hey guys dan pickar here with eastman's bow hunting journal today we're going to review the matthews
v3 this is going to be a little bit different type of review we're going to talk to mark hayes
who is an engineer there at matthews and grill him a little bit and we're going to find out why
that this bow and the matthews line is so easy to tune is so efficient and why they build a bow that
80 of people that pick this up can get it to tune perfectly with broadheads and ready to go hunting
while i have you here make sure you subscribe to the channel hit the bell for notifications and
like this video i love this bow this is new for 2021 the v3 this is the 27 inch model they also
make a 31 inch model you can check that one out in action on my broadhead tuning video if you click
up here but look at this thing 27 inches little tiny bow it's uh a lot of people have a lot of
different opinions on axle length tell me a little bit uh why you guys made a 27 and a 31 this year
so at the core of the v3 it's the bringing what we've been doing to the extreme so your stability
comes from a long riser traditionally people are saying what's actually actual length and that
in their mind gives you the forgiveness number right so like there's certain number everyone has
a different number but over this number it's more forgiving under it it's less that's not inherently
true in the geometry of the riser it has to do with your rigid portion your long rigid riser
and so the v3 is the culmination of a bunch of years so even though a halon was pretty parallel
a v327 would make a halon 30 and a v331 would make a halon 34. so just to get to correlate that
to the ata number you can't look at ata numbers anymore and the shootability of these bows are
inherent in the riser length now as you get longer risers you don't want your axle to axles getting as
as long as that riser could take it and so for hunting model we're trying to get as compact
as possible for the axle to axle length while not giving up any stability and that's kind of where
why 27 is possible this year is because it is a halon 30 riser you're not giving up
the stability of full draw you're not giving up stability when you shoot because a lot of
dynamics are happening right there and so it was more of as we get more extreme
what can we actually do and we could make a 27 like you're holding that's what i'm shooting
but we're also making a 31 that is incredibly compact in a 34 inch typical geometry and so
um it's really the best of both worlds worlds at the core that's what the v3 is is the culmination
of that system now there's challenges with that because our axle to axle is tighter that means our
limbs are more pre-loaded and we have fantastic limbs i mean when we went to those short wide
limbs failures of limbs have dropped off to almost nothing and and so we can't give up the longevity
of those limbs even though we're stressing them further so that was probably the biggest part on
the v3 that people won't even know but we ended up with something that was and it just doesn't
happen in engineering a lot it's a lot of give and takes but what we ended up with the limbs is
something lighter and better and more efficient and so it was kind of the the perfect blend of
everything for once you know everything went right there but it took a long time to get there
i like these short axle bows for the back country very easy to pack very maneuverable i just feel
like i could put this in my back pocket and this thing has some performance i mean if if any bow
could have a hemi in it this bow has it i shot the the triax actually from 2018 that was a 28
inch axle axle bow i shot that bow so well that i was like you know what i'm gonna go with the 27
inch i love packing this thing in the back country i shot so many animals with that bow and i just
felt so comfortable with it especially at distance too that there's no reason to change if it works
for me why change it so that's why i went with the 27 inch this year we realized that not everyone's
going to shoot 27 so that's why we always have in past few years we've always had two different
lengths but you have to have a threshold of accuracy that you're comfortable with
and for me that's either 60 or 100 yard groups that i know that i need to be able to
do regardless of the conditions if i can meet those things i want it as compact as possible
why would i want to carry more bow than i need so i have a certain group threshold that every
bow that i shoot i'm looking for that group threshold if i'm hitting that i want it as
small as possible there's other form factors of people you know people are different sizes and
they have different form and all that stuff and we're not gonna try to pigeonhole you into a 27
if you're just not comfortable especially if you got a super long draw or something where
that string does get a little tight and you got to reach for it so that's why we have multiple
options but in general you want your hunting bow as compact as possible as long as it hits your
threshold of accuracy that you need we have the uh integrate rest here it's this picatinny
groove on the back basically really streamlines your rest and this is for the uh integrate the
ultra rest from qad it's hard to beat it's very easy to deploy if you want to let it down you
just kind of give it a flick like that it lets it down if you don't give it a flick it stays
the matthews ultra rest integrate i love that thing the grip uh flat back design kind of have
some carbon plates on the side nice comfortable grip but what really stands out this year is
the different positioning on your cable guard now what they did this year is basically put
the cable guard dead center between the axles of the bow we know for years that you want your
cables crossing right in the middle because if you look there's two angles of your cables
i got arrows in but this angle on this angle being the same is incredibly important for your timing
