TJD, your numbers are true. Problem is, they only go back 9 years, since the huge swing away from fingers and round wheel bows to releases and hard cams. If you could research kill ratios back into the 50' s and 60' s I guarantee you' d see a HUGE shift upwards in success rates. That' s why the Army munitions base at McAlister, OK has gone to trad-only for their public hunts. They were looking for success rates around 15% instead of 30-35%. By going all traditional, they hit their target goal.

As for people that whittle out their own bows and make arrows from viburnum switches, chipping their own points out of flint and obsidian, there are a lot more doing that than you would believe. Trads make up a handful of all bowhunters, and the primitive guys make up a handful of all trads, but the numbers are growing. I' ve even made a couple of primitive non-mechanical releases. Nothing at all like a Carter, or even Stanislawski.

Better materials that make our bows more reliable are one thing. Does a string material that jumps performance up from 180 fps to 190 fps really change a recurve to a devastating game killer? Of course not. Designing bows that can be held at full draw for minutes at a time, cams that sling arrows out at over 300 fps and mechanical releases that squeeze off a shot like a gun fundamentally changes bowhunting into something, I feel, it was never meant to be. Technology has already progressed to the point where crossbow shooters are now able to ask why they aren' t allowed a place in archery season, and there aren' t a whole lot of reasonable arguments to deny them. Game agencies are starting to agree.

Like I said earlier, it' s not me you have to convince. It' s the people in charge of setting our hunting regulations that are going to decide the issue for us.

Pope and Young drew the line they did in the interest of keeping crossbows at bay. That comes straight from J. Fred Asbell, P&Y' s President. The article is in the Fifth Edition of Bowhunting Records of North American Big Game if you want to read it. Now all these hotshots with their high letoff bows are thumbing their noses at P&Y because of their rules, and crying about crossbows at the same time.

They' re simply receiving the fruits of the seeds they' ve sown.

I do all of my hunting in MD and I was VERY disenheartened to hear MD is going to allow crossbows. I agree totally with Rack in that anyone who has wanted to take advantage of the achery season, has done so long ago. The only people that are going to take advantage of the crossbows in archery season are the gun hunters who don' t want to take the time, energy, and patience to learn archery. You can' t use the " archery numbers have been down, so crossbows will get more people involved" argument in MD, either. MD' s archery numbers have been strong and climbing for years now.

My biggest fear is the gunhunters who will now jump into the archery season with their crossbows. These are the guys from the cities who go out and buy their gear 2 days before the season, and then go out hunting. The same guys that don' t have respect for landowners, the game or the sport. The same guys who trespass.
The same guys that wound animals and give up the blood trail after 50 yards. I could go on and on.

I can' t tell you how many places I could hunt as a kid, but now can' t because some yahoo shot the landowners cows or broke his fence or wounded animals and let them lay or shot deer with a bow in the ham and the landowners wife saw the deer 2 weeks after the season with the arrow still in its' ham walking around.

This stuff is all real. All of this has happened in the past on land that I used to hunt. And none of these landowners allow ANY hunting because of it.

Go ahead and use your " we should all stick together as hunters" argument, but it won' t work on me. I love hunting, but I don' t consider some guy who buys his license and weapon 2 days before the season and wears his Mossy Oak with the tags still on it a hunter.

It' s guys like this that I can thank for losing my hunting land and probably eventually, my hunting rights.

See you all in the Frederick Watershed.


Slice

Crossbows

This ancient weapon has been around for centuries, and modern iterations of the crossbow are still being made. While bans and restrictions on firearms prevent most citizens from owning a gun, very few authorities restrict the sale of crossbows. Modern versions are often made with synthetic stocks and compound pulley systems to improve the amount of power the crossbow archer can produce.

One major rift within the discipline does exist, however. Bow archers, long fighting for their right to hunt in an exclusive season, often despise crossbows. Bow-hunters consider the crossbow to be a mechanical compensation for lack of skill and an affront to the dedication and perseverance it takes to learn to hunt with a bow.

