STABILIZERS for Bow Hunting - Testing the Difference 

Extraordinarily well done!! You covered more here regarding stabilizers than I've ever seen addressed within an individual video. This is information that Bowhunters can actually USE. 🤛🎯

By far the best combinations of archery and solid scientific method I have ever seen. I wish I could like this video more than once.

And this is why Garrett is the GOAT.

This is by far the best analysis of front/sidebar uses and issues that I have ever come across. You have put a lot of useful data into your work, kudos to you!

Really great work. No agenda, no bias, just plain good information. Very helpful.

Amazing analysis with clearly defined results. Combining actual data and practicality. All archers need to see this, and if you aren't working for an archery related company already, someone needs to hire you!

I think mathews tends to be pretty top heavy so it makes since that having just a side bar would help, great video and well done as always!

This is the most comprehensive and well though out video I think I have ever seen. Great use of Six Sigma. Well done! You've just made me a dedicated follower of your channel.

Love the way you attacked this from beginning to end. Incredibly thorough. Thank you for putting in the time and effort, it’s immense. Keep it up, and good luck this year !

I’m new to archery and I found this video extremely helpful in understanding stabilizers. I appreciate how scientific your tests were 👍🏼

You do an outstanding job on your comparative analysis.

Outstanding test, thank you for putting this subject into perspective with real world testing.

Your whole demeanor is so low key that you're - in my mind - actually selling your whole process and results rather short. Not that I'd want you to change anything in that regard. It's just that with all the channels that are much more hyper, a calm dude like you, that's really putting in the work and getting valid, practical results, is at risk of being somewhat drowned out. Glad YT still recommended your video so I could subscribe.

This video is insanely informative and helpful. Great job bro! This took a lot of effort. I’m definitely going to be implementing some of the things I watched here.

I’ve been on the fence about side bars for years and after watching this, I’m ordering one right now!! Thanks for the in depth study you put into this!

Subbed! I love variations and data. The amount of time you put in to gather this data is greatly appreciated! 🤙🏽

I really like the idea of having just a side bar. Great info Garrett!

Dude,,, you have no idea how awesome this video and info is. It was the first vid I watched and there’s no need to look any further. Very impressed. Thank you!

I'm watching this again a year out, and still benefiting from the insights of this research. Thank you for sharing it.

I don't think anybody could have been more thorough on this testing . Great job

This is perfect. I use the same sight and was wondering if I would benefit from a side bar. Thanks for taking the time to make this great video.

Excellent production value, and informative. Will try to extrapolate some of your findings into my own setup.

Very thorough explanation and demonstration of the set ups.

Love that archery course!!!

Great video!! Thanks, got my thinking about a rear bar. Great job on taking what could have been a really dry topic and making it interesting. That's definitely not easy!!! The video flew by!

Excellent data. I will try to run this test my self to tune my rig. There are many variables depending on form, platform and set up. But well done. A real eye opener. Thanks for the Vid.

Thank you so much for all the work it took to provide this information to us. The practical application part in the woods was very good. Great job, very informative!

I just started shooting my Hoyt with 12” front and 10” side bar. It has definitely allowed me to settle on target quicker and keep the bubble level. Great video, very informative data

Thanks for nerding out on this! Just stumbled across the video and loved it

I’m going to buy the new V3X tomorrow and this helped out a ton. Thank you!

This is the coolest archery video I have ever seen. Great job

Look at ‘eem pulling through shots like a boss! Good video brotha.

Ive been curious about these, thanks for doing a video on the topic.

Great testing and awesome video! Keep up the great work.

Kudos to you for making this extremely informative video, that is packed with fact backed up by data.

Very good video! Definitely watch this multiple times.

So much work put into this thank you so much!

Awesome! Ty for doing all this research and sharing, the side bar only makes a lot of sense on a Mathews never thought about that

Impressive effort and academic rigor (said the guy with an English degree...). Thanks for taking the time to run through this AND share your results with us. I'm subscribing for sure!

Thank you for your time with this, very concise. Lefties really are genius.👊🏼

One of the best video on this subject. Every good.

I shoot almost the exact set up on my v3 27. Exact tap bars except I use 1 ounce up front and 6 in the back. I also shot for a while with only a back bar. Excellent video.