so when your cams come around and you have an offset roller guard your cams are technically even
though your stops are in the same time they're technically not in sync perfectly now we knew this
we did things in the past like we made different size rollers so the front one would be smaller
and the back would be larger to accommodate for is never perfect though and the perfect
spot would be right in the middle now you get into your arrow fletchings and there's things
that we had to work around there but with this minimal design we were able to get it to where
the cables are exactly in the center your true timing is perfect now so out of the box tuning
should be easier with this bow because now not only have you got cross center cams and center
knocked arrow your cables are now at the right angle so your cams are actually timed
exactly correct so we actually ended up with a little bit better bank clearance because of
where we placed it in the fact that you're only missing one point all you're going to miss is
this one point of the wheel before you had to miss this whole cable it's almost like a wall
to get past now you can straddle that one point and actually get more vein clearance and then
better timing which is out of the box tuning and that's really i mean when you're setting up a bow
you're building confidence you're learning about it if you can pull a bow out of the box
and shoot a hole with it right i mean that is a confidence builder right there you just going into
shooting groups then at that point you don't want to be fighting with a bow why is it doing this
you know this bow is built to be perfect out of the box for the majority of people
now there's outliers that we have built in ways to work around those things but
the the biggest thing that stands out to me is when you're talking about tuning with this avs
system i mean this is a bow that doesn't have you know a split bus cable system there's there's no
adjustment um for for cam lean on this bow why is that and why does this bow tune so easily without
that ability to put cam lean in in your bow so yeah you're talking about a split yoke and
traditionally as you pull the one side of the yoke it'll lean the cam and you can tune it the problem
with that and people don't talk about this is when you turn a yoke you're shortening your cable
so now your timing's off now you got to fix it on the other end fix your timing that's not the best
way to do it that was a work around a band-aid to get what we're doing is we have the top hat kits
if you notice on our axles we have two screws that squeeze all the slop out so any e-clip
bow you ever see they have a inherently a little bit of slop in there cam can move left or right
and which is bad for accuracy obviously so we have a zero t axle where you screw it from both
sides and then we have spacers that are called top hats that go inside the limb they give the
limb more rigidity more bearing surface and you're able to shift the cam left or right
depending on your shooting styles and then when you find it and you lock it in it's there forever
there's no way you can move that's your setting and the bow will stay there and that's a day one
fit thing and then never touch it again and really confident that system has been fantastic i mean
you're never you you set your rest right down the middle you set it up and down perfect
and then you adjust the bow to shoot the way you shoot talking to that specifically so if guys
maybe if they don't have access to a pro shop or they live too far away maybe they don't have the
ease of getting top hats what is there anything that you can do to still get your bow to tune
and still get it to shoot to your shooting style based on your spine stiffness yep yeah um so i'll
quickly just say we set the leans of the cams from the door from the factory where about 80 is our
best estimate of people will be able to shoot it out of the box and that's really important for us
so it's set in a range we do all the testing every year of where does this bow like to be and we set
it right in the middle of that range so out of the box it should be good now there's a lot of popular
things right now like crazy heavy tip weights really stiff arrows heavy arrows all these things
factor into the tune so yeah if you're sitting there at your house and you're trying to get
broadheads to fly the easiest thing you're going to do is micro adjust your rest
yup no that makes perfect sense so what i do when i set up these bows i i'm i kind of have like
an assortment of arrows and different stiffness and i know that uh matthews for me for my specs
they like 300 spine arrows and depending on how much weight i have up front i can adjust
that and so i very rarely have to use top hats because i'll just kind of adjust my arrow setup
based on what the arrow is doing doing if it's a little weak you know i'll i'll go to a 300
or maybe i'll go from a 125 down to a 100 grain and stiffen it up or cut my arrow shorter like
what mark said guys there's a lot of things that you can do without having to adjust the top hats
and still get that bow to shoot perfectly yeah and if you i just want to say this too if you want to
air a certain way what kind of spine should i get these new bows have been liking a weaker spine and
and that's kind of like your 300 with a 300 grain up front you're weakening that spine and there's
just the dynamics are so intense during that moment that a weaker spine traditionally would be
erratic it would bend too much and everything but everything coming out of the middle of that bow
and having just a little bit of give it seems to like a weaker spine so like i'm shooting a
350 out of a 70 pound 28 inch bow do really good with that when i can't shoot a 300 it has to get
real knock high where traditionally if you look at charts and stuff and like well i'm putting
200 grains up front i might need a 300 base on the chart but i could almost shoot a 400 where i'm at
right now and so if you want to air just for the viewers i would start to air a little bit
