There are a lot more deer now than there were then. That' s a fact. But there is also a lot less land available to hunting now than there was then. More deer on less land = better chance to get a deer, but only if you can get on that land in the first place.

Interesting stuff. I think I can correlate a lot of it to technology.

If you' ll notice, the first big jump in success rate didn' t happen until 1974. That' s about the time Bear came out with their Whitetail Hunter. At the time, that was the bow that introduced more hunters to the compound than any other. Up until then, most hunters shot recurves.

In ' 81, that' s about when the compound finally wiped the recurve off the map. I was one of the very few who were still shooting recurves by then.

In ' 84, we got energy wheels and fairly shootable cams. Plus, most bows had gone from using hangars on solid limb tips to cutout limbs like we have today. Faster arrow speeds.

In ' 87, that' s when the first 65% letoff bows were coming out. And we started shooting at McKenzie 3D' s around that time instead of our old fashioned Hipps and Pottinger 2D' s.

Around ' 91, we saw the first 90% letoff production bow from McPherson (for turkey hunting only - yeah, right), pultruded carbon arrows were catching on, and a lot of people started making the switch from shooting fingers to releases.

In ' 93, people were wierding out over finding carbon splinters in their meat and carbon arrows kinda lost their popularity. Most folks went back to aluminum arrows.

Also, in the late 80' s/early 90' s is about when portable treestands started getting popular. And we got our first designer camo - Trebark.

From ' 91 to present, it' s just been one big arms race to see who can put the fastest bow on the market. When did that single cam nonsense start? ' 94? From ' 91 on, I' d gotten ticked at the way things were going and was shooting only trad for the remainder of the decade and not paying much attention to the techie side...

I guess the last biggie to hit was there around ' 98 when we got ICS carbons.