Bear Gamekeeper Jr Compound Bow

The Gamekeeper Jr is one of the more honest one-bow-for-years propositions on the market: a genuinely light, easy-drawing compound that adjusts with a hex wrench from a five-year-old's 5-pound, 12-inch backyard setup to a 50-pound, 27-inch rig that will legally and effectively take a whitetail, all in a coordinated Mossy Oak Bottomland outfit that arrives ready to hunt. The binary cams and offset string suppressor make it more consistent and quieter than the single-cam youth bows a tier below, and at well under four pounds a small shooter can actually hold it on target. What I keep coming back to is that this is a Bear Royale in Mossy Oak clothing, and the $40 over the plain-chassis version buys the Gamekeeper collaboration, the Bottomland finish and quiver, and the specific hunting bundle, not a different-shooting bow, so the value call is really about whether that look and kit matter to you. At its low-$400s launch price it is an excellent grow-with-me hunting bow for the household raising a young archer toward their first deer, and especially for the family that wants the little shooter's bow to match dad's. Buyers who want the widest possible range to carry a shooter into a full adult draw should also look at the Diamond Infinite Edge Pro, and those happy to build up a bare, maximally adjustable chassis should look at the Mission Craze... read full review