ORIGINAL: Matt / PA
OK...So...since I shoot a long bow with home made wood arrows during bow season, and my homemade 700year old design CROSSBOW during crossbow season, is my crossbow considered traditional (as in the way our forefathers did it??) and if that is the case, then my crossbow (which took a cow elk last season by the way) with no sites, wood bolts, feathers, and nothing but muscle cocking it (at 185lbs it is a bit of work mind you) is the "traditional" equivilent to a modern crossbow.
That's just impressive plain and simple. [:-]
I think you are seeing my argument relating to the much more extreme modern designs but even looking at your awesome homemade crossbow I still get that twinge of not having to pull it back and hold it back at the moment of truth.
That's what separates arechery and crossbows for me.
I know of at least 3 record book animals that I screwed up by drawing to soon, or too late or not at all that would have been slam dunks with a crossbow. I watched them run off because I wasn't good enough. I still need that challenge of having to decide when to draw the string back and having to hold the bow up to make a shot.
When I am old and gray or injured I may just find myself using one in archery season because like I said it probably is the next closest thing you can get but I still will not consider it "archery" hunting. It will be doing what I have to do to still be out there enjoying that season. I'm sure I'll enjoy it just fine but I know the difference.
Everyone seems to think just because some of us don't agree that a crossbow is bowhunting or archery that we're causing some great rift in the force that is hunting in general........that's just nonsense really. It's simply another weapon and deserves it's own classification IMO. I know I'm not saying "Your evil because you want to shoot a crossbow, or want to use it in archery season" .
I just truly feel that the line in "archery" hunting is drawn vertically not horizontally
and archery was never meant to be pre loaded and ready to fire by simply pulling a trigger.
I'll put it to you this way, if someone developed a device that allowed me to keep my Black Widow recurve at full draw the entire time on stand but I could release the string by hand with a homemade cedar arrow and flint broadhead I STILL would not consider that archery hunting.
That's what you're up against with me.
But regardless that hoemmade crossbow is AWESOME, and I'll grant you that's about as close as I'm going to get at softening on crossbows as comparable to archery hunting. LOL
Nice job!