Teach me about stabilizers

[Rag Horn]

I don’t currently have a stabilizer. I have waffled back and forth about the need for one. On a scale of one to ten how important are they. One being not at all needed. What separates a cheap stabilizer and expensive one? What’s on your bow?

[oz31p]

On a hunting bow it’s more of a dampener. I’d say around a 7. 

 

As for the diferance between high end and low is very little.

 

my advice is to get and 8” bee stinger and slap it on. 

[elecshoc]

I would say 8 or 9 with me and my bow.  It's helps not only with damping the sound, it helps me with minimizing the torque on my shot.  I went from a little 5 inch rubber stab to a 10 inch with a little weight and it's been working out well.  

[PseAZ]

I just picked up the New Bee stinger micro Hex stabilizers and I love em. I made my own kit but I'm running a 10" and a 8" out back. Using stabilizers help you aim and balance out your bow. once the arrow is fired it will help stabilize the bow from all the force of the bow releasing. Also limit of force applied to the arrow in a negative sense. I shoot with a back bar on my hunting and 3d bows to help me aim better and with my hunting bow to help offset some of the weight from my quiver and such. you can manipulate the weights on the stabilizer to assist you with how you aim.

[mattys281]

Most of the stabilizers you see on hunting how’s are absolutely useless.  The reason why is they are either too short and/or not heavy enough.  There’s a reason why target archers have ridiculously long stabilizers on their bow: it’s called leverage.  A few ounces on the end of a 24” stabilizer can work wonders for locking you in on target.  The same amount of weight on an 8” stabilizer gives only 1/3 the resistance to torque or pin float, so you would need to triple the weight to get the same benefit on the 8” stabilizer.

if you like beestingers, you can get additional weights for them and add it to the front end.  If you over do it though, the bow will tend to dip to the front at the release which messes up your follow through.  In this case you would need side bars towards the rear to counter it, which also helps in aiming but makes you bow pretty heavy.

I’ve personally noticed little difference in my shooting with and without one at close ranges, 30 yards and less.  I notice a difference at 40 and the difference for me is tangible at 60+.  I’m using a heavy setup though, for my treestand bow I have an 8” stinger with 2x sims weights and 2 of the beestinger disks for a total of 7ounces on the end at a total length of about 10”.  On my long range bow I have 6 ounces of weight mounted on a 10” stinger for a total length of about 12”. 

Shooting both bows with the beestingers as sold I noticed no significant difference compared to shooting without a stabilizer, I had to add about 3 ounces of weight to really see it.  More weight would probably help, but I’m unwilling to add side bars or back weight to a hunting bow and the way I have it setup now, my bow does not tip in any direction, it just drops at the release.

My suggestion would be get a beestinger or cabelas carbon fiber one that has the 1/4-20 threaded weight disks and experiment with it til you find what works best for you.  The beestinger ones only come with 3x 1 ounce disks, but the cabelas one comes with 6 of them so you have more weights you can fiddle around with.  The cabelas does not have the vibration dampening rubber boot on the end like the beestinger does though.  You can buy a beestinger and then get some extra weight disks on amazon pretty cheap 

[Rag Horn]

Thank you all for your information! I appreciate you guys taking the time to respond. 

[recurveman]

Honestly the weight for hunting purposes is more important than an actual stabilizer.   Same applies to competition rifles.   For distances under 50 yards the difference is very minimal.   For distances past 50 yards you really will need a longer stabilizer than most hunting stabilizers to have a true affect on accuracy.   So if I was going to try and shoot an antelope at 60+ yards I might consider shooting a stabilizer.    If I was doing most other hunting.........I don't know that it really helps that much.    Given most shots under 50 yards. 

Now shooting 300 arrows a week.......that will make a huge difference.   

[el diablo]

13 hours ago, mattys281 said:

Most of the stabilizers you see on hunting how’s are absolutely useless.  The reason why is they are either too short and/or not heavy enough.  There’s a reason why target archers have ridiculously long stabilizers on their bow: it’s called leverage.  A few ounces on the end of a 24” stabilizer can work wonders for locking you in on target.  The same amount of weight on an 8” stabilizer gives only 1/3 the resistance to torque or pin float, so you would need to triple the weight to get the same benefit on the 8” stabilizer.

if you like beestingers, you can get additional weights for them and add it to the front end.  If you over do it though, the bow will tend to dip to the front at the release which messes up your follow through.  In this case you would need side bars towards the rear to counter it, which also helps in aiming but makes you bow pretty heavy.

I’ve personally noticed little difference in my shooting with and without one at close ranges, 30 yards and less.  I notice a difference at 40 and the difference for me is tangible at 60+.  I’m using a heavy setup though, for my treestand bow I have an 8” stinger with 2x sims weights and 2 of the beestinger disks for a total of 7ounces on the end at a total length of about 10”.  On my long range bow I have 6 ounces of weight mounted on a 10” stinger for a total length of about 12”. 

Shooting both bows with the beestingers as sold I noticed no significant difference compared to shooting without a stabilizer, I had to add about 3 ounces of weight to really see it.  More weight would probably help, but I’m unwilling to add side bars or back weight to a hunting bow and the way I have it setup now, my bow does not tip in any direction, it just drops at the release.

My suggestion would be get a beestinger or cabelas carbon fiber one that has the 1/4-20 threaded weight disks and experiment with it til you find what works best for you.  The beestinger ones only come with 3x 1 ounce disks, but the cabelas one comes with 6 of them so you have more weights you can fiddle around with.  The cabelas does not have the vibration dampening rubber boot on the end like the beestinger does though.  You can buy a beestinger and then get some extra weight disks on amazon pretty cheap 

I always knew my short one was useless. 

Seriously though, good info.  I’ve always just used one more for the dampening purpose. Never really put much thought into it. I’ll have to screw around with my B stinger a little more.  Who knows, maybe it’ll get longer. 

[azbullelkman]

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