If any bow can unseat the MQ1 as a fan favorite, it’s the Switchback XT. Mathews Switchback XT: The Bowhunting Fan Favorite The Mathews Switchback XT. With a 7.5-inch brace height, 37-inch axle-to-axle length and 308 fps IBO rating, it had target bow specs by today’s standards, but was a hunting machine at the time. Many veteran bowhunters still regard the MQ1 as the brand’s all-time best. But back then, the perception was no recoil.” Of course, if you shoot one against one of our bows today, it’s terrible. “It was so smooth that it was in a class of its own. “It was the most parallel limb bow at the time,” McPherson says. I shot some of my best bow bucks with that bow-which I still have.
I got one for Christmas in 1999, when I was 16, and I hunted with it for the better part of the next decade. Weekend 3D shoots were popular at the time, and virtually all of people I knew shooting the “Bowhunter Release” category shot MQ1s. The Z-Max was the first Mathews with a perimeter-weighted cam, and it was followed up with the MQ1. Not only were those bows smoother, quieter, and easier to tune than two-cam bows of the day-they were often faster, too. Perimeter-weighted single cams were soon to follow-an engineering innovation that McPherson considers to be one of the company’s highest. Company sales increased by 400 percent that year. The first Mathews was called the Standard, and the second was the UltraLight-a bow that McPherson still regards as a personal favorite. But with one cam on the bottom limb and a round idler wheel on top, “SoloCam” bows didn’t have synchronization issues. Mathews rolled onto the bow-building scene with a marketing campaign that highlighted the flaws in two-cam bow technology of the day-namely, keeping the cams in sync. Of those 200, here are the five we’ve narrowed down as the best Mathews bows of all time. Mathews has since launched nearly 200 new bow models, if you include bows under their sister brands like Mission and Genesis. Soon after, McPherson had a new concept for a bow-the single cam-and he launched it with a new brand, Mathews Archery, in 1992. But McPherson found himself at odds with his investors at times, so he ended up selling McPherson Archery in 1987. The brand was making dual-cam bows in those days, including the first compound bow with more than 50 percent let-off. His story in the archery industry began in 1985, with McPherson Archery. An inductee to the Bowhunter’s Hall of Fame, McPherson has that lightning-in-a-bottle combination of engineering talent (he builds guitars on the side), business savvy, and approachable personality. He’s also afflicted with a condition of saying exactly what’s on his mind at any given moment-for better or worse.īut I wanted a third opinion-so I went straight to the source and interviewed Mathews founder, Matt McPherson. Hinton is a former pro-shop owner, Mathews dealer, bowhunter, and a member of the bow test panel since 2013. First, I reached out to my buddy Danny Hinton. So, when I sat down to come up with this list, I wanted references for second opinions. For all the objective testing we’ve done, there’s still a lot of subjectivity in picking a favorite hunting bow (i.e., that brand loyalty referenced earlier). So, we just pick the newest compound bows, right? Not so fast. The best Mathews bows of the ’90s would get crushed by virtually any of the bows we tested last spring. Plus, they’ve gradually gotten better over time. But compound bows are generally discontinued after a couple years. You just choose the red-meat classics that’ll keep the masses happy (even if classy folk like you and me know better). Of course, picking the “best ever” from a lineup of guns and calibers is pretty easy. (Due to COVID, we were not able to hold a test last year to determine a Best of the Best winner in the Best Compound Bow 2021 category.) Only Bowtech has been as competitive as Mathews.
After all, Mathews is a company that, since 2013, has won our bow test three times and finished runner-up twice. 6.5 Creedmoor-seem like playground spats.īut that enthusiasm for bowhunting-and for the debate over the best compound bow-is exactly why we’ve decided to do a run-down of the five best Mathews bows ever made. And when Mathews does win, these folks assume it’s because we took a bribe.Ĭompared to the anger I’ve seen come from the results of our bow tests, bickering over rifle calibers-like. Then there are the archers who shoot something besides a Mathews compound bow. Put simply, if Mathews doesn’t win, those bowhunters believe we’ve done something wrong. On the one hand, you have Mathews Archery shooters who are fiercely loyal. In that time, no other hunting bow brand has caused more of a reaction among readers than Mathews. I’ve been testing the best compound bows head-to-head for Field & Stream since 2013.
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