LBR

I think it makes plenty of sense. We already have projectiles that will travel at well over 1,000 fps, are much more accurate at long ranges,and are pretty much guaranteed to leave a huge wound--the are called bullets. The big thing is difference in the way bullets kill vs. broadheads--shock vs hemmorage. Like I said, it wasa learning process, and at a time where most folks understood that animals are animals, not people.

We're at a time in archery where bows can already break the 300 fps mark, laser sights can be installed, and expandables have made massive improvements (I still don't like them though). With all these improvements, more and more people are going back to the roots of archery with traditional equipment.

Most of us admire and respect Mr. Bear and others, although we'd never attempt some of the shots he did. I don't see any reason for that to change.

Chad

Buster T

Change that to ........ Most of us admire and respect Mr.LBR, Buster T and others, although we'd never attempt some of the shots they did with the equipment they had back then. I don't see any reason for that to change.


If we can say that now ......... can they say that in the future ?

Reason I ask is this ........ you and I think we're pretty ethical bowhunters, right ? We don't take poor shots, we practice, we know our weapons and limitations etc.

You think Fred didn't ?

Maybe we're not giving credit where its due, just like in the future when technology advances, when the demands of society insist on instant killings or 100% recovery rates and sportmen cave to those demands ....... maybe they'll look back and call us unethical shot takers ?

Alpha Capo

after reading this thread i think i need a cig and a glass of Jonnie Walker black on the rocks

....the only thing i can ad is...

regardless of improved hunting equipment and a different code of ethics....hunting is still a very primal activity....where the only thing that really matters is Beast vs. Man regardless of who wins for the day(if you look at it in this light, its easier to see thathunting hasnt changed sinceman has walked on two feet)....

i dont pay much attention to the way others hunt or what they say about the way i hunt (not that i hunt differently than others)...im not worried about PETA or others that naysay hunters, or those that say you have to do things this way...i strongly believe that the naysayers will never beable to take away our right to hunt (or should i say hunting privledges[:'(]), as their politics are unpure, andused for their personal advancement/greed, also their followers are ignorant to the way hunters feel about the woods they hunt and the animals they kill.

....believe whats in your heart and bowhunt the way that makes you happy...regardlessof what anyone says.

nowtime to be a hipocrate spelling?

with that being said there are a few bow/gun hunters that give everyone a bad name when it comes to hunting...

i got very upset this year when the shotgun season came around and my dad and his buddy went out to our property to hunt, and the people hunting the neighboring property fired 19 shots in one afternoon...

i know they didnt kill 19 deer. there were only 4 guys hunting....

later that week i spooked up a small doe that has her back hoof blown off, shestumbled 60 yards downa Revien and laidin the middle of a creeK...

long story short i couldntget a shot off at her because sheended upcrossing the fairly deep creek and entered the neighbors propertyI didnt cross paths with her again, but my buddy did and put her out of her misery after two weeks of suffering(he said she couldnt even walk)...

my dad/his buddy fired one shot and killed a nice 10 pntr near Boone and Crockett... one for one!!!!! thats the way it should be when hunting with a gun! i understand that a miss happens....but those other guys werent hunting they were just shooting...and if you want to go shooting do it at the range not in the woods....as far as im concerned those guys shouldnt call themselves hunters....(I would have liked to "meet" them!!!!)....its things like this that non-hunters see and remember.

all i can say is i can see why things are the way they are....and thats all i can say i guess.

LBR

You missed my point Brad. None of us can predict the future, but my guess is hunters will be hunters. Even with all the improvements in rifles, muzzleloaders, compounds, optics, arrows, broadheads, etc. etc. etc. more and more people are still coming back to the roots of archery. Hunters hunt for the challenge. Not to say there won't always be people that just want to kill something with the least effort possible, but I think it's in our blood to hunt. Human beings are preditors--nothing PETA can do to change that.

There's just so much that can be done to a stick and string. I see new claims pretty regularly, but when you get right down to it, the equiment touted to be the absolute best isn't far ahead of the equipment used 40-50 years ago. As I've noted before, Fred Bear killed an elephant, with a recurve, with one shot. How much better can it get?

If it ever gets to the point society demands instand kills and 100% recoveries, we are screwed anyway, and the sport will be dead. Anything that guarantees that is not hunting. We already have that in existence now--canned "hunts", and thankfully society in general seems to be against that.

The best we can do is try to recruit more hunters, pass it on to the next generation, and do the best we can to make a positive influence on non-hunters.

