Ok as I have said before I am currently using a crossbow because I am old and have bad soulders. I started shooting a compound bow in 1984 with one from Bass Pro with a 65lb draw and 60% letoff. I killed some deer with it, but then in 1995 I move to the farm and built my first wooden selfbow from an ash tree there and put the compound up in the garage for many years. I built my own bows, my own arrows and my own bowstrings and killed some deer with them. When it got to where I couldn't shoot much with these stickbows I tried an old Ben Pearson glass recurve and killed a deer with it. Then when that didn't work anymore I tried to go back to that old compound with miserable results and painful shoulders again. I decided to make the jump to a crossbow and researched the crap out of them and finally decided on an Excalibur Axiom recurve crossbow with a 175lb draw weight and 305 fps.
I have used this to kill a buck last year and a turkey last spring and to miss two deer this fall. I will go out on a limb and say all those of you who are condeming the crossbow as highly accurate deadly short range gun that shoots an arrow have NEVER made an attempt to hunt with one. Yes my axiom was pretty close when I got it from BassPro in Des Moines because it was already set up and on display there. The sales person didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground about cross bows and I even had to show him the proper way to cock and load it. After I got it home and could tinker with it I got it set up and zeroed from a bench at 20 yards, but then the difference between 20 and 30 yards was a drop of 8 to 10 inches so back to the bench for zeroing. Every time I changed arrows or heads or broadheads or even adding Luminocks it made some times big differences in point of impact and I shot a lot to get comfortable with my ability to make a killing shot all the time.
When I got to hunting with it I learned more about some of the cons of the crossbow. They are akaward and heavy and noisey to carry through the brush and heavy to hold while in the stand. If you hang it on a hook they can be harder to bring into action than a compound bow hanging in the same place. With the spread of the limbs you must be very carfull about clearance so that a limb doesn't contact a part of the stand or tree trunk or limb and ruin your shot or your crossbow limb. You must also hold it very level or that will also throw your shot way off. They are pretty noisey on the shot and with a proper weight head the speed drops to around 275 fps. One of my misses this fall was a doe that actually ducked under the arrow at about 35 yards as I shot from the ground from behind a cedar tree. Yardage estimates become very critical because the different aiming icons are set for 20, 30, 40 yards and the drop from 20 to 40 yards is close to 20 + inches. I didn't have anything to range on and no time to get a yardage and in the excitment of getting the shot off I might have even used the wrong aiming icon, but the net result was a shot about 8 inches over her back. The next oprotunity came right at the end of shooting hours on an overcast day. Even though there was still legal shooting time it was dark enough that I couldn't see the cross hairs against the side of the buck, so no shot. The next miss came about because of range estimation and second guessing myself. Had a buck come to the field with a doe and hang around for a while. I made a couple of can calls and he came with in to about 40 yards and saw me move as I manuvered to get a shot from the ground again behind a cedar tree. It was getting late and he was moving away when I stopped him with another bleat. Same story as before, no way to range him but I guessed around 40 yards, but because I had shot over on the doe earlier I decided I needed to hold lower to avoid the same thing, and you guessed it, shot under him.
For those of you who really believe that any shot with a crossbow is a simple slam dunk you are sooo very wrong. The estimate of 75,000 to 90,000 added bow hunters just because of allowing crossbows is way off compared to actual results in other states like Ohio or Kentucky. These states show an increase of 5 to 10 percent and an increase in harvest linked to crossbows of about 1 percent of total harvest. These are deffinatly not the doomsday predictions that I have read on this thread.
I can still get 1 any sex tag for archery season and one for shotgun so if I kill 1 buck and 1 doe with those tags how am I damaging the herd any more that anyother bow hunter who kills 1 buck with a bow and a doe with a shotgun just because I killed my buck with my crossbow?
I have used this to kill a buck last year and a turkey last spring and to miss two deer this fall. I will go out on a limb and say all those of you who are condeming the crossbow as highly accurate deadly short range gun that shoots an arrow have NEVER made an attempt to hunt with one. Yes my axiom was pretty close when I got it from BassPro in Des Moines because it was already set up and on display there. The sales person didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground about cross bows and I even had to show him the proper way to cock and load it. After I got it home and could tinker with it I got it set up and zeroed from a bench at 20 yards, but then the difference between 20 and 30 yards was a drop of 8 to 10 inches so back to the bench for zeroing. Every time I changed arrows or heads or broadheads or even adding Luminocks it made some times big differences in point of impact and I shot a lot to get comfortable with my ability to make a killing shot all the time.
When I got to hunting with it I learned more about some of the cons of the crossbow. They are akaward and heavy and noisey to carry through the brush and heavy to hold while in the stand. If you hang it on a hook they can be harder to bring into action than a compound bow hanging in the same place. With the spread of the limbs you must be very carfull about clearance so that a limb doesn't contact a part of the stand or tree trunk or limb and ruin your shot or your crossbow limb. You must also hold it very level or that will also throw your shot way off. They are pretty noisey on the shot and with a proper weight head the speed drops to around 275 fps. One of my misses this fall was a doe that actually ducked under the arrow at about 35 yards as I shot from the ground from behind a cedar tree. Yardage estimates become very critical because the different aiming icons are set for 20, 30, 40 yards and the drop from 20 to 40 yards is close to 20 + inches. I didn't have anything to range on and no time to get a yardage and in the excitment of getting the shot off I might have even used the wrong aiming icon, but the net result was a shot about 8 inches over her back. The next oprotunity came right at the end of shooting hours on an overcast day. Even though there was still legal shooting time it was dark enough that I couldn't see the cross hairs against the side of the buck, so no shot. The next miss came about because of range estimation and second guessing myself. Had a buck come to the field with a doe and hang around for a while. I made a couple of can calls and he came with in to about 40 yards and saw me move as I manuvered to get a shot from the ground again behind a cedar tree. It was getting late and he was moving away when I stopped him with another bleat. Same story as before, no way to range him but I guessed around 40 yards, but because I had shot over on the doe earlier I decided I needed to hold lower to avoid the same thing, and you guessed it, shot under him.
For those of you who really believe that any shot with a crossbow is a simple slam dunk you are sooo very wrong. The estimate of 75,000 to 90,000 added bow hunters just because of allowing crossbows is way off compared to actual results in other states like Ohio or Kentucky. These states show an increase of 5 to 10 percent and an increase in harvest linked to crossbows of about 1 percent of total harvest. These are deffinatly not the doomsday predictions that I have read on this thread.
I can still get 1 any sex tag for archery season and one for shotgun so if I kill 1 buck and 1 doe with those tags how am I damaging the herd any more that anyother bow hunter who kills 1 buck with a bow and a doe with a shotgun just because I killed my buck with my crossbow?
