So how do you pick the perfect compound bow for your hunting? Two ways actually: You can turn to page 54 in the July issue of Field & Stream and read “Your Ultimate Bow,” in which Scott Bestul, Will Brantley, and I put seven key assumptions to the test in order to answer the most vital questions about what really makes the best hunting bow. Or you can just stay tuned right here, as we roll out the whole story, one question at a time, over the next few weeks.

Already saw it in the mag? Stay tuned anyway, because this online version fearures special bonus coverage, breaking down the inside story and the nitty gritty of each test.

You may think you know what you want in your next compound bow. But you’re probably wrong. (Don’t take it personally. We were wrong, too.) If you want a forgiving bow, for example, you know that you need one with a long brace height, right? Say, 7 inches. That’s common knowledge. And yet, the 540 arrows we shot to test this particular wisdom showed that brace height doesn’t make a bit of difference.

As for accessories, everybody knows that a Whisker Biscuit rest is not as accurate as a fallaway. Except, at the ranges most of us shoot, our tests proved that it is.

Bowhunters are gearheads. We want the ultimate bow, with the ultimate components, for the ultimate performance. And to that end, we apply a bundle of assumptions: This is better than that, and that is better than this, and the other is just no good at all. Yet it seems nobody has bothered to quantify any of it.

So we did.

We launched more than 10,000 arrows to nail down what really works. Not theoretically or...