I am waiting for the relief to wash over me…….
Meh.
Imo, there should be no trophy books at all. But the needy gonna need.
There are plenty of haters in this site especially. Lots and lots of hate on xbow use. How have you not seen that ? And this post was especially for Nick Muche. He made sure to let me know xbow kills are not recognized in p&y. Why he felt the need, IDK, but anyway. Now xbow users have somewhere to enter the books if they prefer. And Yes, I still most likely wont enter any record books for any of my kills. I thought it was interesting that P&Y offered the use of their "official scorers" for this club. I thought that was very professional of them.
Roger's Link
Exactly the "hate" i was referring to. ^^
As hunters, there is so much more that goes into a hunt besides the weapon of choice. Planning the trip, practicing, camp, scouting and tracking. When successful, a clean kill shot is attempted, and for the prepared and fortunate...the quarry is now theirs. For the unsuccessful, there are memories made that will last a lifetime.
I am a hunter, and that's what matters. No matter the weapon, an honest hunter is welcome at my campfire anytime. It's JMHO, but I could not rationalize ending a critters life just so's I could get my name in some book. Other hunters may make different choices for their own reasons.
I hear a lot of folks with a " mind your own business" attitude about crossbows. We were minding our own business until crossbows were pushed into bow seasons. Someone else wasn't happy hunting with what was legal.
I met one of the higher ups last year at our sportsmans expo. Seemed like a real nice guy, and he was very interested in getting the youth involved.
They are having the same struggles as most of the other clubs with garnering interest and growing. IMO any organization doing something for the hunting world is better than nothing.
Will they succeed? Only time will tell.
WOW. you are in for a new world of hunting for pure joy and what pleases you and not being beholden to someone else’s demands for what you carry
I am happy for you.
Ditto Pat
I got started bowhunting later than most so this year will be my 30th year bowhunting. I've only used compound bows and have been pretty successful by my standards.
I don't use a crossbow, but my girlfriend and granddaughter do.
After years of reading all this crap on this site bashing the cross-bow hunter, makes me want to hunt with one then go to the local bar and tell them I did. See how many of you so called "real" hunters would say shit to me about it. All you guys hiding behind your handles on a web site safe behind your computer screen wouldn't say shit until I left. If you did then we would have to find out who was tougher. I may not be, but we'd sure as hell find out.
Hunt with what you want as long as it's legal. I hate internet bullies, or bullies in general.
Guess I should have counted to 20. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this. Don't give a shit. Yes, I should have just passed on by this post, oh well, it is what it is.
You hate bullies but you are ready to kick everybody's ass That is classic
Should have counted to 100
Blue dog welcoming you into his camp is awesome and should be what you take away from this. Class guy that blue dog is. Feel honored
William Tell?
The B&B Club
You have never seen a post from me regarding myself as a legend. And you wont.
There. Fixed that for you….
JMO, if you shoot a compound for any reason other than a physical handicap/infirmity, you’re on pretty shaky ground complaining about crossbows.
Gotta love marketing that says it’s not about the weapon… and then promotes 100-yard reach….
A cross gun is not a bow and they don't belong in bow season, pretty simple concept in my opinion. Cross guns are in bow season here in PA and that's that. I doesn't mean I have to like it, agree with it or condone it. I think it blows.
I also realize that my opinion only matters to me and that's cool too.
When it comes to crossbows in the archery season it boils down to land and tag availability to me.
On private land and OTC tags I don’t care if they are during archery seasons. The waters get muddied on public land and tags that need to be drawn.
Yup. Where the harvest total is not keeping up with the reproductive output of the herd, cross guns are a straight up gift from the gods. On public land, or anywhere where it’s more important to control the number of hunters than the size of the herd, they are absolutely the work of the devil.
But I feel the same way about compounds. Before releases were legal and before laser rangefinders, there was no such thing as overpressured archery seasons or point creep.
Releases have been legal since Christ was a corporal. Range finders been around for at least 25 years. Got my first one in ~2001. Wanna blame pressure in OTC and point creep on something... look no further than social media. YT, IG, FB, and yeah Bowsite and Rokslide to name a few...
And if the optical rangefinders we had in the ‘80s were just as good as laser-rangefinders that automatically compensate for shot angle, why are they no longer on the market? I used to use an optical rangefinder all day long, every damn day on my field site, and it was a piece o’ crap.
Now, we have laser rangefinders integrated into the sights so that all you have to do is put the red dot where you want to hit and not punch the trigger too hard.
That’s a long ways from shooting barebow with fingers.
If you're saying to ban compounds and rangefinders from archery season, I'm with you. If you're saying crossbows are the same as compounds, then you've lost me. If compounds were the same as crossbows, then crossbowers would just use compounds and there'd be no debate.
