adams

Ouch, My ribs hurt from that one.

Sure they could drive but you are correct IMO, that it wouldn't be very efficient and for that very reason alone I don't feel the majority of hunters would participate.

But who should get to decided who can participate and who can not? Why as SPORTSMEN, do we want to exclude people from our ranks?
Since I'm not one of then (I will stick to my compound as I am very efficent with it) I can't say why they wouldn't want to try a coumpound. Some my just not like them and others may be more efficient with a crossbow. As to "do we need crossbows" Yes I feel we do need them as a management tool but for giggles let's take the other side for a bit. Unless you shoot traditional gear (a stick and a string) we really have no bitch in the matter. They pioneered the sport and it has evolved from there. Because of this evolution the compound is now considered the norm and the majority of archers never go back to bow hunting in its raw form. Crossbows can be looked at in this same light. IMO it would a step in the easier direction just as compounds are to trad gear.

adams

I forgot to touch on this one. The tide has begun to turn my friend. As urban sprawl continues to devour whitetail habitat and squeeze the areas that one can safely and legally hunt with a firearm, the use of bows and crossbows alike will be the preferred management tool of wildlife professionals to control populations.

MA Jay

Excellent point you just made there Adams. I agree that over time crossbows may well replace guns as the primary management tool. I am including below a post I made elsewhere.

This last year, Ohio "archers" killed 22% more deer than the year before, gun hunters decreased 13%. Crossbows are replacing the deer kill numbers from guns. It's really very simple, and I am not saying it is wrong or that crossbows are bad. They are not the end of civilization, just a major change in the logistics of hunting seasons as we have known them. I believe, based on Ohio and other states with legal crossbow use that they are replacing the gun not the bow. Is that a bad thing? No, I don't think so. We can't pretend that it is not happening though, as it clearly is.

What I wonder about is if people who advocate so strongly for crossbow use during the longer archery seasons realize what they are giving up by transitioning firearm hunters to crossbow hunters. You are not recruiting "new" hunters, the numbers in the states that allow them bear that out. You are recruiting gun hunters to use crossbows as the gun seasons are becoming shorter and the crossbow seasons allow more time in the woods. Still not a bad thing... but couple that with a crossbow season that is very long, with the much larger traditional gun season hunting group and the ony thing that suffers is gun season. I don't mind sharing the woods 1 bit, I love to see other hunters out there. What I see here in the North East is more and more towns and areas not allowing gun hunting any longer, and restricting hunters to archery only if at all. I do not think that is right or a good thing. What the crossbow represents is viable alternative to the gun .. as clearly evidenced by the harvest in Ohio. I don't know about you, but I know what happens when gun rights loses the backing of the "hunter". You may not care about this, but please do not be blind to it or dismiss it.

silentassassin

MA Jay I can take your entire argument and insert compound in the place of crossbow and it's equally true? The fact is that hunters have got to stick together (both gun and bow hunters) and we need to try to get as many as possible involved in the sport.

DJH -------

THEY ARE THE WOLF THAT HAS SEEN THE TIGER

As hunters educate themselves on the pros and cons of the crossbow, the tides are slowly but surely turning.

Across America, the rumble of change is rocking the bowhunting world. At the heart of the storm, amid the thunder is the crossbow! Both sides of the issue are gearing up for what each believes will be the struggle to end all struggles. Those of us that were born before the middle of the last century realize that this controversy is just one more in a long line disputes that has been turning hunters against hunters since the day one clever hunter decide to tie a stone tip to his pointed stick, thereby making his weapon more deadly.

Imagine what his companions had to say about his radical move. He was lurching away from traditional spear hunting! The stone tip was too efficient and would ruin spear hunting, forever. The stone head gave balance to the spear that made it more accurate, far too deadly and even increased the effective range of the weapon! These comments are not unlike those being made about the modern crossbow, eons later.

In my lifetime, I was a part of the “compound conspiracy”, which the “Chicken Littles” of the bowhunting world predicted would destroy bowhunting forever. Three-plus decades later, however, the compound is the weapon of choice and has been responsible for recruiting more bowhunters than any other innovation in history.

