Bear Royale Compound Bow

The Bear Royale is one of the more honest one-bow-for-years propositions on the market: a genuinely light, 2.7-pound 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 take a whitetail - no bow press, no modules, no shop visit in between. The correction worth carrying away is that this is a dual-cam bow on Bear's Cruzer/Legit platform, not a single-cam toy, which is why it holds a defined wall and lets off hard enough for a beginner to actually aim. Its published 290 fps is a top-settings ceiling rather than a youth-weight reality, and that is the right way to read it - the adjustability, not the speed, is the product. What keeps the Royale on my short list for first-bow buyers is that nothing about it feels disposable, and because it re-fits in minutes it does not become obsolete the week a kid grows. At its $299.99 launch price it is an excellent grow-with-me bow for the household raising a young archer toward a first deer, and particularly strong as a shared family rig that carries a shooter from the backyard to the treestand. Buyers who want that same low youth floor but need the range to reach a full adult draw should also look at the Bear Cruzer, and those who want the single widest adjustment span in a ready-to-hunt package should look at the Diamond Infinite Edge Pro... read full review