Home > Bow Reviews > Morrison Cheyenne 48#@28"

I had been looking at getting the full advantage from HT or BB class in NFAS competitions, in the main that meant using a recurve and not AFB. When finding a top quality Recurve, there are three prime candidates, Border, Black Widow and Morrison. I have shot a number of Borders and while they are wonderfully crafted bows they are far too heavy in the hand and also rather bulky for my taste. It was a similar story with the Widow as I have had 3 of those and while I loved them all they were not quite what I was looking for. 

Morrison have a very good reputation on the traditional archery forums in the US, generally considered in the top two bows along with ACS. Unfortunately there were two problems, firstly they are expensive and secondly there is a four month or more wait for a custom bow. So I decided I would trade one for an ACS as I have three and while it's always good to have a back up bow two might be too many. I stuck an ad on Trad Gang and got a lot of response, ACS and Morrison are a similar price and quality so there were no complications with money needing to chance hands. As luck would have it one of the people who responded was in France, that made things a lot easier than it might have been had the person been in the US. He had two Morrison bows he wanted to get rid of and he sent me pictures of both and I went for what I thought looked the better of the two, a Dymonwood in black and tan. I sent the ACS on Tuesday and he sent the Morrison the next day, rather excellently the Morrison arrived on the Friday.

The general condition of the bow was good without being outstanding but the limbs are pretty good. Morrison come with a bewildering combination of riser and limbs and I think this one is an A riser with B limbs.

Luckily I had the perfect chance to try it out the same weekend. I only took one set of arrows with me 75-80# spine, that was a mistake. The 50# ACS love those spines and having heard how good the Morrison's were I figures that a bow of similar poundage would also deal with them. Unfortunately not, looks as if the bow is cut to centre but not past or certainly not as far past as the ACS, I was getting a definite kick from the arrows and while I was generally hitting the target and able to compensate it was with nowhere near enough accuracy to feel comfortable and get a good idea of how the bow could perform. I was having to aim well to the right to get where I wanted to be and it was very difficult to judge accurately. So unfortunately I wasn't able to get much of an impression of the bow.

On to the Sunday, I shot about 10 dozen using a new set of Easton X7 arrows from the bow, according to the charts they should have been suitable for the bow and it proved to be pretty accurate. First up we were shooting 50 yards and the arrows were flying really well to the target. Then when everybody had gone I was able to get closer to the target and use my three rivers testing set. I had arrows from 40-45 all the way up to 80-85 and it was interesting to see the progression across the target with the different spines. Rather surprising was that the 75-80's were bang on, always one in the gold and another very close by, however I then remembered that these were uncut at 32" and so reducing the length would stiffen them further and that's why the 75-80's I was using the previous day were too stiff.

I was initially disappointed on the Saturday, but Sundays results were much more positive, the bow is quick there is no doubt about that but it does shoot a little different to the ACS and it was going to take a little time to get used to as it is less forgiving of mistakes.

This bow has wooden core limbs and not the better carbon foam core,you can tell as while it's a nice bow it's not up there with the carbon based bows. It reminded me of the Borders as it was wonderfully crafted but the performance for me is a little lacking. That's not to suggest it is sluggish but it doesn't have that extra little zip. 

 

Rating
Features & Design
A very well made bow, Morrison offer snake skin limbs from the factory and this one had those, looks excellent.
Performance
Not up there with the best bows, but remember that Morrison offer a large range of bows and they are not all equal.
Value for Money
I got this second hand but with the addition of snake skins and various other bits the price does go up pretty quickly.
Overall
If it's a great looking bow you are after then this might well be it, the array of custom options means you will get something special, but for me the wood core limbs didn't offer the level of performance I was expecting.

 

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Steve Nicholson and Andy Gilfrin, are real archers interested in the best archery suppliers have to offer. In our search for the very best bow, arrows and equipment we have shot, used and worn pretty much everything on offer.

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Essential Details
What : Morrison Cheyenne 48#@28" Price : $995

 

 

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Magazine We were very pleased to give our support to the James Whale Kidney Foundation shoot which we cover in this months magazine. We were also contacted by Lars Pilø with news on the archery related finds on Jovfonna, and while we couldn't get out there ourselves Lars kindly filled in some background information for us.


A mixed bag this month, me in the South West, Geoff putting the record straight, a chat with Keith Stay and the wisdom comes from South Cox of Stalker bows. 

We take a tour the length and breadth of the British mainland to visit Scotland with Border Bows, Yorkshire with Aidy Hayes, the Wirral with Jason from thelongbowshop.com, down South with the Company of Canterbury Longbowman, and Geoff is in Spain.

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