Doc

I'm not sure what is being gained by the continued arguing that a crossbow is a piece of crap weapon for hunting. But I think there is sufficient evidence and a sufficient number of people that openly agree that a crossbow is a superior weapon to a compound bow and has many features (including the ability to steady it) that assist anyone who has any rifle experience and even total beginners to become near instant hunting-ready marksmen in a very short time ..... I really don't think that is arguable. Even the proponents of crossbows universally admit and applaud that the crossbow is a superior deer hunting weapon.

You can advocate for whatever you want, but the reality of the situation and modern-day hunter mentality says that it is inevitable that it is only a matter of time before it all becomes a one season free-for-all. It may be years, it may be decades, but all signs and the sport's own evolution, point toward the elimination of special seasons or changes so dramatic that the original seasons won't even be recognizable. Some of that already exists and the DEC and various manufacturing and sales entities are pushing for more movement toward that end.

That is why we need some form of official early intervention in the schools by responsible agencies to offset those notions.

Lol ...... Some would probably shove the kid to the ground and take the shot themselves. Well, what the hell, then the kid would learn what hunting in that family was really like. Who knows that same dad would probably yank the gun out of the youngster's hands and shoot the deer even during the youth season ..... ha-ha-ha. No seriously, I think that all these ideas are predicated on the fact that the mentors are basically decent people who are interested in getting the kid into hunting. If they are not, any mentored program will fail. The problem is that we seem to be trying to scam kids into hunting. We give them an unrealistic idea of what conditions and situations are in the hope that when they really do start hunting they won't notice that it can get damned cold out there. And I do think that introduction opportunities are being lost when hunting friends and relatives and the social aspects of hunting are excluded from that introduction.

No, the real reason there is more pressure to keep adding more and more unsuitable weapons into bow season is the fact that today everybody wants the time slot that used to be allocated to bows. As someone put it here, they simply want technology to make their hunting easier. I saw how serious the DEC really was about taking more deer when they totally ignored the gun season and instead went after the bowhunters to balance the deer population. The fact is that bow season was never intended by anybody to be a population-cutting hunting method. Even with crossbows, we will never rival the gun season for deer cutting efficiency. And that is because that is not what bowhunting is all about and it never was, and it never will be. So this story about how the DEC will continue to beat on bowhunters until it no longer is a bowseason has nothing to do with population control. It is simply a designed attempt at reshaping what their vision of that timeslot should look like. It is an attempt to turn bowseason into an extension of gun season. And we have the hunter mentality now to go along with that philosophy

I came down out of the trees years ago....lol. But I will say that back in the days when I did rely on treestands, I still was pretty crappy at offhand shooting (regardless of the amount of practice), and I did find ways of avoiding shooting that way. And a lot of that involved getting very resourceful at clamping rests to the stand. What I realized was that a rested gun was a whole lot more accurate than off-hand regardless of what the circumstances and hours of practice were. And amazingly enough, the crossbow is enough like a rifle that that same principle applies. Now, I will admit that with my vertical bow, I am stuck. There is no way of bracing that. But that is one of the major reasons so many people want to use a crossbow. Just like a rifle you don't have to put up with that wiggling and waving. The geometry of the weapon lends itself to bipods and other stationary rests just like a rifle.

Almost all of my hunting is on very high pressured state land.

They have emotion on their side. That makes it easier to get emotion-based support and more dollars. Some day we will learn to use that super effective tactic and begin to tug at people's heartstrings with stories and pictures of starving and diseased animals that are suffering from over population. We talk ourselves blue in the face offering up all kinds of dry, lengthy, scientific factual research and then try to resuscitate those that have slipped into a coma part way through the arguments. Meanwhile the HSUS people are winning ground from people with tears running down their faces from the tear-jerking Bambi style tales of suffering and death of the furry little woodland creatures. Their audiences are captured with the emotionality of the presentation. People hearing all sobbing just simply throw their money at these organizations. We've got to get on the emotional side of deer-yarding stories and the rabies and distemper and mange tear-jerking stories of the poor little woodland creatures that suffer inhumane ravages of over-population. Personalize it. Use the humanizing tactics that put the listener in the place of these poor forgotten animals. Never mind the facts and figures and stats and data. Those data-blizzards simply paralyze people into open-eyed unconsciousness. One of the most powerful images that I have ever seen was a video post on here that showed a weakened deer that was in obvious anguish hardly able to keep its head up for more that a couple of seconds at a time. We need more of that shown and explained to the public!