Now comes the latest plague that threatens to exterminate bowhunting – the crossbow. Yet bowhunters refuse to pay attention to states like Ohio and Arkansas that have been allowing the crossbow since the compound was still taking its first baby steps. States that can document, based on recorded history rather than emotional conjecture, that the radical claims made by the anti-crossbow camp are not only unfounded, but are pure, unadulterated bovine excrement.

Because of the nature of our publication, we have been receiving calls from all across America for information, documentation and statistics about the crossbow and crossbow hunting. State game management agencies, sporting publications and grassroots hunters are gathering the facts and examining them with careful scrutiny. No longer are people taking the word of what the hysterical uninformed claim to be the truth. Bowhunters want to know exactly what is involved in the issue and exactly what the facts are. Education is winning the day.

In a recent press release, the Pope and Young organization announced their hosting of the 2005 Bowhunting Summit Meeting. In that declaration they included this sentence: Another major issue that will be an agenda item is that of effectively combating the ever-increasing effort by a segment of the archery industry to put crossbows into bowhunting-only seasons.

We recommend that Pope and Young take a short breather and talk to the grassroots bowhunters of this country to find out exactly what they think about the crossbow question. We believe that they would be surprised to find that its not the manufacturers that are creating the crossbow rumble, but instead, it’s the hunter that wants the option to be able to use a crossbow to hunt big game. Of course, we realize that according to their lofty standards, anyone that wants to use a crossbow is two or three notches below that of a forest slug on the food chain.

In a recent survey on the Wisconsin Outdoor News web site they put the question forward to their readers of whether or not they favored expanded crossbow use in that state. On publication cutoff day, the survey indicated that 60% of the hunters favored the crossbow, while 40% were against it.

Organizations like Pope and Young can make all the unfounded claims they wish, but in the end, it will be the bowhunter that causes the crossbow to be just one more option for the modern hunter, not the manufacturers.

As hunters educate themselves on the pros and cons of the crossbow, the tides are slowly, but surely, turning. Through knowledge and truth, people are being made aware of the fact that they have been fed inaccurate and erroneous information by the bowhunting “leaders” for many years.

As more and more hunters work towards the legalization of the crossbow option, the panic among the “Chicken Littles” is slowly, but surely growing. Grassroot hunters are rising up and openly questioning the sage leadership and its ultimatum of “everyone must do it our way or you can’t play”.

As the tables turn, hunting is evolving to its next level amid the screams of protest from the inflexible and self-motivated elite. Unable to stop the oncoming storm, THEY ARE THE WOLF THAT HAS SEEN THE TIGER.

Eleven year old Katy Platek with her first deer taken with an arrow.

datamax

If that is your point, then the compoud bow has made your state untranquil compared to mine - is that a fair statement ?

Why don't compounders use a real bow ?

WHy is the question. Let me tell you the answer - easy. Compounders shoot compound because they're much easier than shooting traditional bows. Undeniable fact. Crossbow shooters like their easy, compounders like their easy, trad hunters like to make it more difficult. But its all bowhunting, isn't it ?

MA Jay - if there comes a time archery hunters are taking too many deer .... then its time to reign in technology and create a modern archery season and a traditional one.

Agreed ?


DJH ------- Funny thing. Most guys from non-crossbow states hate them, fear them and regurgitate P&Y rhetoric. Most guys who live IN crossbow legal states have no problems with them.

Isnt' that odd ? If they are so bad, why do those who have the greatest experience and exposure to them hate them too ?

thesource

And again, Datamax ignores the facts about hunter density and uses his narrow experience in AR to paint the entire bowhunting nation.

You have so few hunters in Arkansas, what difference does a handful of crossbow hunters make? Apparently, there are not that many interested in bowhunting in general there.

Its pretty simple math to extrapolate crossbow numbers to BIG hunting states, and the numbers become downright ridiculous.

Again, why do we need to legalize crossbows? Anyone who wishes to hunt in bow season can grab a legal bow and join in. How is that exclusionary?

