TJD, your numbers are true. Problem is, they only go back 9 years, since the huge swing away from fingers and round wheel bows to releases and hard cams. If you could research kill ratios back into the 50' s and 60' s I guarantee you' d see a HUGE shift upwards in success rates. That' s why the Army munitions base at McAlister, OK has gone to trad-only for their public hunts. They were looking for success rates around 15% instead of 30-35%. By going all traditional, they hit their target goal.

As for people that whittle out their own bows and make arrows from viburnum switches, chipping their own points out of flint and obsidian, there are a lot more doing that than you would believe. Trads make up a handful of all bowhunters, and the primitive guys make up a handful of all trads, but the numbers are growing. I' ve even made a couple of primitive non-mechanical releases. Nothing at all like a Carter, or even Stanislawski.

Better materials that make our bows more reliable are one thing. Does a string material that jumps performance up from 180 fps to 190 fps really change a recurve to a devastating game killer? Of course not. Designing bows that can be held at full draw for minutes at a time, cams that sling arrows out at over 300 fps and mechanical releases that squeeze off a shot like a gun fundamentally changes bowhunting into something, I feel, it was never meant to be. Technology has already progressed to the point where crossbow shooters are now able to ask why they aren' t allowed a place in archery season, and there aren' t a whole lot of reasonable arguments to deny them. Game agencies are starting to agree.

Like I said earlier, it' s not me you have to convince. It' s the people in charge of setting our hunting regulations that are going to decide the issue for us.

Pope and Young drew the line they did in the interest of keeping crossbows at bay. That comes straight from J. Fred Asbell, P&Y' s President. The article is in the Fifth Edition of Bowhunting Records of North American Big Game if you want to read it. Now all these hotshots with their high letoff bows are thumbing their noses at P&Y because of their rules, and crying about crossbows at the same time.

They' re simply receiving the fruits of the seeds they' ve sown.