weaker um but like you said if you have if you haven't cut and glued everything mess with your
tips and your tip weight and your insert weight because you might have a shaft that you want to
get to tune and i guarantee you could you just might have to tweak some of the components
dual bridge riser very stiff riser wide limb pockets fantastic i love this two-piece quiver too it
weighs like seven ounces it's easily my favorite quiver i love two-piece quivers so yeah let's go
ahead and saddle up here and shoot an arrow out of this thing and i'll kind of go through
the draw cycle with you so once again 29 inch uh 70 pounds um the modules are all interchangeable
you can't change the draw length you have to get a new module if you want to change the draw length
um and all the draw lengths are available and yeah it is very simple you don't need
a bow press but you do need another module so let's go ahead and shoot it
stiff in the beginning evens out nice hold you can see how short this bow is
very quiet bow no complaints i mean matthews the last couple years it's all very quiet with
this 740 nano it's engineered for this bow in particular this one and the 31 on the v3
for optimal dampening you have the monkey tails on here which do help and nothing in the limbs
let's shoot one more so like i said a little bit stiffer on the draw but i don't i don't really
notice an accuracy issue at distance i don't notice uh you know anything that i feel is
detrimental to my shot or uh to my hunting style other than this bow is compact and i love that
now quiet as can be there you have it if a bow could have a hemi in it it's this one
i think it's going to surprise us on the chronograph let's shoot a 525 grain arrow
see if we can notice any difference and see if it quiet it down even more than that first arrow here
all right yeah seems like it's just as quiet lighter arrows just as quiet as
the heavy arrow theoretically the heavy arrows should dampen it down a little bit
but it's just a quiet bow so let's shoot this thing through the chronograph
and see what kind of speeds we're going to get out of it i think we're going to be surprised
ibo is 342 so let's send one down range this is a victory vap 300 spine weighs 437 grains
let's see if we can hit 300 feet per second let me get right here
312. now that we're gonna hit 300 we're 12 feet per second over that's pretty quick
i just chronographed this thing and i shot 312
which that shocked me i was like i bet it'll be 305. you always love to guess before i shoot
312 feet per second which blows everything out of the water as far as speed goes but what i'm gonna
do is i'm just gonna probably go to a different arrow and just increase my weight a little bit
because i don't like to be much over 300 feet per second but the power in this bow is it shocked me
this is something to touch on i think it's super important we don't talk about it enough in
general but we do individual mods we have a switch weight cam with switch weight mods that are made
individual so your 29 inch draw traditionally in what's happening in the industry is a lot of
rotating mods it's easy on the dealers they don't have to stock the mods we understand that however
those things are programmed at 30 inches you at 29 or me at 28 are going to be sacrificing
the stored energy and the efficiency of the cam by using a rotating mod we draw individual mods
for individual draw lengths draw weights and let offs it's perfect so your 29 inch 70 pound or whatever
one you're shooting is the perfect draw force curve for that setup that's why you're getting
so much speed you know we're probably neck and neck at 30 inches now we're better in efficiency
but if you're just looking at speed numbers we're pretty neck and neck with the industry
you shoot your 29 against another 29 i guarantee you it's faster you shoot my 28 against anybody
else's 28 i guarantee you it's faster we're programming it for your specs as perfect as
possible and it is harder it's way more cutting for us it's way more designing for our team
but at the end of the day you get a better system at your specs and it's really important to us
it shows and and like you said i've shot every different bow this year through a chronograph
this one's the most efficient it wins let's shoot a 525 grain arrow
this is a day six 350 with a 125 grain tip on it um it's a little under spine for this bow
but uh we have the weight that's what i was going for you're going to want to shoot 300 spine arrows
out of this bow if you're shooting 29 inch 70 pounds you just need a stiff arrow because
this thing is uh yeah high powered got some horsepower to her all right here we go 525 grain
281 so that's what we've been seeing it's 30 feet per second slower really quieted the bow
down a lot so 280 feet per second i like my hunting arrow to be a little faster than that
since i shoot a single pin slider i like a flat a flatter trajectory i don't necessarily want
a huge arc with a heavy arrow but i want a lot of weight too so i'm probably going to
have to shoot around a 460 to a 475 grain to probably get me down to 300 feet per second
any much over 300 feet per second it's hard to get good consistent broadhead flight at distance uh
past 60 yards it's just tough uh so i like to keep it 300 feet per second maybe down to 295 is fine
but that's impressive 312 feet per second with an ibo of 342 that's it's pretty darn fast
i can't get enough of these bows i love shooting and i've i've never had so many bows the last five
years just be so simple to set up and to to get to fly well with broadheads and go bow hunting it's
part of the whole thing that's part of confidence building that's part of the better experience
you'll be a better archer because of it all right guys that's the matthews v3 thanks for joining us
today be sure you tune in to our channel for more bow reviews it was a pleasure to do this one today
and get out there and shoot your bow and we'll see you next time