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Voted other because I mostly use homemade ground blinds and a secure homemade built tree stand with roof, for those not so favorable days. I also use a portable umbrella, on occasion for quick pop ups, which works really well.

It takes me be back to Native American times. Develop a skill level way beyond any other weapon out there. Challenges and goals to set a sense of accomplishment like no other. Archery season is far more enjoyable, for me than firearm.

I only Crossbow Hunt from my Ladder Stand ! If I happen to take a Nap so be it ! LOL

More time in the woods, more closer one on one interaction with the animal. The xtra tag and the challenge of only killing a top end,smartest animal in the woods at close range.

The challenge and the fun, the quest for perfection, rifles, handguns, shotguns, airguns, slingshots, you name it, I just love shooting! Al

To be honest I do not bow hunt much these days, I prefer to hunt small game at that time of the season. I purchased an Excalibur crossbow a couple of years ago to play around with and while I can easily outshoot any of my traditional bows both accuracy and distance wise, I just can not get enthused enough to hunt with it. If I do hunt with a bow it will be with a traditional bow. Al

Much of my bowhunting was done from crude but effective blinds I built on the ground to break up my outline, I also did quite a bit of still hunting with not a whole lot of kills but prefer that method of hunting. Al

If I have a site where I can be on the ground, up hill hill from the trail I'm covering and downwind I will stay on the ground if possible. The older I get (71) the more hesitant I am to use a hang-on stand more so because of the climbing stick set up. I need to be able to hold on to the top of the climbing stick, step across or even down onto the stand or I won't use it. If I don't feel comfortable I won't use it. I have had a couple stands in IL that the outfitter has set that I won't use. They have been perfectly fine taking me to another.

I like Crossbow hunting - now the entire season - because it's so quiet out there ! If I score I score , if not I've enjoyed the silence !

Actually, I really like archery, just for archery's sake too. There is something about manually holding back all that force, and then letting go of the string and seeing the arrow go into the target (or not). At one time I was deep into tournament archery. I was never really super good at it, but it was just fun. Like any sport, it was the challenge of developing a skill that was difficult to master. I always enjoyed the 80 yard shot on the NFAA field archery course. When I shot it with a recurve, I had to have a prism sight pin just for that shot, so I could see the target around my fist.....lol. Hunting was really a natural offshoot of archery. I was bowhunting before I ever owned a gun......shooting pigeons in the barn at age 10.

Great time of year to be in the woods. You get up close and personal with the deer!

I came down out of the trees a quite a few years ago. Mainly due to a "heights-thing". But I also discovered the excitement of dealing with deer in an eyeball-to eyeball situation where things are put kind of in their favor. Yeah I'm sure it has impacted my success, but the added excitement has kind of increased the whole deer hunting experience. By the way check out the poll. That's a forum feature that we haven't used in quite a while.

I had a 7 and a spike in the yard today. Still carrying bone.

I hung mine up in 2014, when the crossbow was first legalized, for the peak two weeks of the rut in the southern zone. I still have my last (2) compounds, but haven’t touched them since. Way more efficient for me for sure. I’ve killed more deer, hunting just those (2) weeks of the season, the first (5) of those last (10), than I did the previous 30 years with my vertical compounds, hunting the whole seasons. It’s almost all about the meat for me though, and I haven’t killed any with my crossbow, since they opened and early antlerless gun season in my home zone, (5) years ago. I stopped fighting so hard for “full inclusion” when they gave us that early gun season. Im actually thankful now that we didn’t get full inclusion, because that might have prevented that early gun season. I haven’t had any significant struggle to get enough venison since then. Antlers mean very little to me. The peak two weaks of the rut is still one of my favorite times to deer hunt though, so I’m very thankful that I can use my crossbows then. it provided some excitement last year, when I missed this stout 3.5 yr old 8-pointer on the last Sunday of that 2week crossbow season. (26) I could not locate my bolt after the errant shot (probably deflected due to predeployment of mechanical broadhead against popup blind window mesh), and I prayed to Jesus, that “His will be done” regarding carcass recovery. Not only did He answer my prayer, just like He always has, He did better than allowing an immediate recovery. It would have been tough dealing with that carcass on that 70 some degree Sunday morning, and still make it to church. He guided my bolt safety away from the buck, not even nicking a hair. I didn’t see that buck again until the last minute of daylight on the last day of ML season, when he offered me a broadside shot. The temperature was just right in late December, for hide-on carcass aging, in our insulated garage. By that time, there was a lot less fat on the carcass, so processing went significantly faster than it would have, had my bolt struck where I intended, over a month before.