I was resistant to the idea myself before seeing Martial Power... but now I'm thinking Beast Mastery might not be such a bad idea. The primary reason I was resistant to it was that I was glad that the PHB Ranger was not forced to be nature oriented, and that I could use it to make a better archery-based thief, military-style archer, or other type of sharpshooter archetype than with any other class.
But now that I look at it, a raptor companion sounds really good. You can mark targets easier. Seeing as how it says that when you spend a move action both you and your companion can move (need not be the same movement), that adds in all kinds of opportunities. Just looking at the first couple levels, I see a few things:
For one thing, you could move or shift as your move to keep out of enemy reach, while your companion flies toward the next target you plan to attack, to be positioned to mark it.
You've got a level 2 utility that basically allows you to make two trained perception checks at will and take the best result.
And looking at the attack powers, while there aren't any ranged beast powers per se, there are powers that are "Melee Beast 1", which states that the companion must be adjacent to the target. You can be anywhere you damn well please. Partnered Savaging even seems to be something you could use well as an archer, the companion attacks in melee, and if you've got the target marked, you get to shift and make a basic attack against the same target. Note that it doesn't say melee basic attack, and there are ranged basic attacks in the game as well so you could do this with your bow. That would provide the 2{B} damage, your 1{W} damage from the basic attack, plus your extra Quarry damage, and a 3 square shift for you. Your companion could move over, mark the target, swoop down and claw at a target in melee, and then you could shoot at the same target from range. I'm sure that on examination, there will probably be other powers like this that would be perfectly fine for an archer to use as written.
I now think I might just modify my preferred martial character build from an archery thief built from a Ranger / Rogue multiclass with the Archer Fighting Style to one that includes a falcon companion as his "thief's fetch" to swoop down to distract foes and snatch things, and still take primarily archery attack powers.
