Is this the best recurve bow for field archery under £200? Quite possibly. I tested two poundages of them here for you.

For such a reasonably priced recurve bow, you get a very fine quality shooting experience, and the one-piece natural wood finish looks the part. It’s a nice draw feel, incredibly quiet on release (even without a set of bow silencers), it’s tillered well, is a good weight in the hand, and most importantly shoots straight.

The GreatTree Deerslayer was my third ever bow, and my first ever “proper” one. I’m quite a big guy, but at the time I got the 30# draw weight model, as I was still building up my back muscles after a car accident and didn’t want to feel over-bowed.

I was very pleased with the Deerslayer and my grouping quickly got tighter. The 30# Deerslayer bow lasted me a while, and when I was ready to get a higher poundage model, I was sad to give it up. For my personal taste, I couldn’t find another bow in the price range I liked more…

So I bought another Deerslayer! This time a 40# (at my draw length it’s actually 44# when put on the bow scales). As I hoped, this was a perfect upgrade.

With my first Deerslayer, I was shooting with Easton alloy arrows, with plastic vanes off an arrow rest. The deerslayer behaved itself well with this configuration, and I was getting some pleasing shots and reasonably tight groupings.

When I upgraded the poundage from 30# to 44# (not an insignificant jump) my old arrows would have been far too weak in the spine. This would have given me tuning and accuracy issues, and worse case scenario possibly even dangerous to shoot! So I started looking for an upgrade on my arrows too.

I was reading the excellent book “Become The Arrow” by Byron Ferguson at the time, and he made the interesting point that when shooting off the shelf the arrow is closer to your hand than when using a rest. Because of this the arrow position is less sensitive to slight variations in hand angle so it’s more forgiving to shoot. For Deerslayer round two I ditched the arrow rest and plastic vanes, and instead got myself a snazzy new fur arrow rest for shooting with feather Fletchings off the shelf.

For the arrows, I wanted to have a full upgrade and switch to carbon. These can be crazy money, and losing arrows to a field archery session could get expensive.

I’d heard some of my fellow archers at the club raving about Linkboy Carbon Arrows, so I thought I’d give them a go. They worked out at a third of the price compared to equivalent well known brands, and they are fantastic. See my comprehensive Linkboy arrow review here.

You pay more upfront cost for carbon arrows than alloys, but I’ve noticed that accuracy over long distances is improved enough to lose less arrows in the woods… thus saving money in the long run in lost arrows, and time in Fletching the replacements.

With the more powerful Deerslayer, and Linkboy Carbon Arrows my grouping immediately improved again, and I felt like I had upped my game.

The Deerslayer has a really fast snappy discharge which I like, but does feel less smooth than some more expensive bows I’ve tried to be fair.

The Great Tree Archery Deerslayer is my favourite bow for field archery. It shoots well, is quiet, much lighter to carry around than my Static compound bow, looks the part on the course, and feels like you’re taking a piece of wood back home when you go shooting in the wild.

I thoroughly recommend the Great Tree Deerslayer, it brings home the venison.