I started bow hunting in Pennsylvania when I was a kid, so I know a little bit about the progression of things. I don't know where these people were that said bow hunting was looked up to as something special. If you were in a bar in the mountains during rifle season and mentioned a bow, you were lucky if you didn't get the crap beat out of you. Bow hunters were hated by the rifle hunters back in the 60s and early 70s. Then along came the compound bow in the late 70s, if I remember correctly. It pulled the "stick" guys over to the compound. There were still plenty of deer on public lands so I stuck to the stick and the recurve. I hunted for years on public land and only remember seeing two other guys with recurves. Where were all you holier than thou guys at? Then Pa. let archery season extend into the rut. Everybody and his brother ran out and bought a compound bow. A lot of those hard corp rifle hunters became bow hunters when they found out it was easier to kill a buck with a bow during the rut than with a rifle in gun season. Unfortunately, it beat the deer herd into the dirt on the state land I hunt. From my observation, for every deer drug out one is hit and lost. Now I rarely bow hunt anymore. The mountains that once were good places to bow hunt are now empty of bow hunters. They all quit or went somewhere else because the early in-line hunters kill and scare off most of the deer in the area.
I have now come full circle. I hunt mostly with a gun the second week and do O.K. Deer get pushed in from private property by then. So don't worry about crossbows, it is a fad that will run its course. The ranks will thin out when the easy pickins' are gone. Maybe some of you should try rifle hunting again.