Good Lord!!! 17 pounds??!? You haul that thing around in a trailer or what? <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle> Mine weighs about 7 pounds with scope and quiver full of bolts.

I don't disagree with you on the high letoff compounds. In fact, that's the main reason Pope and Young won't budge on their 65% minimum. They knew the crossbow proponents would someday make that argument. However, getting TO full draw with a deer in front of you is still a bit more difficult than simply shouldering a crossbow.

The Ohio kill numbers came off the ODNR website. It's your game department, not mine. You would have a better idea of how they come up with their data than I would. But, I have to admit to a little ignorance on my part how my state comes up with it's numbers.

As to whether our deer population would overrun everything if they shortened our gun season, the answer is yes. Texas has about 4 million whitetail deer and, with just under 600,000 hunters, we NEED that 75% success rate. But, as I said earlier, you can hunt with whatever you want to hunt with in the gun season, aside from some public lands that restrict you to shotgun, muzzleloader, bow or crossbow.

I wish I could give you hard data on Texas bow season, but several years ago TPWD started selling licenses with all stamps and permits needed for nearly all hunting and fishing in the state. So, someone that only goes fishing for redfish or hunting for whitewing dove and needs those permits but doesn't have any interest in turkey hunting or bowhunting, he will buy the combined license with the turkey and archery permits. It's cheaper than just getting the hunting/fishing license with only the permits he needs. So, we really don't know how many are bowhunting. We don't have check-in stations either, so they can't do any on site surveys.

That's why I don't know how my state gets it's data. I can tell you that bowhunters don't like it for that very reason. We don't know how many of us there are. We can't go to the commission and say there are 'X' number of people they are going to mess up by pulling one of their little schemes to get guns into bow season. We had a devil of a time last winter when TPWD proposed a youth only gun season to be held each and every weekend of bow season. We managed to hold it to only the last weekend, but still, our season was encroached upon.

In fact, we think the license program is a prelude to incorporating the bow season into the general season. If, or when, that happens, the argument against crossbows in this state will be a moot point. And there won't be any more crossbow hunters here than there are right now.




Edited by - Arthur P on 01/29/2002 15:44:09