Shooting The Bear Cruzer Lite

It has been a week and a half since my oldest daughter became the proud owner of a Bear Cruzer Lite (In pink, of course). We’ve been out shooting a couple of times so far and it has been nice to see the bow in action.

Size

When it comes to the size of the Bear Cruzer Lite, I don’t think I could have asked for a better fitting bow for my daughter. As far as 6 year old girls go, my daughter is a little on the small size. She stands about 44 inches tall and weighs roughly 45 pounds.

Due to the small size of the Cruzer Lite (27-1/8″ axle to axle) and low mass weight (3.2 pounds) my little girl has no issues holding the bow up or moving it around before executing the shot.

Adjustability

Out of the box, the Bear Cruzer Lite can be setup to shoot anywhere between 5 and 45 pounds of draw weight. The draw length range goes from 12 to 25 inches. With this adjustment, I suspect that my daughter should be able to shoot this bow for several years before it is time to consider upgrading.

The IBO Speed rating on this bow is 310 feet per second. I’m not sure how that is calculated, considering IBO speeds are generally calculated using 70 pounds of draw weight, 30″ of draw length, and a 350 grain arrow. On the surface, 310 sounds rather impressive for this little bow.

Fit and Finish

The Bear Cruzer Lite has a lot going on for such a little bow. I purchased the RTH (Ready to Hunt) package, which supplied some impressive little accessories. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t top of the line by any stretch of the imagination, but they seemed nicer than the usual cheap plastic offerings on a typical budget bow.

I did run into two issues. The first of which was the peep sight. It was a large diameter peep that tied in 90 degrees to the string. This isn’t a problem if there is sufficient string angle, however, when the draw length is set short, the peep is useless. I wound up replacing it for one that tied in on an angle.

The second issue I ran into was a heavy center serving. The serving was so thick that my daughter had nocks pulling out of arrow shafts during the shot. I had to use a file and open up the nocks on her arrows to help resolve this problem.

Aside from these issues, I’ve been very happy with the bow. The finish on the riser is nice and it feels good in the hand.

To the credit of French Creek Outfitters (where I bought the bow), they offered to re-serve the center serving with something thinner to eliminate this problem. I haven’t taken them up on this offer just yet but I may wind up doing that soon.

Performance

Out of curiosity, I setup my chronograph and took a few shots with the Bear Cruzer Lite. After three arrows I averaged 63 feet per second – using a 17″ draw length and 9 pounds of draw weight.

My daughter is shooting Carbon Express Predator II 2040 Arrows cut to 23″. I have a 90 grain glue-in target point installed with 2″ blazer vanes to steer the arrow. The total arrow weight is 289.6 grains.

Penetration on 3D targets is hit or miss depending on shot location and brand of target. Arrows tend to stick without issue in Mackenzie Targets (we have an old lion at the club) but it is a crap shoot with Rinehart (the more chewed up the insert, the less likely the arrow is to bounce out).

When shooting paper, I’ve been having her shoot on Block Targets. Arrows penetrate those without issue. I suspect we would have bounce outs on our Big Shot Targets (unless we were to use a Youth Mat).

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