CHEATING?

[osimono]

A couple of my hunting buddies are whining about crossbows being legalized here in Louisiana. They say that I'm CHEATING b/c I'm not disabled. All of these guys have top of the line compounds,80% let off,fiber optic sights,etc. and they all drop those bows the minute gun season opens. I hunt with a recurve, a compound, an assortment of guns, and I'll definately be using my crossbow this comming season. I was going to go with the recurve exclusively but that crossbow is just too much fun. I even had one ask me "How are you going to feel if you shoot a 150 class buck with that thing?" and I replied about as bad as I'd feel blasting it away with my 7mm-08. Do any of you ever get this crap?

[R.J.]

Yep ... hear it all the time ... usually from people that have never used a crossbow !

You still need to get your quarry close enough to make an ethical vital shot ... same as any other archery tackle ..

My comfort zone is 35 yards

Most kills are inside of 20 yards ..

Bottom line is ... if it is legal in your area , who cares what others think !

Have fun in the field ... enjoy and take pride in any game taken with any type of archery tackle !

[Cossack]

My son in law shot a Robin Hood on his second shot with a crossbow ever. Now he's convinced they are "just like a rifle."
Another friend, who hunts turkeys with a SHOTGUN, is convinced I'm cheating hunting 'em with a crossbow.
Most of the people that voice those opinions have never shot a CB; some, not even a vert.
Of course you could always show them this: http://www.conceptarchery.com/
A vert with 99% letoff

[Doe Master]

The problem with these close minded people is they just don`t seem to have all the facts. Fact #1 the compound bow is the newest piece of hunting equipment .Fact #2 the crossbow came long before the gun was even thought of .
What does it matter how you harvest your animal of chose as long as it is legal .
Have fun and take pride in your harvest.

[wabi]

A couple of my hunting buddies are whining about crossbows being legalized here in Louisiana. They say that I'm CHEATING b/c I'm not disabled.

You might offer to disable them so they can try a crossbow.
I wouldn't call them buddies if they criticized me for using a legal and ethical method of hunting. After all, the idea is to place a broadhead where it will drop the deer with the minimum amount of suffering. To me that means using the weapon that gives the highest odds of doing just that!
If it's a compound for them, I'm not going to point out that the compound is cheating by reducing the weight you hold at full draw, or that a release is just pulling a trigger to let the arrow fly, or that the sights on the compound take all the guesswork out of aiming so it takes relatively little practice to master accurate shooting.

[tuskntine]

I seem to remember some of the same whining when compounds first came out . I was working in a sporting goods place at the time . We just laughed at them and as time went on we sold them compounds .

[osimono]

There's no bad blood between us, we give each other trouble every chance we get. They just have one idea of what archery means. One was having trouble believing me about the group sizes I was getting @ 50 yards so I invited him over to do a little shooting. I offered him to go hang his high dollar wrist watch at 50yards but he declined.[ Boy was he lucky!] But he was very impressed with the accuracy after he shot it.

[VixChix]

I hear the "it's not fair" all the time. If the animal had a choice what do you think it would rather see us with?!??!

It's our responsibility to make sure we can do all in our power to make sure our shots are as acurate, humane and ethical as possible.... I switched to the crossbow for that reason.

[BigTiny]

I had a guy at our local sporting goods store give me some of that "crossbows aren't really archery" business. Then he took me out back to show off his new Matthews compound that shoots an arrow nearly 350 fps and makes less sound than I do lacing my boots. I told him that my Vixen shoots just over 250 fps and makes just a bit less noise than a .22, and how nice it would be if I could use a bow like his, bowhunting would be so much easier. Then he kinda got stuck in between trying to sell the bow and smacktalking crossbows. It was fun watching him try to sell and crawfish at the same time.

osimono, where y'at? I'm up in Claiborne Parish.

[ecoaster]

I personally have been in half a dozen situations where my crossbow actually prevented me from making a shot. I have had deer within 20yards and could not get a shot because of tree limbs or some obstacle that would have smacked my limbs if I slung the arrow. If I would have had my compound vertical bow, the deer would have been dead. Crossbows are just another tool in the box of tricks we hunt with.