On the 70 yard stuff, and the instant bowhunter stuff:
On the 70 yds. Of course you can kill a deer with a compound at 70 yards, and there are even a few people who might have business trying it.
Ballisticaly I don' t recomend going out to 70 yards and trying to catch the arrows. I don' t recomend it at any range. Remember Agencourt.[
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Hitting at that range is a whole other thing. Go to a 3D event, and see if anyone misses the 10 ring on any of the targets, ever
. That' s max 50-55 yards. On the other hand there are guys who hit almost all the Xs in a screaming arizona wind. There is a lot less at stake, and in play, in 3d. You' re not shooting at flesh and blood that feels pain much as we do, and can move whenever it wants to.
In fact returning to my PSE shooting school experience of about 10 years ago, George said they comonly shot proghorn at 70-80 yards, though they didn' t use to generaly talk about it. He said if you didn' t have that shot, you reaaly didn' t have much chance. Now that isn' t true today, and may not have been true 30 years ago. But it sure could be true in his particular bit of terrain. After all some gun hunters used to write you can' t get within 500 yards of pronghorn.
OK, but we are talking about serious international level shooters here. Hey guess what there are folks who can run a sub 4 minute mile, etc... I' m not one of them
Finaly, longbows carry energy out there further than crossbows. One could make a crossbow with identical ballistics to a compound, but that isn' t what we generaly have.
The instant bowhunter thing:
The difference between CBs and XBs is that the guy who marches out the door with the Coumpound is not going to have the slightest hope of hitting the side of a barn, The knowledge and tuning required to get even a decent set-up in the field is massive, learning to shoot takes years unless you get expert attention fromt he start, or are uncomonly motivated. The proshop can help with the gear, but even so I know a lot of folks who got a persistant pain in their rotator cuff after the first 20 shots. The XB is all prepackaged. Sighting is presumably required.
Also because of the you-need-to-draw-it thing, most novice CB hunters are unlikely to get even close to a shot, often for years and years. With the XB, your chances may or not be better, but you can get off an arrow, not just make a fool of yourself with an arrow falling off the rest.
I don' t have a dog in this fight, as to which is better for hunting. It was a highly credible idea say back in the days when almost all broadheads were user sharpened, that and instant crossbow hunter might be a bad idea. But we and the gear have evolved, and I am not so sure this reflex response is any more credible today for XBs that rifles. You can' t police the sport in the days of packaged everything, videos and sports channels, the internet, just by making one method somewhat more difficult. As others have said, you need more intergrity than that, both as a sport, and a hunter.