I finally received my Mountain Monarch early last week. The bow came shipped in a square box that included a soft fleece case, flemish string with yarn ball silencers and tie on nock point, a black rubber bow tip protector, as well as a big jim T shirt.
The bow looks better than I could have imagined, the woods Jim suggested pair so well with the spalted myrtle limbs I picked out. The Mountain monarch typically comes with a black micarta I beam, but I told Jim I wanted the look of a wood I beam so he said he could move the micarta over to the side and suggested maccasar ebony wood for the sight window. I was a little worried the black micarta would throw off the look of a mostly wood bow, but I think it blends nicely with the dark maccasar, and complements the black spalting in the riser and limbs very well.
For a grip I asked Jim if he could make it similar to the Toelke Pika but with a bit of palm swell and he did an excellent job. I suspect he has handled a few Pikas, the likeness is spot on.
While shooting the bow for the first time I did notice the slight extra speed from a recurve design and the different noise a recurve makes upon release, I have been shooting r/d longbows for the last couple years and it took a few shoots to get into the groove of recurve shooting. After a day I became a lot more comfortable with the bow and a lot of the extra noise has died down, although it still has that recurve "twang" compared to a longbow "thump"
So far I am loving it, I have been running full length 600 spine beman centershots through the bow with 150 grain field points. Bare shafts are showing a little week, but I am going to shoot it a while longer before trying to adjust the arrow at all. I suspect I will cut down the shaft some and go with a 175 or 200 grain head;in order to keep that magic 10 gpp. But until then I am still getting to know her. it has been a long wait and fun ride. The last few weeks I have felt like a kid waiting for christmas morning.
instead of embedding all the pics I will just put a link up to an album
https://imgur.com/a/ru1Ze3l
