We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More › The performance gap between compound bows and new crossbows seems to be widening exponentially. In the last few years of crossbow testing, we reviewed bows — the Ravin R500, Tenpoint Nitro 505, and TenPoint TRX 515 — that shot speeds faster than 500 fps, which was impossible to imagine just a few years ago. For reference, the fastest compound bow in the 2024 Bow Test — the Mathews Lift — generated a speed of 283 fps with a 406 grain arrow and a 29 inch draw set to 59.2 pounds of dra ..read more

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More › When it comes to any good brand rivalry, fans of one are ruthless critics of the other. How many Chevy trucks have you seen bearing window stickers depicting that young man relieving himself onto the Ford logo—and vice versa? If we were to search for an equivalent rivalry in the bowhunting world, Hoyt vs Mathews has to be it. Both companies have been building incredible compound bows for decades. But if you’re a Hoyt guy, odds are you don’t care for Mathews. And if you’re a Mathews ..read more

Celebrity bowhunting and fitness influencer couple Josh and Sarah Bowmar are coming under fire (again) after posting photos and video of Josh Bowmar posing with a 16-foot 3-inch crocodile that he killed in Tanzania and says is a new pending world-record. The controversy started on Instagram but spread to the mainstream media when The Citizen, a Tanzanian news outlet, published a critical piece about the hunt. Two details of Bowmar’s hunt seem to be of primary concern: whether it was legal and whether the crocodile is actually a world record. https://www.instagram.com/p/C1IHxPWpQrq Crocodile hu ..read more

Bryson Ziegler was hunting just five feet off the ground as dawn broke over his family’s land in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, on Dec. 17. With only smaller saplings to use for his saddle, he couldn’t climb as high as he usually would when bowhunting. But the spot along the fence line adjacent to a grassy field was Ziegler’s only option. “I had no choice except to stay low to the ground, but I had good cover from a thick honeysuckle background,” the 22-year-old tells Outdoor Life. “I’d seen [the] buck the previous evening and I figured he was using a swale in the grass field to move from his feed ..read more

It was a tight timetable for Brad Jones to bowhunt for black bears on his buddy’s land near the North Carolina coast on Saturday. Jones figured it was worth it, though, since he knew a couple big boars had been frequenting the property in Beaufort County.       “My buddy Stuart Dudley had nighttime trail camera photos of a couple big bears on his 200 acres, and he told me to go try and get one with my bow,” Jones tells Outdoor Life. “But he had some bear hunters with dogs coming in [Dec. 16]. So if I wanted to get one with my bow, I had to get there first.” Dudely had ..read more

I’d hunted from the same stand in the hardwoods at least a dozen times this season. But I hadn’t seen the buck in person since late September—before the season even started. I’d watched him through the late summer, and trail cam photos told me he was still around the farm in central Ohio where I hunt. I knew he was a special buck, and I’d grown obsessed with him as October wore on. It was just past 9 a.m. on Oct. 28, and I’d seen exactly zero deer that morning when the giant buck finally showed himself. My hopes dissolved just as quickly, though, as I watched the deer of my dreams stroll out o ..read more

It was mid-morning on Nov. 13, and South Dakota bowhunter Shauna Woodward found herself in the heat of the rut. Glassing from one of her favorite spots on the 1,000-acre cattle ranch that she and her husband own in Spink County, she saw bucks chasing does and fighting each other. As she sat and watched the action, she waited patiently for an unusual, palmated whitetail buck she’d nicknamed “Moose” to show itself.    “I was near a grove of cedar trees, with a strong 20 mph wind blowing,” Woodward tells Outdoor Life. “I was glassing the trees, looking for the palmated buck. I coul ..read more

When Indiana bowhunter Drew Rutledge started getting trail cam photos of one particular buck four years ago, he knew it had potential. By 2022 the buck was a heavy 10-pointer, and Rutledge says it had grown significantly by the time this season rolled around.        “I’ve got hundreds of photos of the deer over the last four years, and I watched him grow bigger and bigger,” the 34-year-old from Mt. Vernon, Indiana, tells Outdoor Life. “I figured last year his rack was about 165 inches. This year his rack became massive, gaining two more points and putting on ..read more

Jacob Milton with the buck of a lifetime. Devon Degenhardt Longtime bowhunter Jacob Milton tagged the biggest buck of his life off his family farm on Nov. 18. When he finally took his shot on the nearly 200-inch deer, it was the culmination of 13 days of hard hunting. He’d already had a dozen close encounters with the buck, and he remembers being strangely composed when he released his arrow that evening. If it wasn’t for his neighbor sharing some trail cam pics the month before, however, Milton says he never would have started hunting the buck in the first place. The fifth-generation Kansas ..read more

Dalton Hiltibrand with the giant buck he killed on Nov. 17. Courtesy Dalton Hiltibrand For the last few years, Dalton Hiltibrand has been watching the same giant buck on an 80-acre parcel of private land in Nemaha County in northeast Kansas. Trail camera photos going back to 2020 showed that the huge, double drop-tine buck, nicknamed “Paraglider,” would regularly move off the property and onto other nearby farms. “This year he showed up again in August,” Hilitibrand tells Outdoor Life. “But we only had a few photos of him during the day and night.” On Nov. 15, Hiltibrand decided it was about ..read more