I bow hunt compound now but trad bows for many years, muzzleloader & rifle as well. I honestly could care less what another person chooses to hunt with.
Perhaps if your stuck hunting public land near a major city and the woods are overrun with Xbow hunters I could understand. Myself personally have never been & never will be in that situation.
The real hunt these days is not with a weapon, it's the hunt to obtain quality land to hunt on, you find this, and what others use on other property doesn't matter or at least that's how I feel about it.
Point is i heard this same stuff when compounds came on the scene. Guys called them sissy bows, and everything else.
Anyway...compounds, longbows, recurves, whatever...i'm glad we got the choice, but unless your older, or physically handicapped that you can't draw a bow, It would have been best to keep crossbows out of archery season, so much....We are our own worst enemies sometimes...but whatever...you make your own choice.
But truthfully a modern compound with sights, 80% letoff, mechanical release etc...is a pretty good stretch from a recurve or longbow.....not really to much in common, other than you draw it.....a crossbow kinda just gets even farther away from what we originally started out with....BOW....and ARCHER......."BOWHUNTING".....
But hey whatever.....main thing is...get out there and enjoy yourself, and don't worry so much about the next guy.....There is a BIG difference between having an opinion, being firm in what you believe and stand for....and having an opinion you try and jam down everyone else's throats, all the time.....or FORCE to accept.....( kinda like the queers, and trans try to do) Frankly my bow season isn't effected to much by allowing crossbows, i spent a lot of time in a treestand, on the ground and stillhunting..with a longbow, and recurve.....nobody said i couldn't...nobody forced me to use a crossbow.....And....we are eating deer meat...life's pretty darn good.
I remember that story. Pretty sure it was in the same rag John Sloan had a column in. Still don’t see the relevance to over crowding in OTC and point creep. You can thank the BRO crowd, THP, OnX, all the “how to beat the odds to draw your tag”, social media “smash that like button and follow” etc… for that. If you wanna blame range finders and treestands, have at it.
Me & you have also gone round & round about long range rifles & range finders verses woods rifles.
You seem to have a serious dislike for rangefinders. I use them but absolutely not dependent on them. Basically beyond 30yd with a compound, beyond 150yd with a muzzleloader & beyond 300yd with a rifle.
In 40+ years of bow hunting I've killed 2 deer at 50 yds and maybe 10 at 40 yds. Easily 75% of the deer I've killed with a bow have been inside of 25 yards, no range finder required. The furthest deer killed with a rifle last season was 350yds. Again no range finder required with the 6.5x284
Not sure why a range finder is such a thorn in your side but speaking for myself personally their just not that important, but yes there's usually one in my pocket when I'm hunting. Just not that important, I'll absolutely go back to the truck if I forget my binoculars, probably not for the range finder.
That experience and some shooting on the 3D course made abundantly it clear to me that inside of ranges where a rangefinder becomes necessary in order to tap into the potential accuracy of peep & pins, I am simply more effective without sights. For me, that’s between about 20 and as far as I’m willing to shoot at a live target. And as just a matter of personal philosophy, if I am not close enough to take the shot without some artificial gadget telling me what to do, then I’m not close enough. If I weren’t willing to bet my tag on my ability to get within my technologically-unassisted bow range, I’d do the sensible thing and use a firearm.
But go ahead - take a poll among western state compound shooters and ask whether they own a laser rangefinder and whether they’d feel naked without it.
Back then I shot a 10, 20 and 30 yard pin. Now days my top pin is set at 30 yards.
Now days I have a pretty good grasp at what is 30 yards or less. However I still take my rangefinder with every time I head out hunting.
If your hunting in the rifle season with a crossbow, I'm all for it. If you take my archery tag, I'll object but I've got no hate for ya.
If someone wants to hunt with one during rifle season and take limited tags from rifle hunters, by all means, go for it.
Yeah, if only that were true in PA. We’ve added approximately 125K “bowhunters” since the damn things were made legal in 2009.
If if weren’t for compounds, there would be much lighter participation in archery seasons, and rangefinders just add to the problem.
Before releases were legal everywhere (I’m not aware of any exceptions), people shot maybe 50% let-off with fingers, and there was no problem with overcrowding.
The concerns that compounders have now with crossbows are exactly the same concerns that single-string shooters have had - in growing abundance- with compounds as the have gotten faster, easier to use, and ever more technologically enabled.
Timex - you say that you don’t care what you hunt with. That’s fair. It’s also entirely fair to say that people who don’t care what they hunt with are NOT the people for whom archery seasons were carved out in the first place. The fact that you’ve been allowed to join in is an undeserved privilege made possible by a calamitous superabundance of deer throughout most of the country, but In The Beginning, at least where I’m from, Archery season was a privilege paid for at the cost of your rifle season tag. So you had to have the cojones to bet your One annual tag on your ability to get it done with a bow, or go home happy just for having tried, and for having had some solitude in the process.
