Common fallacy, perhaps just an excuse to sooth one's ego, but fast bows are not necessarily loud, or shocky or hard to shoot well. In fact the opposite is the case. But ulitmately cast is and always has been the standard for any and every bowyer, once the other aspects are attained. And cast is absolutely a very important aspect of any hunting bow in particular, where distance to target is frequently not known with certainty, and time and intellect necessary to estimate well usually very limited.
It can be very humbling, and an incentive for some and an excuse for others. A chrono will teach you a lot and if you are not careful most of it unrelated to bowyering. When you see exceptionally large numbers, look for string type and mass, overdraw or other shooting technique, even relative humidity. Within reason, all well built bows shoot within 5% of each other, within each style and materials obviously. Conversely, when you see exceptionally low numbers, there's a reason and frequently one of the aforementioned. But when you completely ignore cast as an aspect of one's prowess as a bowyer, you miss substantially what makes a bow a bow and consequently what makes a bowyer a bowyer. Nearly anyone can put a string on an appropriately shaped green elm limb right off the tree literally and expect it to not break, and cast and arrow some distance.
My shooting technique is poor, so 170s is the best I've done with a boo backed bow, usually I get in the 160s with selfbows, 10 gpp, 22" power stroke, ~200 grain strings. I have little doubt a practiced shooter with good technique could increase that by 5 t0 10 fps. But still, 5 to 10 fps is not all that much on a percentage basis, which supports my earlier argument.
I've not seen many bows posted here that would not shoot within 90% of the standard, so I expect some who have posted would be surprised what their bows would actually shoot from a machine, all else being equal.
