Hunting and Fishing
In Defense of the Traditional Bow Hunter
The longbow, still the choice of select hunters, is not in the same class as the compound bow. So how about a few days tacked onto the season strictly for traditionalists?By Randy King, 7-19-11
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| The traditional bow. Photo courtesy of Randy King. | |
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It is good to keep a perspective on why you do things. For example, I shot a traditional bow and, for many years, I could not tell you why. It is a bent hunk of wood with a string and some straight lengths of cedar for arrows. I would love to extol the virtues of the longbow and tell you why it is a better killing weapon than a compound bow but I can’t in good conscious do that. It took me a long time to realize why I shot a longbow and not some fancy new compound. Then the answer just hit me – I want to escape from the modern; I wanted some perspective.
This escape comes from not having the fastest, deadliest, quietest bow. It comes from not worrying about my 40 yard pin. And from this escape - I am certain of one thing – I am a lot less deadly with my longbow than a fellow hunter with a compound bow. That brings me to the reason I write this: Shooting a traditional bow is not like shooting a compound bow and should be classified as a different weapon and, perhaps, even have its own hunting season.
The compound bow. Is this the same weapon as above? Photo courtesy of Randy King.
I have only put a single arrow in a big game animal with my longbow. The reason for that is mostly distance. I cannot and will not shoot an arrow out of my bow at anything past 25 yards. In contrast, when I was shooting my compound, a 30-yard shot was a “gimme.” With today’s compounds, hunters can take shots in the 60- to 70-yard range with relative ease. I would have to aim about 3 feet over the back of an animal just to shoot that far with my longbow.
I remember talking to a counter guy at my local archery shop who was bragging that “on a good, calm day,” he could shoot 100 yards accurately. I don’t care who you are: That is freaking impressive! I have only seen YouTube videos of shooting like that. It becomes clear, though, that the counter man’s bow and my bow are not the same weapon, they are no longer apples to apples.
Accuracy like this comes, in no small part, from being able to hold the shot steady and aim. With a compound, the typical let off rate is about 70 percent of the draw weight. That means that a compound bow will allow the hunter to hold only 30 pounds if he’s pulling a full 100 pounds of draw. Compare that to my bow. I pull a 30-inch draw at about 62 pounds. With my longbow, I get no “let off” point. I have to hold the whole weight the whole time I aim. That means that I typically must shoot a lot faster than a compound archer. It is harder to hold 60 pounds than 30.
Add to the compound bow the advantages of peep sights, light concentrating sight pins, carbon arrows and fall away risers, and you get a deadly weapon that is very dissimilar to a longbow.
Some would argue that the compound is just the evolution of the longbow. It is the next iteration in the cycle of the same weapon. That argument makes sense to me, I get it. The blunderbuss might be considered the first rifle but it is clear that this ancient weapon is not the same as modern day center fire weapon. Hunting regulations even reflect the difference; that is why many states have muzzleloader seasons and center fire seasons. It is recognized that the accuracy and effectiveness is not equal between the weapons. I see the same parallels for traditional archery and modern archery.
I would think that with 10 percent of the population of bowhunters shooting traditional, a little love for the guys with a self-imposed handicap would be great. Give us an extra day or two in the woods before everyone else to have a chance at getting close to an animal. I like the idea of proportional representation. Give the traditional guys a proportion of the season commensurate to the total number of traditional hunters. Make them declare at the counter when buying a tag.
I can remember running into a duo of hunters during deer season who wanted to do nothing more than chat about the bow over my shoulder. One of them even said, “I have seen those at archery tournaments before, but I didn’t know that you could hunt with them!”
In my mind I was thinking. “Holy crap… you have to be kidding me!” I kept my composure and explained, in the nicest way that I could, that humans have hunted my way 1,000 times longer than they have hunted your way. I had to explain to them both the concept of aiming without a sight and that I could just “feel” where the arrow was going to hit, or at least should hit. It was discouraging for me to see hunters that had never shot a stick and string bow before. They had no idea how hard harvesting an animal could be with the old way. They were stuck in the modern that was trying to be ancient.
That is why we hunt with bows, is it not? Bowhunters are seeking an escape from the modern. If hunters did not seek that escape would they not as soon hunt with a riffle or some other form of gun? Yet our culture demands that our escape method be made more efficient and constantly improved. I don’t agree with that, so I hunt my traditional bow and keep on looking for a different perspective.
Randy King lives near Boise, Idaho, and is an outdoorsman as well as a certified executive chef. He enjoys writing about the connection between hunting and food and has written for Outdoor Life, Cooking Wild, Boise Weekly and Northwest Sportsman, among others.
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Comments
So while I respect Randy's choices, I just have to wonder when the chiz-offs will end.
Oh, and lanette...killing your supper is special. You should try it, and then you'll understand. It's quite the reality check.
We are still blessed in the Rockies with an abundance of backcountry, and in many places within our region, it still isn't too hard to get deep into wilderness. A compound bow weighs 4-5 times what my longbow weighs. Then add in the fact that most bowhunters these days see it as 'essential' to hunt from a tree stand (not to mention all the otehr crap that Cabelas has convinced them they need...). By the time you add up all this weight that your average modern bowhunter 'needs' to carry, I feel I have a huge advantage in terms of mobility to get farther into the backcountry easier. The biggest key for me is getting far from ORV tracks that allow the lazy access they would otherwise have to work for. Stay far from places that permit that sort of motorized access, and you often have the place to yourself, and often the game is a lot more plentiful and less skittish. Go figure.
Those with limited available backcountry might not have this luxury, and thus more user conflicts to deal with. But if I run into another bowhunter in the remote places I choose to go, whether they are carrying a longbow or the latest hi-tech gizmo, it's obvious they've worked to get there, and I'm cool with that. Maybe I'm just lucky where I live.
Where I think this issue starts to get interesting, though, is as the differences between compound bows and crossbows start to shrink, how do you increasingly justify an archery season that allows the former and not the latter (an exclusion which I support, by the way)? At what point do these high tech arrow machines (whether they are oriented vertically or horizontally) become so powerful that gun lobbies begin to campaign that there is no valid reason for a separate archery season at all anymore?
My husband made and sold bows during the time when he was among 7 long bowyers in the nation building and selling them. Dan Bertalan has a chapter in his book 'Traditional Bowyers of America' which was a real honor to be among those he wrote about. He is 85 years of age and is still shooting his longbow, the weight has gone down to 65# and he still hunts, however the hills are getting to steep for him to climb, so hunting has become a real blessing when he does go out, although we have deer in our yard, once in a while a bear also elk and even a moose have wondered through, however to him they are off limits. Shooting is important, stalking the game is most important, making a good shot is important and just enjoying what God has given us is most important. I plant an extra flower for the deer and they of course take them all, but I don't mind. We just try again to see what they like and dislike. I personally believe that the compound has made competition more important than it used to be when there was only the longbows and recurves. Score at a shoot didn't matter much to those that competed, only the fellowship. Those were great times, but like so much as we grow older we see what has been lost in this fast pace we now live in. The Lord said He would shorten the days and with each day that passes we can see that He has, but left us with so many great memories, friends and family in those hunting camps in the back country. For this we are thankful.