LAST UPDATED: May 8th, 2015
I went to my local archery shop (Tim-Buck-Outdoors, tbtoutdoors.com) tonight and he had just gotten in the new Diamond Iceman bow today. I asked if I could shoot it along with the new Bowtech Admiral and the Captain. He said it was no problem and they already had rests on them. Nothing else but a rest, but that's all I needed to shoot them!
First off, let me say the Iceman is one sharp looking little package. He had it setup at 65# with a 29” draw. A little short for me but I had to shoot it anyways. He gave me a few arrows and off to the range I went.
The draw on this bow is silky smooth with no hard spots the entire length of the draw. I drew it several times before attempting a shot. What I found was just a very gradual buildup of resistance and a slight fall into the valley. The Iceman is rock solid at full draw with no wanting to creep. I touched of the release and a slight thump was barely heard and the arrow smacked home in the backstop. This bow is very, very quiet. This will be a great hunting bow for sure considering the effortless draw and quiet shot. Now to be honest, I did feel a little vibration with the shot. Nothing major, just a slight tingling in my bow hand. Of course a few accessories would take care of that for sure, remember this bow only had a rest on it. I’ll bet if I would have put a stabilizer on it I wouldn’t have felt anything. With this bow being the only single cam center pivot bow out there, I can see it being a big seller for Diamond. It will cater to whole new crowd that have to have a single cam bow.
While there I also shot the Admiral and the Captain from BowTech. I am not a big fan of the super short bows. Being 6’ 3” tall I like a little length to my bows. But the little 31” Admiral stole the show shooting against the longer Captain. However, the Admiral was set at 60# and the Captain was at 67# so there was a difference there. The Admiral was smoother on the draw and quieter at the shot, whitle the Captain seemed to have a big hump in the draw right at the end. But after talking to Jeff after shooting the bows, he said a lot of that can be adjusted out by playing with the draw stop setting and the let off. These new bows can be customized to each individual shooter in a variety of ways. You can get a lot of different feels from the same bow, depending on how you like your draw or let off to feel.
Both of these bows were super quiet, just a slight thump and a loud whack of the arrow hitting the backstop. The new string suppressor system is a big improvement over last year’s model and with the carbon fiber rod that is a lot lighter too. I can’t wait to get one of these bows and set her up with a sight and all of the goodies and see just what they will do on the targets!
Once we have a chance to shoot them a little more at the ATA show next month, we will get some additional information posted on these great new bows from Diamond and Bowtech, along with the rest of the 2009 bows as well.
