Escalade Sports Bear Archery Flash Youth Bow

Bow gets a star for being bow-shaped, and throwing an arrow, kinda. I had high hopes for this bow and my 5 year old, but it just doesn’t work. He will only shoot a couple arrows and then get frustrated with it. It is too heavy for the lower end of age range. It is also fairly long and unwieldy for a beginner. This isn’t made of aluminum and fiberglass as others have suggested. It is all plastic. The whisker biscuit through the riser is a great idea, but doesn’t work. There is no way to get the bow to generate enough energy to really launch an arrow and stick into a target more than maybe 8-10’ away. There is no accuracy. I am very famailar with archery and have several real bows for myself. The pin adjusts fine, but the bow doesn’t shoot an arrow far enough or with enough power to let it come out of paradox and stabilize. The whisker biscuit further hinders this by providing additional uneven resistance which throws the arrow off. The bow is not heavy per se, but for the energy it is generating, it is heavy. The thick plastic limbs eat up the energy that would be transferred into the arrow. I got frustrated with this bow trying to sight it in for my son, tinkering with string twists, etc and couldn’t get it to hit point of aim. Never had this issue with any other bow sighting system.If you want your kid to hate archery immediately and get frustrated get this bow. I ordered the first shot and will see how it fares. This has great design potential, but is executed poorly, which is a shame. I wish I still had my first bow, which was easy to draw but zipped little light weight arrows accurately.The arm guard that comes with this is about useless, the arrows aren’t great and are certainly over spined for the bow. There were no instructions.I don’t suggest buying this. Maybe I just got a bad one, but it is still unwieldy for an average- sized 5-year old. Probably the equivalent of me trying to learn on a 6’ bow that weighs 10 lbs.

I HATED this bow at first. Couldnt get the arrows to fly more than a couple feet and even an adult at full draw could not penetrate the target. Fast forward a couple years and the bow is gathering dust in a closet. Kids take archery classes at a local place and the employees suggest getting the good arrows and giving those a try. So I buy half a dozen Easton Vector 15-29 at their recommendation. Low and behold kids can now use the bow! The safety arrows that come with it SUCK, splurge and get better arrows if you buy this bow. Also, a basic small bow for kids in the 5-8 range can be bought for about $30 at an archery store, and a larger bow for bigger kids in the $40 range (like the SPE Snake), so keep that in mind. The big appeal for this bow is the rest for the arrows and that it has some added safety. Kids can focus on the other elements of shooting, foot and body placement etc. I have a kid that's pretty uncoordinated so this has helped him to learn and lessen his frustration of trying to do several things at once. He can hit the target with reasonable accuracy 15-40ish feet out with some practice. Once he gets everything down consistently I will move him into the Snake or similar. NOTE: kids are a small 8 yr old and big 10 year old

I bought this bow for my 2 kids ages 13 and 10 who are both left eyed in shooting. They could handle the bow fine but it proved to have absolutely no accuracy and as previous comment noted, there is no power behind the shot. I took an hour trying to adjust the sighting for them and get it to shoot on target from various distances with no luck. It shoots low and to the left every time and won't stick in a hay bail at 10 feet unless I pull it closer to my adult size draw.There aren't many options out there for left side shooters and this was a complete let down.

It is incredibly easy to use. The problem is, it does not do anything. The tension on the string at rest is near zero, and stays under 10# all the way to 20" draw, resulting in almost no arrow velocity. I know it is strange to talk about arrow velocity on an introductory child's bow, but that is the best way to describe the problem. It is just a badly made design. If is pulled all the way to 24", it meets the poundage speck and gets a bit of velocity, so it is clearly the design, not a defect unit. Using it will cure your child of archery, as they will never hit anything, as the arrow itself does not fly straight (does not straighten out).

My 8 year old son loves this bow. I got this for him as an introductory bow. He does things with both hands too so wanted something that would allow me to watch him to see where he would settle out. Turns out he's going to be a left handed shooter which fits with his eye dominance. After getting use to the bow and working on form I bet he shoots 100 arrows a day on the weekends. He has fallen in love with the bow. It's great for a beginning shooter.

The item description says it's recommended for "children ages 11 and older". I got this for my daughter who's 11 and while she was able to hold it and pull it back just fine it was barely strong enough to shoot at the closest target (10 yards) at the local range. Half the time they hit the target the arrows bounced off. The string is barely taught on the bow and can be removed easily by hand. I thought for $60 I was getting a "real" bow - this is closer to a toy - and I'm sending it back. Even my 8 year old didn't like this - might be ok for a 5 or 6 year old, can't really say. One other thing, we got two arrows but the nock on one of them was broken.

I haven't measured the actual strength of these "bows", but they can't stick an arrow into a foam target at 20 feet. I can literally throw an arrow harder than these can shoot it. I called the "support" number and got the run around there too. I've been hunting with the same old Bear Kodiak for over 30 years. In this case it seems they REALLY don't make them like they used to.

I give one star since the description says “bow” and a bow is what arrived. I give a second star since it flings arrows as a bow should. That is About all it does. Flight is poor, the bow is too heavy and the limbs are way too heavy to properly operate at low draw weights. There is really no way to make this thing work properly.