BuckMagnet, the reason the trads are so concerned about what's happening with compounds is the fact that we share the same season. They're concerned that making the compound easier and easier to take game with is going to eventually raise hunter success ratios to the point where the season is shortened.
TJD posted this last July:
What I did was this: looked at the Wisconsin bowhunting numbers going back to 1966, and calculated the success rate; that is the ratio of deer killed to the number of licenses sold. Since Wisconsin has one of the larger numbers of bowhunters in the US, I' m gonna guess that the results would be similar in other States as well.
In a nutshell, here' s what I found:
Year Total Kill Licensed Hunters Bow Success
1966 5,986 85,114 7.03%
1967 7,592 101,573 7.47%
1968 6,934 114,975 6.03%
1969 5,987 106,669 5.61%
1970 6,520 101,573 6.42%
1971 6,522 100,206 6.51%
1972 7,087 98,720 7.18%
1973 8,456 105,875 7.99%
1974 12,514 119,960 10.43%
1975 13,588 133,775 10.16%
1976 13,636 133,318 10.23%
1977 16,790 146,760 11.44%
1978 18,113 157,838 11.48%
1979 16,018 144,511 11.08%
1980 20,954 155,386 13.49%
1981 29,083 173,874 16.73%
1982 30,850 189,524 16.28%
1983 32,876 194,367 16.91%
1984 38,891 205,132 18.96%
1985 40,744 215,900 18.87%
1986 40,490 216,472 18.70%
1987 42,651 208,675 20.44%
1988 42,393 210,518 20.14%
1989 46,394 210,912 22.00%
1990 49,291 216,981 22.72%
1991 67,097 216,559 30.98%
1992 60,478 220,872 27.38%
1993 53,008 224,008 23.66%
1994 66,254 234,077 28.30%
1995 69,269 235,780 30.94%
1997 67,115 237,991 28.20%
1998 75,301 240,350 31.33%
1999 91,937 252,432 36.42%
2000 86,899 258,236 33.65%
2001 83,120 257,571 32.27%
There are a number factors that contribute to the hunter success ratio increase: more deer, popularity of treestands, better educated hunters for instance. But the bows we have now are light years ahead of what they were just 20 years ago. You can look at those numbers and correlate the 3-5% spikes pretty well with advances in archery equipment. 1999 for instance, the year ICS-type carbons got popular.
Going by the data from the McAlister, OK army base where they wound up limiting the hunt to trad equipment in order to keep their harvest rates down to management levels of 12-15%, it would appear that the treestands, deer numbers and education would account for about a 6-9% increase. That leaves archery related advances accounting for at least another 20%.
Those advances have put bowhunting in the spotlight as a game management tool, when we started out being a recreational hunting activity with minimal herd impact. That might be a good thing in areas where deer herds are out of control. But where herds are thin, that kind of success rate could be a disaster for bowhunters.
What will happen to our seasons if our success ratios ever get close to gun hunters? Your success rate with your compound could have a very direct and detrimental impact on my traditional hunting. Remember, none of us is all alone on an island. We're all in this together. What the compound community does has a direct effect on the trad community.
What has turned into 'bashing' and senseless arguing started out being trads raising valid concerns about how technology is impacting the sport. And being roundly cussed for their audacity and then ignored by the tech community. Small wonder there is so much anger involved in this kind of thread now.
A lot of us are SO worried about what the PETAphiles think, but have so little regard of what another group of bowhunters think. Isn't that skewed a ways off the path?
Both sides need to quit being so defensive about things and THINK the whole thing through. Maybe that way we can find some common ground.