The idea was always that this season would be self-limiting terms of participation, with negligible impact on the herds’ health, numbers, or availability to the rifle hunters who are still footing the bill for the whole proposition.
That’s no longer the case.
Bow hunting for me is the month of October in the woods, muzzleloader is the first 2 weeks of Nov in the woods then rifle till the 1st sat in Jan.
Are you trying to imply that because I gun hunt during gun season that I don't deserve to be able to bow hunt during bow season.
That's some pretty twisted logic.
I'm not unsympathetic about folks limited to public land. Or the limited tag situations out west. It's just simply not the case where I live & hunt in VA. X bows and range finders are not the problem, trophy hunting is the problem. Nobody cares about a freezer full of venison anymore, all their interested in is that hero shot with a big buck on fb.
That's some pretty twisted logic.”
No, that’s called making choices, and in some parts of the country, that’s just The Deal.
Pick.
One.
One tag. One weapon. One season. Per. Year.
Just because your reality is different where you are doesn’t invalidate the reality of those of us who have lived elsewhere.
I honestly don’t give a rip what people want to use to cull off a critically overpopulated deer herd - IN PLACES where the deer ARE. Just keep the damn crossbows out of areas with critical overpopulations of hunters so that the Public hunters can maybe get out of bow range of each other for a day. And if it takes further restrictions on equipment to bring hunter density into balance with what the resource can sustain, then I’d support that, too.
So according to you there’s no distinction between a hand held hand drawn vertical bow with the archer using a release or a shoulder mounted weapon, pulled tight in, fingers wrapped around a pistol grip to keep it tight against, forearm on a steady rest or clamped in a tripod, iluminated magnified optics, flip the safety off, and squeeze that trigger. Now the ads are pushing 150 yard shots. With a disclaimer not that you would take a shot that far, but it’s nice to know you can.
You harp on releases and RFs but make no mention of the influencers that have glorified western backpack hunting. The advent of mapping apps like OnX and Gaia, sites like this one Rokslide, MM, YouTubers, IG, influencers pimping it out for likes and shares have done far more, exponentially, to increase crowding and point creep, than a release and RF.
Releases have made the effective range of the bow way to far to justify the length of modern archery seasons. One simple rule change would fix every problem with long range weapons in archery season (including the crossbow)... no mechanical releases.
Guy walks over to me an older guy maybe in his 70's....asked were i was hunting because he didn't want to mess my spot up..i thought that was polite of him...i told him, and pulled my longbow out of the truck....he looked at it then commented, "i used to hunt with a bow, but i got bad shoulders and can't pull one back anymore, so i use a crossbow now"...
He almost seemed apologetic.......i wished him well, and good luck, and headed out...I had an hr hike to my stand, hunted all morning and like usual didn't see another person...when i got out shortly after noon, he was gone and my truck was the only one left in the parking lot...
nobody ruined my hunt....the fact that he used a crossbow didn't effect me one bit, and he had no need to feel apologetic to me.
Sometimes i think the whole world has turned into a bunch of chubby, bawl babies, all caught up in the gloom and doom, thinking the world owes them, and all wanting to throw a tantrum when they don't get their way.....
Not much, ..."when the going gets tough...the tough get going anymore" "he took MY tag"...."he shot MY buck"....A CROSSBOW HUNTER!!.....aw poo poo... that's a tough break yes for anybody.....suck it up, go try harder for another one.
You think crossbows are not bowhunting?...so do i ...its a crossbow, not a bow, but then again...a compound isn't exactly a bow either....if we really want to be honest, a bow is a recurve or longbow...not a bunch cables and wheels....we just give it the label...kinda re-defined the term "bow".....well now...isn't that a common practice these days... "redefining"
I got far more serious stuff to worry about than crossbows, FAR more serious.
Lots of good people use crossbows.....but this world is full of not so good people, and i'm far more concerned about that, than what they hunt with....
A good man with a crossbow?....... Or a foul,queer promoting, tansgender confused, baby killer, with a longbow?.....I'll bet i don't have to tell you which one i'd prefer in my hunting camp..
Also…arguing that rangefinders have the same impact is ridiculous. Rangefinders do not increase a persons’ accuracy they simply tell you the distance to the target. If your maximum effective range is 40 yards, you can range targets all you like at 60 and 70 yards and it will do nothing to help your shooting it will only tell you how far it was when you missed.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
ASA has both unknown and known distance (rangefinder) classes. I'm pretty sure that, shooting the same rig, they push you back one stake (4-5 yards) if you're using a RF. Not sure if this 'proves' anything...