Very cool video. I've been wrestling with whether to add a stabilizer to my set-up. Have been going without. Now I'm convinced I've got to at least give it a try. Thanks for the qualitative analysis.

Great video. I have tried to convince my hunting partners (mom, kids, siblings) to use a more "target" stabilizer configuration on their bows - to no avail. They are satisfied with the accuracy they achieve and the reduced weight of their setups. I win every accuracy contest but that doesn't matter when hunting whitetails.

Thank you very much for the information. Helped out quite a bit for me and my set up.

Amazing! I've been trained in scientific and statistical methods and this is a wonderful application. Thank you for putting this all together!

I wonder to what extent the axle to axle length of the bow would increase or decrease the balance of stabilizers. As always, great content, brother!

Excellent video, well done, will definitely follow the tips, thanks for effort 👏🏻👏🏻

Wow. That was really thorough.. thanks for your efforts on this! 👌😎

Just came across this video I completely agree with you! Im using 2 up front and 6 in the back as well...perfect

Very nicely done!

I wish when I went to my bow shop, they made me go through this testing. Rather, I wish I had the motivation to do this myself. Nonetheless I am tired of being neglectful and being unsure about my shot. Thank you for this information. Next season I will have a much better setup thanks to this video!

This looked like a bunch of work. Great video

I've been pondering my stabilizer set up lately. This video was incredibly helpful with great information! Thanks!

Excellent video 👏

Also, love ur V3 setup👍🏿

I’ve honestly thought about going rear only for a while now. I always hold low and it helps a lot

Really enjoy all your videos. And thanks for not have some pretentious into roll and music!!!!

Great data! Yeah I shoot almost identical bows for 3D and my hunting bow (PSE Xpedite) My target (3D) setup is about 7lbs lighter DW but same rest and sight but I shoot Hunter class and I use 11 3/4" and 5oz front and 6" 18oz rear and my Hunting bow is 9" 3oz only front bar and both hold great. Target bar holds more steady but Hunting bow holds slightly different in hand. Another helpful tips with rear bars is the angle up and down with the amount of pressure it puts on your bow hand in the grip. My other bow a VXR 31.5 I had tweak the angle a little to get more contact with the lower part of the grip and it helped tremendously on accuracy.

Statistical approach was well thought out and meaningful

Great video. This is something I’ve been looking at. I’m considering a side bar.

Great video!

Other comments said it better but I’m adding a comment anyway. Well done analysis and video. Material information.

Awesome stuff 👍🏻

I removed my stabilizer a few years ago after shooting with one for 20 years- no complaints. Less weight to carry and I can’t tell a difference in my groups- my Mathews has little shock and seems well balanced already

Brilliant work! I don't believe you ever mentioned the actual distance. Your mean group size looks excellent tho 👍

Great job, based on facts, great info💪✊

Great video. I shoot wt a front stabilizer and a Apex side mount and a rear stabilizer. My bow holds well for me wt that set up.

Thanks for this--super helpful!

My hoyt ventum pro has 2 front stabilizer mount points. Using the lower mount just above the bottom cam i get the benefit of shorter bar with the same stabilization of a much longer bar of mounted in the typical location

Nice test with interesting results. I wonder how much the geometry of the Mathews comes into play. The 3 primary bow designs are 1. Have the grip in the center, 2. Have the arrow in the center, 3. Split the center between the grip and the arrow. Mathews puts the arrow center of the bow. This puts the grip well below center. This can make the bow feel top heavy. Most companies split the difference and put the arrow a little above center and the grip a little below center. I think PSE has had bows in the past with the grip in the center and the arrow well able center but in never was popular. The perfect bow would have the arrow and grip both in the center but that isn't possible without a hole in the hand. I can see how just the side bar on the Mathews would be effective. I wonder how your stab test would do on another bow like Hoyt, PSE, Bowtech that split the center between the arrow and grip. I bet you would get some different results. I have a 2011 Bowtech Specialist. Bowtech designed the Specialist and the Invasion with the need to add a stab so that they will balance. Without a stab, these bows fall backward. But when the proper stab is added, they have a good neutral balance. But people complained because when they went to the archery shop to check these bows out, the bare bow felt unbalanced. They didn't know these bows were designed that way on purpose as to be neutral balanced when a stab was added. If a bare bow has a neutral balance without a stab, it will be front heavy when a stab is added so a back stab helps to bring the bow back into a neutral balance. Bow geometry and bow design like short ATA, parallel limbs and high let off has a big effect on bow stabilization. Plus, how a person rigs their bow will affect the stabilization. There are too many variables to test for without going crazy.

