Consider, Matt... We're already letting in compounds with 99% let-off. How long could you hold back a 70 pound draw bow with 7/10ths of a pound of holding weight? In Texas, the drawlock device is legal! Isn't that a vertical crossbow, for all practical purposes? We've got bows that are nudging ever closer to 400 fps, and you know as well as I that they're going to keep pushing until they get there. Some suicidesetups are already capable of it.

Maybe I'm ready to toss out the baby with the bath water. I've been accused of it before. I spent a lot of years on the front lines of the anti-crossbow war, whileoften taking very long breaks from the compound. I'dconcentrate on shooting traditionalwhile notpaying much attention to what was going on with compounds. Then one day, duringone of mytraditional sabbaticals that had been going on for several years, someone said something on a forum that caused me to turn around and take a hard look at what was going on behind my back with compound technology.

I honestly felt betrayed because I saw that what I was fighting for had turned into exactly what I had been fighting so hard against. All the things I'd feared would happen if crossbows were allowed in archery seasons had already come to pass. There were suddenly a lot more of what I considered slob hunters in our ranks than ever before. We had guys describing themselves as meat hunters and trophy hunters.Wehad equipmentthat makes bowhunting so easy that BOWHUNTERSstarted doing QDM. That had always beforebeen the rifle hunters' domain! Bowhunting success rates for compound users had leapt up to around 35%, only acouple tenths of a percent different from what Ohio lists as the success rate for crossbow hunters. Traditional? It still is only in the 12-15% range. We had bowhunters that were getting upset if they didn't tag out every year. BOWHUNTERS consistently tagging out!

I don't know. Time will tell if I'm right or wrong. All I know is, except for traditional and primitive,bowhunting today is not the bowhunting I was fighting to preserve.I just don't see the vast majority of 'bowhunters' backing off from their infatuation with technology enough to reestablish what they always called "a clear and demonstrable difference" between compounds and crossbows. On the contrary, the compound clankeeps demanding more and more. "Make it faster, easier, more mechanicalso I canbe successful without so much effort."

The reason so many states lately have legalized crossbows is due almost entirely to the proliferation in compound technology, not to mentionP&Y's loss of credibility on the issue since the demise of the 65% let-off rule. You can look forward to more states going the same way in the near future. The geniehas escapedand there's no way to put that little turd back in the bottle.