At what point do we come to the conclusion that if we seperate up a 3 month block of hunting time into primitive archery(which my crossbow should be included in) traditional archery(no wheels, but modern equipment) compound, crossbow, then primitive muzzeloading, modern muzzeloading, then shotgun and rifle do we end up with not only a week or so of "our season" if we are lucky but someone somewhere will whine that "their season" is not during peak time so they have no ability to harvest an animal. Allowing crossbows into archery season has never decimated deer herds or caused a huge influx of gun hunters poaring into anyones woods during archery season. The same can be said for ANY form of modern technology in archery. Is technology influencing how we hunt and increasing our chances of taking an animal?? of course. but deer herds are still growing and every year the harvest gets bigger(at least in most states). The crossbow debate will probably never have a clean end since the debate as to compounds being "bows" is still going on as well. I feel that it is a moot point. I would prefer that as "archers" we allow that there is equipment available that makes being accurate easier and more consistant and if we as individuals choose to limit the use of that technology to provide more challenge then we should be a bit more proud of a successfull hunt than the guy with a compound or crossbow.However, pride inour accomplishments is not the same as elitism which is the subject of this thread. Being told by someoneusing a fully outfitted compound that a crossbow is not archery is no diferant than a compound archer being told by a modern recurve hunter withcarbon arrows that his bow is not a bow. That of course is followed by the primitive archer that sneers at all ofus. (by the way, I use a long bow with wood arrows I make myselfduring archery season). Be proud of how you hunt if you choose to take the hard way, you deserve to be proud, but seriously...it is all archery and we had all better focus on more important things than re-defining a weapon that was considered a bow overa thousand years ago...

Wyvern