Actually, any consistent attempts at hijacking threads should be glossed over and ignored. If a point outside the topic has any value, start a separate thread instead of hijacking this one.

By the way, I finally found the article on the net. The address is http://www.mpnnow.com/article/20160404/SPORTS/160409803

I am suggesting that we get off our duffs and begin some pro-active, aggressive, activity that actually makes sense and has a proven track record, and stop merely giving lip-service to our efforts to revitalize hunting as a legitimate activity. I am not interested in continuing to let the anti-hunters set the education agendas. Does it take legislation to do this. It sure does. Or we can sit back and continue to watch hunting slide into the toilet because we are more concerned with throwing stones at successful programs than really addressing the problems and solving them. As for financial soundness, I have to wonder just what the costs will be when deer populations become totally uncontrolled because hunting has lost all legitimacy and acceptance. The drop in West Virginia's hunting license revenues tallied up to 1.5 million dollars because of that 20% decrease in hunters over that decade surveyed. I'll bet they have no problem justifying the expenditure as their license sales continue to increase.

You know, way, way back, somebody came up with another piece of technology that was all about making hunting a little bit easier. It was called a gun. When bow seasons were established, it was done exactly for the opposite reason of making things easier. It was done to up the challenge level. We seem to have finally completely buried that aspect of bow hunting and continue to march along that same path of "making it just a little easier". With that mentality, who really needs some special season? We have finally corrupted the basic reasons for a special bow season to a point where everything is considered legitimate simply on the precept of making things a little easier. And we are able to justify every incremental step using that same phrase. But what is lost now is the fact that bow season was meant to be a reversal of that mentality.

That's a great definition for as long as it stands. But we have seen how easy it is to arbitrarily change equipment definitions in bow seasons. You are setting up your own definitions, but you have no legal or authoritative standing to set those definitions and as we have seen, even if you did have such standing your definitions would only hold until the next guy comes along with his ideas of what constitutes legitimate equipment in bow seasons. Let's face it, today it is a free-for-all with an "anything goes" mentality. If someone wants your season, they will have it. It's just a matter of time. If muzzleloaders want to get into bow season, it will happen, and no amount of re-adjusting equipment logic or definitions will stop them.

Yeah people like to "bicker". Like when bowhunters said that bow season should be for bows, there were a bunch of people who wanted to argue with that, basically saying, "were coming into your season whether you like it or not, so move the hell over". Think that's bad, wait until the muzzleloaders say the same thing to the crossbow people. No matter what you may have worked years to set up, there are always those jealous people that come along afterward and want to shove their way in. And then the bickering begins. It is inevitable. There's always somebody who wants what you have. We all know that there are a whole lot of rifle hunters that would just love to have access to the bow season, and someday will be coming for it. And then, once again, you will hear "bickering". Get used to it. I won't end until there are no more "special seasons".

I cannot shoot a gun off-hand worth a crap. Because of that, all my stands have built in gun rests, and I have never really had a problem getting those nice horizontal surfaces to rest my gun on. Everything but the sandbags ..... lol. It's a pretty deadly arrangement. Doing the same with a crossbow would be absolutely no problem. For still hunting with a gun, I have a primos trigger bipod that works great. I can't see it being any more of a problem for a crossbow. But maybe there is something I'm not seeing that makes these things not work for crossbows.

