Carbon on a 34 inch hunting bow is the subject customers bring up more than anything else this season. PSE has five hunting bows in its 2027 line: the Odin Carbon, Odin Sub 30 Carbon, Odin Specialist Carbon, Sicario Carbon, and Butcher. I have not shot any of them, so everything here comes from PSE's own product pages as they stand now. The Odin Carbon measures 34 inches axle to axle and uses a redesigned in-house carbon riser handcrafted in Tucson, Arizona. PSE says that riser delivers 10 percent greater stiffness, with an enhanced internal core that reduces vibration. That is their number, and I do not argue with it. The site lists no price for any of these bows, and the variants are not orderable yet, so I have nothing to say about value either.
Stiffness is not the hard part of carbon. Structurally, carbon gives you stiffness easily. The hard part is keeping a bow feeling the same after a season of abuse.
A hunting bow gets strapped to a pack, hauled up into a treestand, leaned against a truck, and knocked against branches on the walk in. It sits in a cold blind at dawn and in a hot vehicle at noon. Those swings change how a bow feels in the hand, how the string sits on the release, and how cleanly the arrow leaves. A riser can be built to handle a lot of that, but the bow still has to keep its tune through it. This is why the question I put to every hunter is not how many feet per second the bow makes. I want to know how often the bow gets dropped, bumped, or left somewhere it should not be. The answer tells me more about the bow he will be happy with than any speed figure.
Speed comes near the bottom of my list. A hunting bow has to be shot in tight places, in the cold, while tired, and under pressure.
Look at the Odin Carbon with its two cam options. With the FDS, the brace height is 6-5/8 inches. With the new FDS XL, it is 6-7/8 inches. PSE rates the FDS at 340 fps and the FDS XL at 366 fps at a 33 inch draw, which is 26 fps for a quarter inch of brace height. I take that trade, and I explain it the same way every time. In my experience setting up bows, a slightly longer brace is more forgiving and quieter, and it stops the string clipping your sleeve, and those are things a hunter notices on every arrow. At close hunting distance the 26 fps difference moves the impact point far less than it does at 60 yards, so the trade costs you less there than the number suggests. For open country and longer shots, I lean toward the FDS. For a treestand and tight timber, I lean toward the XL. Do not give away feel for one number.
The Odin Sub 30 Carbon is 29.5 inches axle to axle and uses the same generation of carbon riser. PSE positions it for treestands and ground blinds. Its brace height is 6 inches with the FDS and 6-1/4 inches with the FDS XL. PSE lists IBO speeds of 346 and 357 fps at a 31.5 inch draw, with a mass of 3.6 lb. Draw lengths run from 24.5 to 30 inches with the FDS, and from 26 to 31.5 inches with the FDS XL.
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The Odin Specialist Carbon is built for shorter draw archers. It is 29.5 inches axle to axle, uses FDSM cams, and offers quarter inch draw length adjustment. Its brace height is 5-7/8 inches, and PSE lists it at 330 fps at a 28-1/8 inch draw. For a smaller archer who has been turned away by long bows, this is the one in the line I would put in front of him first.
The Sicario Carbon measures 33 inches axle to axle with a 5-1/2 inch brace. It has a Dead Frequency Carbon riser, 5/8 inch cam bearings, and a choice of FDS or FDS XL cams. The Butcher is 30-1/4 inches axle to axle with a 6-7/8 inch brace, EC2 cams, and the PBTS tuning system. PSE lists it at 328 fps and gives it a mass of 4.5 lb. All five bows use the EZ220 version of PSE's Limb Vise limb pockets.
On a hunting bow I look at whether you can hit with it. Axle to axle length and brace height decide how much room you get in a cramped stand. After that comes draw length fit, then grip, then how the bow carries all day on your back, and speed comes last. The 366 figure is measured at a 33 inch draw. The IBO standard is 30 inches of draw at 70 pounds with a 350 grain arrow. If your draw length is nowhere near 33 inches, treat that number as a reference only.
PSE also says the Odin Carbon was developed with input from its professional hunting staff and cycle tested beyond 100,000 shots at 90 pounds. That tells me PSE tested the riser for durability, and a bench cycle test is not the same thing as a season in the timber. It does not tell you how the bow will sit in your hands on the morning you need it, and only a fitting does that.
The collection page asks buyers to find a trusted pro shop for fitting and full tuning, and that is where these bows belong, because a bow set up correctly, with arrows matched to its draw weight and spine, gives you a better chance of the same shot from one hunt to the next.