Chad

TXFRNTLDER

4 pages here and nobody has asked the most important question.

Are therepictures in this book?!

LBR

There are some pics. Best thing to do is get some of the Fred Bear videos as a companion to the book. Mozambique Game Trails is a good one, and the Fred Bear Museum Tour is really good--it has several short clips of hunts in it as well as a tour of the old museum given by the late Mr. Frank Scott.

Chad

Buster T

Fred liver shot his elephant according to the book I read I believe. An elephant ...... and he missed the lungs.

I just finished a book last night, a guy who's killed a LOT of bucks, Booners, and really knows his hunting. He shoots a Widow ...... and he missed several times, hit one in the ham, took a shot at a frontal neck shot (finally found the deer and killed it) and took several running shots. This guy is well known - very well know - yet the shots he took and his % wasn't great. 1960's through late 1980's was the time frame

So what then ? (A) we've "grown" as sportmans or (B) we've regressed to a world of sportsman who're afraid to simply go out and try and kill game ?

Or is there a (C) ?


Yes, there are lots of pictures in the book. I've watched a few Fred Bear movies and had the same comments - he took shots I wouldn't have, missed etc.

Arthur P

Will Thompson: Snowy egret in the top of a tree 80 yards away. Shorebird at 100 yards. Talks about hunting ducks, going out in the morning with several hundred arrows and coming back to camp for more arrows at lunch. Recommends shooting woodpeckers for practice. Hunts in the dead of night. Shoots several animals before he even identifies them. He and his Indian friend, Tommy, put a half dozen arrows into a cougar before it finally dies... A whole book of that kind of stuff.

He might not be as revered today as Bear is, but he was Fred Bear's equivalent in the late 1800's. The kinds of things he did then are absolutely shocking to us today, but it was the norm for HIS time. And I think it does us good to look back on these historical figures and see how far we've come. Hopefully, those that come after us will learn from our mistakes too. That's how the human species adds to it's knowledge base. Learn from mistakes and build on successes.

At least, that's how it SHOULD work. Doesn't always happen that way, due to mental deficiencies in key positions.

If you're so all-fired worried about what people in the future are going to think about your hunting - and if people in the future are anything like you, you're probably justified to be worried - maybe you just better quit hunting and take up chess or tiddlywinks.

Personally, I've got enough to worry about just looking out for my own set of ethics.

LBR

I don't remember where Fred's shot landed, but he killed an elephant with one arrow all the same. My point being he got the penetration required to kill the largest land animal on earth with a bow that had no wheels, cams, carbon, let-off, etc. How much better can it get in that respect?


Everyone has to set their own code of ethics. Big name or not, nobody sets mine for me, and I can't tell them what shots they are comfortable taking. Ben Pearson is one of the archery "icons" I most admire, but Ben is on film shooting (and making a kill) a javalina at somewhere between 130 and 160 yds (depending on whose account you listen to). NO WAY I'd try that, even if I was a good shot at that range, but I still respect Mr. Pearson.

I don't think it's so much "growing" as getting better educated. The pioneers of the sport pushed their limits--but they were still learning what their limits were. Some people still try to push the envelope. The biggest concern we have today, again my opinion, is the impression we leave on the public. Far fewer people kill their own chickens, hogs, and beef. More and more people seem to think that meat come from the store, set on a plastic or styrofoam tray and wrapped in celophane. People that never consider that the steak they are enjoying tonight was grazing in a pasture last week--but would be disgusted to hear that a wild animal was wounded by a careless hunter.

Like I said, these people vote.We need to give the best impression we can, and educate them, else they are liable to vote against us. We have idiot and hypocritical organizations like PETA and the HSUS putting out false propaganda already--no need to add fuel to that fire.

I don't think things will change all that much in the future, at least not for some time. The reason is the same as I already stated. Back in Fred's heyday, even housewives and kids participated in killing and cleaning the chicken that was going to be cooked for Sunday dinner, the Christmas goose, the hogs and cows--even if they never hunted, they were exposed to this and understood that in order to eat something, first you have to kill it. My grandmother was a very compassionate person, anddidn't want anything to suffer needlessly--but she didn't have a problem wringing a chicken's neck before she cleaned and cooked it. The same chicken that she would have whipped her kid's tail for if she'd caught them throwing rocks at it, orotherwise tomenting it. I can't see society getting much more "sanitized" than it already is.

Chad

Huntinlady

Very well said LBR.