We all have our own theories as to why hunters are dropping out, but not too many theories as to what to do about it. Most sign on to the weak attempts around special youth seasons. We throw our support around that thought and then declare that the problem is solved. I always thought that such programs are marginal at best in terms of effectiveness and instead supported more aggressive plans that in my mind would be a lot more effective. My favorite thought has always been for direct DEC involvement in public school assembly programs, and even school courses that taught outdoor activities including hunting and fishing. What a perfect way to recruit youth. Replies to that thought always involved a fair level of ridicule and comments that basically said that such a thing would never work and could never be accepted and implemented. Well imagine my surprise when I picked up the outdoor section of our local paper and learned that for the past 8 years, West Virginia has been doing exactly that and with an accompanying reversal in new license sales. Instead of the 20% drop in license sales over the last decade, they recorded an increase in sales of 9% per year since the school curriculum included a hunter education class. And apparently 6 other states have since introduced legislation to do exactly the same thing because of West Virginia's demonstrated success. A little out-of-the-box thinking has been applied with real positive and provable results. 17 states have passed laws to create "apprentice hunting licenses" which allows kids supervised by a trained mentor to sample the sport before completing the required 8-12 hour hunter safety course work. Other states have passed constitutional guarantees for hunting rights which essentially is a governmental endorsement of hunting. But here we are in NYS patting ourselves on the back for special youth seasons and then declaring success and walking away from any further thought on the subject. There are some states that are actually addressing the problem of shrinking hunter populations and showing positive results.

That is an excellent thought. In fact one of the best holidays for that is anytime during the Thanksgiving week. The kids have the whole week off and normally it is an excellent week of deer hunting. The fact is that Thanksgiving week usually gives the opportunity to get friends and relatives an opportunity to interface with the new hunter to show the camaraderie and social aspects of deer hunting rather than picking times when all of these people are excluded from participation. When you are trying to pick the ideal situations for hunting introduction, pick a time that is representative of what deer hunting is really all about.

There are so many options available that would be better choices that it really made me wonder about the motivation of putting it where they did. Probably the one thing that bothered me the most was the additional precedent that featured the intermixing of guns and bows. It was just one more step that demonstrated an attitude that mixing the two is no longer a concern. Given the fact that there were other options, the message being sent by the DEC attitudes and choices is obvious. One point of clarification should be made. I do not find fault with how the youth season impacts bowhunting successes, other than some unlikely but possible potential safety concerns that are obvious anytime you combine those two weapons with deer hunting. But the major concern for the activity itself is the fact that many potential mentors are forced to choose between mentoring and their own bow hunting (that can't be of benefit to increasing the available pool of mentors). I am not arguing as to whether that should be a conflict in terms of right or wrong, only a statement that it likely does cause a conflict and for no reason at all given all the other alternative dates.

I would have thought that if their policy was a blazing success, we would have heard that by now. They sure could use the positive PR ..... lol.

I understand where that thought comes from. It is simple..... Many (most?) gunhunters would love to force their way into bow seasons and enjoy the benefits that bowhunters have fought hard to establish over the years. They just don't want to use a bow and undergo all the pain of mastering that particular weapon. They want the bennys without the effort. Well now they have the crossover weapon that allows them to do that. We'll see if we become another Ohio where the bow season is now a "crossbow season" where they happen to allow you to still use your vertical bow. You have to admit that a crossbow is a very attractive alternative weapon for those who don't like all that archery form and discipline crap. So we wind up with a simple re-distributing of hunters from gun season to bow season. All those reasons that so many took up the bow for. The attempt to escape the frenetic party atmosphere of gun season for relative peace and quiet of the bowhunting world will undergo an irreversible change to something that represents a gun season without the bang.

I think that is a pretty good guess.

Hunting becoming a rich man's sport? ..... ha-ha-ha .... Some of it is apparently.

But, where has the news coverage of NYS hogs gone. Word has it that if you have a breeding population in the wild, before you know it you will be buried in them. And yet, we are not seeing any proliferation, in fact they seem to be disappearing. Maybe it's because the new DEC edict of "don't shoot them, let us do it" has worked. Who knows? Nobody in the DEC is making any of their results public. At least not that I have heard anyway.

Ha-ha-ha .... looky here, we have just fought the crossbow battle all over again. We could have saved a lot of time and went back into the archives and copy and pasted the jillions of threads that have already been posted for the last bunch of years. Funny how none of the discussion has changed a bit over all those years. Same old points and insults and remarks. This is an endless argument that really has absolutely nothing to do about the weapons involved. It is really about mind-sets and attitudes and individual reasons for hunting. And since we are all individuals, the debate will go on forever.

That is one thing that makes perfect sense to me. There is no justification for allowing crossbows and then continue to disallow drawlocks for able bodied hunters. They are just two minor variations of the same thing.