MA Jay

Agreed.

I am not going to argue against crossbows here. My point was clear, be very careful what you wish for. Adding crossbows to archery season adds more hunters and kills more deer during archery season. The result in Ohio is shorter gun seasons and reduced deer harvest. Gun hunters who already were hunters are switching to crossbows to get access to more deer and time in the woods, and here is the catch.. but did not switch to archery (bows) equipment when it was available to them. I don't blame them for it, wise move in my mind spending more time in the woods. Now take the next step guys.. and Ohio is a perfect example... what happens when bowhunters and crossbow hunters kill more deer than gun hunters or more than they are allocated to kill? Either the entire lumped archery season is reduced, or as Data pointed out you split modern archery equipment (compounds and crossbows) from traditional, reducing the seasons for the more popular and efficient modern equipment or the last and already happening option, remove gun hunting and use archery as the only legal means to control deer.

Think about it. The numbers and the facts are right there. If the trend is longer seasons and more and easier to use archery like equipment .... what happens to guns? I'll tell you, as I have seen it all over the North East, they are made illegal to hunt with at all. That means no bird, deer or squirrel hunting with guns. Crossbow advocates, you claim we (the at least keep them seperate crowd) are "dividing our numbers" .. when you don't see for a second the forest for the trees. Archery seasons greatest strength is it is not easy and requires effort to master. It is why, even with 3 and 4 month seasons we kill less than 20% of the deer compared with 2 weeks with guns. Add all those deer killed with crossbows as in Ohio and see how long before they eliminate all that scary gun hunting. Talk about dividing our sport. It won't happen over night. But it has already started in every town and county where they have restricted all hunting to archery only.

datamax

I've lived in 40+ of these states, traveling to almost veryone and hunting over a dozen in the process. I also have read quite a bit up on the subject - enough to know that anti-crossbow people cannot point out one time, just ONE TIME, where crossbows have resulted in lost season or tags.

Not once.

And let me remind you once more, if overcrowding is the issue, ban the damn compound because 98% of archers use those. Compounds do exactly what you fear crossbows will do - they bring in those not dedicated enough to learning "real archery" and/or using a real bow. Am I right or wrong ?

It SHOULD make a huge differnce using your silly mathematics. We have a few hundred thousand gun hunters and they SHOULD all be using crossbows to infiltrate our archery season, shouldn't they ?

But they aren't. Why ? Bowhunting isn't easy. C'mon, the BOWHUNT does not change one lick until you're ready to shoot your bow, be it crossbow/compound/recurve/stickbow etc. And crossbow hunters don't kill any higher % or if they do it aint mugh higher.

So lets rehash a bit - crossbow hunters HUNT the same way, they can't shoot any farther than a compound can, arguably LESS of a hunting weapon, they don't lead to instant 100% success rates , the BOWHUNT doesnt change .......... hmmmmmmmmmm, why NOT allow them then ?

Compounders could pick up a REAL bow too if they wanted to, couldn't they ? but they want their easy - same thing as crossbow hunters. Black calling the kettle black, you gotta love it

MA Jay - think about this too. In Arkansas, lets say I have 2 buck tags and 1 doe tag. I kill them all with archery equipment. And over the course of a decade, more and more people choose to hunt with archery equipment (including crossbows and compounds) and eventually we see where archery season is killing too many animals. I mean, originally, archery season was NOT meant as a management tool, rather a way to maximize peoples times in the woods.

In the scenario above, its safe to say compounds & crossbows are responsible for the overcrowding of archery season, for the higher success rates and higher kills, and the G&F will have little choice but to regulate archery season by limiting the equipment or more likely, cut tags and seasons.

Technology is the enemy of archery season - not one specific type of bow. Remove technology from archery season and there would NEVER be a problem with overcrowding or high success rates etc. The modern compound bow, every single year, strives to get the archery more accurate, faster, quieter, at longer rnages with less practice.

Theres your enemy folks - like it or not.

BOWFANATIC

Has the ban on crossbow threads expired?

The title has changed , but the content is pretty darn familiar.