KINGWOULDBE wrote: In my experience more is better, until you can’t handle it, then back down until you can, in hunting we are only taking a few shots, not shooting a field tournament of 100+ arrows.
If you can shoot the heavier limbs I would, Howard Hill liked to hunt with 80-90lb bows because of the better cast and deeper penetration, he and Bear both said; the most important thing is penetration, with out enough penetration you will not reach the vitals.
No one, & I mean NO ONE, has ever lost an animal from to much penetration, on the other hand, countless animals have been lost from lack of penetration, even if it was hit bad, a pass through is better than not getting deep enough.
Big bears are north Americas most dangerous game, the adrenalin factor alone could cause one to make a less than perfect shot to begin with, sticking a big bear with a sharp stick could get one eaten, I would also not want my arrow to stay in him, so he could see it and cause more flight in his reaction, usually if it just jumps through them, they are more puzzled to what just happened, than if they see an arrow wagging in there side.
I am assuming you would be shooting 20 yards or under, I would shoot the heaviest bow I could work up to, shooting only 5 or six arrow with it a day, yet making perfect shots as I can, I would also shoot around 1000 grains with UEFOC ( ultras extreme forward of center ) I do not need a flat shooting arrow, I want a deep penetrating arrow.
Just my 2 cents and worth what you paid for it.
PS, I shot this boar at around 30 yards with a 60# centaur longbow, a 675 grain arrow with a tuffhead and over 30% uefoc, I only got about 11′ into him, hitting him in the heart, I did a test shot @ around 6 yards after he was dead and only got about 4 more inches of penetration.
I would not shoot this set up at a Brown bear.
King has some very sound advice there. This is a brown Bear I shot in the late ’70’s. The BIG Browns are BIG and TOUGH. The longbows hanging to the Bear’s right are 70″ long!
Ed