mhogan, you still have never gotten the point I was trying to make when your buddies got me kicked off Bowsite. You understand what technology is doing to bowhunting but you still don't recognize that traditionalists make up 5-6% of all bowhunters. We're a footnote. A bunch of guys with the quaint idea of doing things the way they used to be done. We're living history reinactors. WE DON'T HAVE A BIG ENOUGH VOICE IN THE OVERALL PICTURE TO MAKE ANY IMPACT, WHATSOEVER.

If you think different, trot on over to the tech forum and tell them how trads think their hot new bows, fast arrows and stuff are messing up bowhunting and that they need to mellow out. I'll get the garden hose ready to douse your blazing rear when you get back. <img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>

We trads have fought for restrictions in Texas to the point where the fish and game commissioners roll their eyes at us. Anyone opposed to opening up the regulations to new equipment, like when they legalized the Drawlock, the first thing they say is, 'traditionalists again?'

The choices as I see them: Continuing to fight the crossbow on traditional grounds and be dismissed as kooks. Joining with compound shooters to fight the crossbow, when they shoot stuff just as bad, and be hypocrites. Working to help crossbows get their own season and settle the issue. Or just stand back and watch crossbows get incorporated into bow season.

Out of those choices, I would choose to help them get their own season, or their own hunting areas. That way, I don't lose any of my hunting pie, because I can pick up a crossbow and hunt with it just as easy as a crossbow hunter can pick up a bow and hunt bow season. And I keep my bow season free of shoulder stocked weapons except for the disabled.

Or there is another option. Get out of the fight altogether, let the current bow season go as it has been going, and let all us 'kooks' get together and start lobbying for a new bow season, or at least special area hunts, just for traditional. But then, that would make US the bad guys, trying to take a piece of someone else's pie.

Frankly, here in Texas with a one month bow season and the limited amount of public land we've got, it doesn't really matter too much. Except, of course, for us poor sun-of-a-guns that can't afford the ungodly lease fees and have to hunt public land, and it's mostly swamped with hunters anyway, crossbow or no. On a lease, it doesn't really matter whether the guys on the other side of the fence are hunting with longbows or compounds or crossbows.

Edited by - Arthur P on 01/05/2003 22:00:17

Edited by - Arthur P on 01/05/2003 22:51:07