Stopped by Cabelas in Huntsville and they had a Ravin crossbow.

Wow, they thought of EVERYTHING when designing this crossbow. The arrow sits above the rail so there is no friction between the string and the rail, so no rail lube is needed. Maybe you've seen their commercials where they shoot a 3" group at 100 yards? It is really impressive to shoot one.

The bow is drawn with a built in crank and can be de-cocked using it. It was VERY easy to crank. When drawing the bow, you just crank until it quits (impossible to over-crank), then you don't have to move the cocking mechanism, it stays right there. The axle to axle when drawn is something like 6". It did require the use of Ravin arrows because of a special nock.

A group of guys gathered around when I shot it a couple times and everyone was really impressed with the engineering that went into that crossbow. Others also shot it and were impressed. One of the guys said, this crossbow makes all the other crossbows out there "junk". I don't know if I would go that far, but they really did try to think of everything to make it the ultimate crossbow. I don't know of anything I would change right off.

The version they had was the R9 that shoots 390 fps. It was fairly quiet and the trigger was very good. The price tag was a little high, but not out of line with some of the others out there. It was $1500, which was a little bit of a sticker shock for me.

Maybe I will save up, idk??? The worst part about getting one is having to start sitting down to pee...