The best thing any of us could do is talk our fellow shooters into shooting more than just the week before the season starts or even not shooting at all until they shoot at an animal.
Agreed, wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, that's something the entire archery world has been wildly unsuccessful at getting done.
But are the manufacturers pitching in and helping to improve the situation? Hell NO.To the contrary, nearly every bit of advertising copy for new bows, arrows, mechanical broadheads, etc focuses on how much EASIER it is to shoot well with their products. Which most people seem to correlate with how much LESS they have to shoot and practice.
I've never understood it, but there is a gargantuan number of people calling themselves 'bowhunters' who seem to think shooting a bow is a chore to be avoided.And those seem to be the very people that the marketing specialists are targeting. [>:]
Minimum arrow weight is a poor solution, admittedly, but what else is there? The human critter is a lazy slug. He won't do anything he doesn't want to dounless he absolutely has to. Keep that in mind.
We can't FORCE people to practice. We can't FORCE them to enjoy archery. We can't FORCE them to take educational classes in archery physics and mechanics and, even if they did,we couldn't FORCE them to understand a word of it.
I feel minimum arrow weight is the one thing we CAN mandate, under force of law, that has the best chance of making postive changes in the wound/loss ratio and fending off the anti's. Some guys might have to sacrifice and shoot arrows that weigh 50-60 grains more than they really like. They might have to endure a 15-20 fps loss in speed and not be able to brag their hunting rig shoots over 300 fps. They might have to endure an increase in penetration potential with very little impact on their trajectories over typical hunting distances.
I'm sorry for all that. I'm sorry that we have to have game laws just because you can't count on people to always do the right and ethical thing without someone looking over their shoulder. I'm sorry that so manypeople can't learn to love archery the way we do. I'm sorry so many can't even grasp the fundamentals of physics as it pertains to archery. I'm sorry so many head to the woods every year without knowing the anatomy of their intended quarry, so they'd know where to place an arrow. I'm sorry that so many think shooting well enough to hit a paper plate at X number of yards makes them 'hunt ready.' I'm sorry so many guys won't be able to WOW the bystanders with their arrow speed at the archery range with 400 gn arrows.
I'm even sorry I can't say the minimum arrow weight should be 450 grains.
