Is a 50 pound pull back weight a lot for a compound bow?

The 50 lb bow weight will provide a complete pass through on a deer sized animal, providing you hit in the heart-lung area. But it will not bust through the bones like a higher powered bow will do.

When I first started bow hunting, my first compound was a 50 lb Brown Bear, with round cams and weak. But I killed 30 deer with it, before I moved up to 70 lbs.

The main thing is accuracy. And to get that, the shots need to be 30 yards or less., preferably around 20.

Well, draw weight does not exactly equate to power, per se, but a 50lb draw bow should be adequate for whitetail and mule deer or anything smaller.

What you really need to be concerned about is the velocity. If the bow is rated for, say, 320 FPS with a 50lb draw, you can expect a real life estimate of about 310 FPS. That is about 73 foot-pounds of energy, which is adequate to take pretty much any animal in the world per the chart at the bottom of this page:

http://www.huntersfriend.com/compound_bow_selectio...

Now, I am almost 100% positive that you'll want to be closer to 60-70 pounds of draw to get 310 FPS from a typical modern compound bow... but pretty much any 50lb bow can handle whitetail or mule deer provided you can get a clean shot.

Shooting range and accurate shots will do for any deer. I hunted with a 40 lbs bow for years with great success, But killed a lot of bales of hay first. Getting a close shot (20 to30yrds) is part of the fun of bow hunting, but a clean harvest is when you have put all your work together and with good results.