We kind of look down on people that use crossbows, but don't us traditional bowhunters kinda do the same thing?sometimes? toward compound shooters?...easier, longer range etc..? And it isn't just the "quick and easy" crowd that are totally at fault....There is money to be made, and crossbow manufactures are more than willing to promote crossbows in archery.......so we opened the door years ago.....way back.....easier, faster, more accurate = better......and here we are. doubt they are going away, and the world is a whole lot bigger than me...so?....rather than look down on em...i got a new longbow i just glued up, think i'll just go work at it...
maybe life aint so bad after all...
Nope, not in the West. Out here the "real" hunt is in drawing a limited tag. Colorado has 23 million acres of public land to hunt. The competition for archery tags just among BOWHUNTERS is totally out of hand. Now throw in 20,000 former rifle hunters who switch to crossbows, and the problem is amplified exponentially. And CO is an either-or-state, so no, you can't hunt with a rifle if you hunt with a bow, and vice versa.
Some of you guys in the East might want to take a step back and look at what others have to deal with.
Same attitude as people who don’t live with lions or wolves or bears… or droughts.
The whole “plenty for everybody” thing only works where there’s plenty for everybody…
Bamboo saying MOST x bow hunters ARE compound bow crossovers is nuts! I agree with Lou, most x bow hunters are rifle hunters applying for tags with better odds to draw than rifle.
Bamboo saying MOST x bow hunters ARE compound bow crossovers is nuts! I agree with Lou, most x bow hunters are rifle hunters applying for tags with better odds to draw than rifle.
Hunt, after you share that I’ll share a story of how I ran down a big gobbler and broke his neck with my bare hands. Instead of shooting him. :^)
Yep. A lot of people are in that boat… and a completely UNsurprising number of them weigh their odds of FILLING A TAG very carefully before committing to one weapon or another.
And you can ask yourself - how much better do you think YOUR odds are on an Elk trip WITH a laser rangefinder and a release than if you had to hold 50% let-off with your fingers and guesstimate your range unassisted.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that “most” compound shooters will say that NO “Serious Elk Hunter” would even CONSIDER making a trip out west without a rangefinder, because DUHHH… Probably not many who would recommend a bow with a top speed under 270 fps, either, never mind that that’s about 50% higher than a very fast stickbow….
And here you are, apparently never having made even a single trip out west, but you are quite confident that you understand the situation better than the natives…. because…. you live in a state 2000+ miles away which is completely overrun with Whitetails….
CO is looking at ending OTC Elk tags for Archery and they’ve apparently already ended NR cow-only tags, making a trip out west that much less affordable for those of us who don’t value bone over meat. All that it would take to get bowhunter numbers back down to low-impact would be to ban mechanical releases. Banning electronic rangefinders would be another helpful measure. Take it back to where the whole proposition of bowhunting is just no longer appealing except to a relative few.
It was the late 80s early 90s when my buddies were going west elk hunting. They had invested a lot in top of the line camping gear water purification and compact cooking stuff. They would pack in a couple days hike to get away from what they called the day hunters.
I met some of these guys shooting indoors at the 4h center in Front Royal VA. The majority of them shot in the bowhunter division, that's fingers,pins,short stabilizer.
Back in those days Lazer range finders were star wars type stuff. There was the bring the two images together type that were junk.
Most of us shot mid 40s" ata round wheel bows, myself personally was shooting a 44" Hoyt chuck Addams super slam bow, I shot fingers 3 under which lowered my pins so much I could only have 3 pins, I shot 80 lbs 28" 2317 shafts feathers, with zwickey Eskimos and long aluminum screw in adapter so roughly 160 grain heads.
Feet per second ? Maybe 220 -240 with 20, 30, 40, yard pins & no range finder. That bow was super quiet and I killed a bunch of deer with it.
Yes times have changed but back when I had the opportunity to go west big game hunting mine & my buddies equipment was definitely old school by today's standards.
Your ongoing _________about Range finders is _________. Get over it dude.
I shoot stickbows with the " instinctive method ", whatever that means. Therefore my shots are close, within 25 yards. Range finders are not for me. Range finders are a valuable tool for those who prefer longer range weapons, generally with distance dependent sights. I have zero issue with their use.
You’re actually blaming RFs and releases for point creep, over crowding, and the possible end of OTC licenses. Phuc dude you must have some serious hamstrings to jump to that conclusion. Or blinded by your own prejudices.
The exponential increase in crowding, point creep, etc.. is in direct correlation to the increase influencers, YouTubers pimping their channels for likes and shares. They are the ones that popularized backpack hunting and whored it out to the masses. Even to the point of advertising units, trailheads, etc….
And again, I’ve never, ever heard or knew of someone, even forty years ago, the took up bowhunting because releases were made legal.
GF has spent a decade on this sight blasting everyone that doesn’t do trad bows. Or, confess they are the greatest. When was the last time you actually killed something GF? Do you even hunt anymore?