Great now I have to buy a side bar. Lol Always impressed with way of looking at things.

Very interesting. I wouldn't have expected the side bar only to perform so we'll.

Great video

Wonderful video! Your thoroughness and scientific rigor was excellent and really makes a difference in my decision making. Now if you could do something to answer the question of fixed or mechanical broadhead :))

Good God I love your crap! Good to see a real bow for the test! Would love your testing on an Oneida

Engineer? Dude,..awesome video, learned a lot!

excellent info!!

Very informative video! A lot of information to take in! Good job! What part of Minnesota are you from?

Box and whiskers chart. Nice

Well done!

I started compound bow and archery in general only 4 months ago. I’d say I’m a pretty good shot at 20, 30 and 50 yards. Only yesterday I was shooting and my groupings were all over the map. I forgot to put my stablizers on and put them back on and my groupings were less than two inches.

Kudos to you for a very detailed experiment. Im wondering if a short stabilizer can perform the same as a long stabilizer. Can you make a video about that?

Great information

Shooting a PSE Evolve 35 at 29.5" draw and 55lbs. Pse phantom drop away rest new set of ABB platnum string and cables with a specialty archery 1/8" peep. Tru glo hyperstrie with sightline (after they had to stop making them but bew old stock from an online shop) and a tru ball abyss (1st gen) release. Have a quick disconnect on the front part of the riser with an 8" front bar a 1" shock ball and 8 oz of weight on the front putting me at a total of 11-15/16" (to comply with bow hunter class with local NFAA & MAA torunaments). I have a one sided "v" bar on the back side of the riser with a quick disconnect a 5" bar and another 8" balanced to 6" from the back of the riser. My arrows are Gold Tip Velocity XT's in 300 spine at 31" 100gr up front (apart from the 12gr insert), a custom made arrow wrap (whith a design i made in photo shop and had printed up) thats 11gr, 2" gateway feathers rayzr fletcings that all total about 412.2 gr with out my lighted nocks with then around 226.4. I use this bow for hunting, 3D and indoor target. I make 0 changes for any of those setups and 0 issues with shooting. The back bar made a HUGE difference in my stability and balance along with going with a longer front bar and the added weight to the front and back. I think people often under rate the benefits of having a back bar on a bow hunter setup wheather its for hunting alone or tournaments. But it really can make a big difference in how people can shoot

Great job thank you

Hunting with these big stabilizers is a pain in the ass

Well done. 🤔 does having the mathews limb legs on, add or subtract from stability?

WOW nice job thank you sir

hey i know where that range is! thanks for the video very informative

Well done

I’m shocked. The man that sold me my bow 7 years ago told me stabilisers are over rated and not needed. Now I need to try shooting with stabilisers and see if I can steady my bow faster 🤯

Great video as always but why no front bar only test?

Thank you!

A+ review.

Bravo, extremely thoughtful and thorough. Thank you. I want to go out today and shoot with only a back bar and see what happens. Question, have you researched one brand of stabilizer versus another? So much marketing noise and I can’t discern the real differences, if any, between the brands. Perhaps the answer is that the real difference is no stab versus stab, and the make of the stab is a marginal, or no, difference. I have some old and rather short stabs and want to modernize, but no clue how to distinguish between brands. Thx.

brilliant. thankyou

Your sight looks pretty substantial and fairly far in front of your shelf (essentially a "stabilizer"). So, to me, that makes sense that the just backbar is balancing that out. Whereas if you add the front bar you are adding to the sight, thus needing more backbar weight. What is the weight of your sight? Also, having shot mathews in the past and this year when deciding on a new bow I do find them to be top heavy, which means they like a backbar. Just my 2 pennies. Thanks for putting in the effort for us!

Have you thought about using the quiver to provide that back weight?

Do you think that the information that you gathered through this testing might vary significantly if you used a different bow. Did you try any of this with on your old BX-32? Shifting bows has made a big difference for me on the impact of a stabilizer on pin float and accuracy.