I am coming into this late .. and tried to read all the posts but there is one VERY large negative with crossbows.

The NEGATIVE about crossbows is that they can easily be used to kill and take deer outside of legal shooting times without detection. During gun season and ML season there is a very loud BANG!!! when someone shoots after legal shooting hours, and anyone who has hunted much has heard these people and many have been caught by Conservation Officers because of this. If you have hunted in rural areas and hear a shot at night .. you know exactly what is happening, and can call authorities to respond.

With a bow, where you need one hand to hold the bow and another to draw it back, there is no holding a light. You can't see the pins well enough to take a shot after legal shooting hours and even if you were tempted to try and sneak in a silent shot after legal shooting time you would not be able to see well enough to do it. If you were to screw in a flashlight or some other device to your bow, which is illegal in many states ... would at the very least have you answering questions from any CO you met. Now with a crossbow, you can easily sit in your treestand as long as you want .... and just flip on that flashlight and snuff deer with no one the wiser. I am not saying that any good and respectable hunter would do that ... but we have bad apples among us, and we need to be very careful to defend our passion from those types. I don't think allowing crossbows during archery season allows us to patrol our ranks effectively from these types.

There is a reason crossbow's are the "Poachers Choice" and allowing more of them into deer woods in stands during archery season is a bad decision.