“Crossbows are not bows.” Crossbows were the next logical generation of archery development recognized as such by medieval scholars and historians, weapons development historians, the Department of Defense, ATF, and FBI. Even the criminal investigation classification and law place crossbows in “archery”. Every group that analyzes the properties and history of crossbows categorize them in “archery” or “bows”. The only group that does not recognize this is the bowhunting community, because of the perceived reduction on their chance of success. In truth the traditional bowhunting equipment is less effective than crossbows. Today’s compound bows are essentially similar to the crossbow in terms of performance and are only different in terms of vertical or horizontal configuration and the locked draw. The crossbow does not have a “rifle stock”. The stock was developed historically from crossbow stocks (chicken or the egg argument) and then adapted to primitive firearms. The crossbow stock is not designed for recoil or the placement of an action; rifle stocks are not designed for horizontal mechanical force loading. Incidentally, the International Bowhunting Organization recently changed the status of the crossbow during competition from exhibition to participation.

The State of Iowa has shown how much influence bowhunting associations can have on state law in terms of demands on administrative and legislative time and effort.

Iowa defines “bow” and “arrow”
The IAC section that deals with bowhunting deer now reads:

" Except for crossbows for persons with certain afflictions of the upper body, as provided in 571 - 15.5(481A), only bows and arrows meeting the following criteria will be permitted for hunting deer.

a. Only longbows, flat bows, recurve bows, compound bows or any combination of these designs that are hand-held and at least 30 inches long will be permitted. The propulsive energy for launching an arrow must derive solely from the bending and recovery of two limbs of the bow.

b. The bow must be hand drawn and held at all parts of the drawing cycle by a single, uninterrupted pulling action using only the muscle power of the shooter' s body until release. Release of the arrow must be by a conscious action of the shooter, either by relaxing tension of the fingers or triggering a hand-held release aid. No portion of the bow' s riser (handle) or any trough, track, channel or other device that attaches directly to the bow' s riser shall contact, support and/or guide the arrow from a point rearward to the bow' s brace height.

c. The following are prohibited: Crossbows; any device with a gun-style stock; any device that holds the bowstring at partial or full draw without the shooter' s muscle power; any device that derives the energy to propel the arrow from a hydraulic, pneumatic or mechanical or similar device other than the mechanical advantage provided by eccentric wheels or cams where energy to propel the arrow comes from the pulling effort of the shooter. Iowa just made traditional bows illegal.


I don' t understand the problem here. There is no gunpowder. There is no difference other than the held draw. What is going to happen when technology advances?? Are we looking that far ahead?

I think you get my point Arthur! Or are you trying to tell everyone here that xbows take just as much practice time as traditional or compounds? If thats the case I dont care how many xbows you have , your full of $hi*!

I know an awful lot of guys who get their guns out a week before season to sight them in and get deer on a regular basis! But according to you sir , " they dont have any business in the woods" [:' (]

Hey Doug, I remember beating the hide off this horse last year with you, and I ain`t biting this year!

But I do get a kick out of watching from the sidelines.

Carry on!

I dont know why I fall for this every year. I tell mysef not to bother , why waste my time , and then I tell myself to shut the hell up and I dive right in.

Is it too late to back out and grab some popcorn?

I' m done![X(]

That' s exactly what I said and exactly what I meant. I guess you' re trying to say they' re doing the right thing? You KNOW better.

If you think I' m saying compounders and crossbowers should practice as much as trads do... You' re right again! Congratulations. You understood my post, perfectly.

Too bad so many compounders and crossbowers don' t enjoy shooting their stuff as much as trads do. Has to be lack of enjoyment or they wouldn' t be looking for reasons to avoid shooting and making up lame excuses like ' I don' t have time to practice.' [:' (]

I can not believe a bunch of gronw ups are arguing over something like this. The bottom line is.....there are enough woods for everyon to hunt in.