deer, they will all take game. It depends for you as to what situation you're in, how much you want to spend, and what you want to do with each of your different bows. Thank you for watching the video. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe. We'll see you at the next video.