In my 30 yrs of bowhunting I found only one shop here in VA that is pretty good. They typically will take time with your needs especially if you buy the bow from them. Even still, they get a funny look on their face when asked to help with paper tuning, but they will help with it. All the other shops I have been to simply let people buy a new bow, set it up, sight it in and out the door you go. No tuning what so ever, no checking timing etc. It amazes me still to this day how hundreds are sent out to the woods with untuned bows, draw length too long, underspined arrows etc. Especially young kids, the teenagers. Most just simply do not want to fool with it. with that said I would love to see some memes in regards to bow shop owners/techs .. be a hoot
Quantity over quality is the new business model. Sell 100 bows with no time invested, maybe 10 come back with issues. The other 90 will never know if there is a problem as long as it flings arrows. May not be right but that's just how business is done now at most places. I was young and dumb once, bought the cheapest bow, no tuning, flung 350gr walmart arrows but somehow still killed deer. Now I'm more experienced, with better equipment and kill less deer
Lucky for me, our local pro-shop is run by a couple tournament prostaffers who go above and beyond to make sure every bow that enters their shop is set up correctly.
I kill lots of time at a shop helping the owner. He is a pissed off old man which is how you know it's a good shop. They have a 20yrd indoor range and everything to tune. I help most because after the basic tune you would be surprised that as the majority of people have zero interest in doing anything besides taking their bow out Oct 1 and fling carbon at a deer at whatever range it comes to. Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk
IMO, a big issue with shops is that they don't charge enough money for their time and labor to work on bows. They've set a precedent that labor is free or close to it. Time is the most precious commodity we have, especially as a business owner. They can't afford to spend hours and hours working on someone's bow and helping them out without being compensated properly for it. But they aren't comfortable enough, or good enough, to sell that service for the appropriate amount of money. Let's face it - most guys don't get into the archery pro shop business because they are good salespeople and shrewd businessmen. They do it because they love archery, which has been the downfall of many a shop over the years. This all leads to them simply not doing any tuning work at all, or they do it for free. Neither one of those scenarios helps them run a profitable business, which leads to a whole slew of additional problems. And so the cycle repeats itself.
I agree 100% Justin. I am a guy that will pay for a shop to get my bow tuned. I just can't find one. The one shop that do go to has never turned me down to at least paper tune. Luckily, the techs there are good at eyeballing when setting up and most times it takes less than 3 shot to get a bullet hole. But there are many other shops around here that send folks out the door with ungodly untuned bows. I would garner to wage that 75% or more deer are kiled with an untuned bow. I know I killed a bunch in my younger day with an untuned bow. I didn't know any better. Fortuantely, most of my shots were and are less than 20 yds more like 15 and in and have had no issues, but I still want my bow as efficient as possible.
I have a 26.5" DL....I found out early how important a properly tuned bow was for me to get every ounce of speed I could get!
We've had so many shops here over the years. They usually make it anywhere from 3 to 8 years and then go the way of the Dodo. I 100% agree they don't offer or charge enough for some things, and that it has evolved to them just trying to get numbers/sales. I think they've also learned that trying to go the extra mile to tune a customer's bow can turn into a nasty can of worms for them too. For years I was certainly out there shooting arrows at elk with a bow that wasn't fully tuned (and with arrows barely around 400 grains). Just a paper tune at 6' with a fletched arrow and you were "good to go". I have always carried a grouse arrow when elk hunting, it NEVER shot to the same point as my fixed BH's until I learned how to tune myself. Not even once accidentally, ha ha. We are currently back down to one single place with a Pro Shop, the local North40. There are about 4 different guys that work there, and they are definitely pushed to get sales. So, when they sell a bow, they set it up and if the customer doesn't ask, they just paper tune it themselves. They will let the customer shoot it through paper if they ask, but I have seen them take over for customers that aren't capable of shooting a bullet hole through paper. They're not going to spend the time to try to get their form corrected because of the can of worms' thing, and the push to get customers out the door and move on to the next one. I think, in general, most people shoot a bow strictly for hunting and they aren't even aware that they aren't shooting a bow that is well tuned. How many times have you heard someone say, "the Shop paper tuned my bow so I'm good". They have no idea that it is dependent on the person shooting the bow's own form. Heck, there are a lot of folks that think a bow would be perfectly tuned if a Hooter Shooter was used.
Yep. Out of college I went to work for one of the largest CPA firms in the world. Put my time in and went out on my own in 1998. I was scared to charge a competitive rate because I was afraid I'd "scare" off the client for being too high, etc. So very early in my career the president of a good size corporation was referred to me because he had went to one of these little H&R Block/Billy Bob non professionals and was in trouble. He paid them for their time but luckily didn't let them file the return. He comes to me and I spend quite a bit of time recreating correct financials to do a tax return and doing a correct tax return. When he comes to pick it up I didn't have an invoice ready. I hated to charge him for my real time because it takes way more time to correct someone else's mistakes He asks me how much and I tell him I hate to charge him for all of that because he'd already paid the other guys for what he thought was correct work and I had all this time in it. He said, "I'm gonna give you some advice and if you want to make it, take it." He said I can't worry about that stuff and if he'd come to me first instead of hiring some non professional jackleg he'd been in a better position and I can't fix other's mistakes or bad decisions for free. How much do I owe you? I gave him a real bill, he paid it and has been a monthly retainer client for over 20 years. He also owns the office complex my office is in so he's been my landlord for business since 2014. I learned to not try and be the cheap guy, but be the best guy and when you become the best you have to charge for it. If you try to be the cheap guy you'll only get the cheap clients and even if they're cheap they still don't half pay.
They do need to charge more. The best guy in our area ended up leaving to join sheet metal union because he needed to support his family. Cant blame him one bit. It would also be a good thing as far as it driving people learning to work on their own equipment. Also people taking better care of their gear.
