WFL, I couldn' t agree more. There was much too much hubub about the equipment in the RU class because the better shooters can shoot just about anything. Francisco shot a bow very much like my hunting recurve. But my huting recurve isn' t a " hunting recurve" according to lots of trad shooters. It' s fast. It' s accurate. It' s powerful as hell at 55 pounds with carbon limbs. It' s set up with a plunger and a flipper just like everyone else in the RU class and just like most hunters used to do before shooting off the shelf became all the rage.

Steve, what baffled me was that the HR class DIDN' T have restrictions on point weight, arrow weight to draw weight and other things that would keep the class from getting " corrupted" by target shooters. You' re going to be facing a lot of them next year because they have no where else to go.

Unfortunately, I can' t shoot my hunting setup in the HR class because my hunting setup has a <gasp!> arrow rest! And it also has a <shame, shame!!!> 4 inch shock and sound absorbing stabilizer. The fact that it' s an ACTUAL hunting bow at a relatively stout 55#@27" draw weight doesn' t seem to matter. My setup got blown out of the water by the new rules.... to shoot RU competitively, I had to switch over to a target setup and to shoot HR, I' d have to discard a HUNTING stabilizer and figure out some way to turn my flat shelf into a radius shelf, get rid of the arrow rest and pad it out with leather in a way that meets the rules - or buy ANOTHER bow set up specifically for that style of shooting, which I personally think is a disadvantage for hunting.

I thought the RU class was viable as it stood before and that' s what really sandpapered me. No stringwalking, no face walking, no 3 foot stabilizers. So what if a small hunting stablizer or plunger button is used with an arrow rest. If they help you put the arrow where it belongs in the hunting woods what makes it such a bad/unfair thing? I guess I' m just nonplussed about all this nonsense. In the golden age of recurves and barebow shooting EVERYONE used an arrow rest. Shooting off the shelf only became stylish in the last ten years or so. I' d hardly call a recent fad " traditional" , anyway. Maybe I' ve just been in this sport too long and have turned into an anachronism.

But one thing you can bet on. The HR class will have the rules stretched just like every other class. People want to win and they' ll do what' s within the rules to do it and there' s nothing wrong with that.