Tweaking bow requirements

All in all, I think there’s really no “best” bow out there. The material limitations of almost all bows are such that they exceed a human’s ability to fully draw it, if a bow were to be made with the maximum draw weight in accordance to the materials. The differences in the types of bows are usually so due to limitations in material availability, the environment these bows would be used in, and in what manner these bows would be used. While there are not many cultures that distinguishes between bows used for hunting and bows used for warfare, the ones that do often produce bows above the 180lb draw weight range- some going above 200lb among the cultures that fancied them for warfare.

In most cases, these sorts of bows are overkill against unarmored zombies. Even for bullet-proof or bullet-resistant vest used by the police and soldiers respectively this would be overkill, not so much because arrows have better penetration than some bullets, but because kevlar isn’t made to stop most other stuff than bullets. An arrow with a sharpened cutting head, either from fire-hardening, a knapped piece of rock, or a metal tip presents a shearing force, whereas kevlar is designed to stop stuff that’s simply pushing, albeit pushing incredibly hard. Now prison issued body-armor made to not only resist bullets, but shivs, darts, and other fun things, those stand a good change of stopping an arrow with the above draw weights.