After God and family bowhunting has been and continues to be the most important thing in my life. It has been since I killed the first live deer I ever saw in my life at age 16 with a Ben Pearson Cougar. In those days in many states east of the rockies big game were rare. For the first 10 years I bowhunted (only 6 of those years with traditional)I felt very lucky to get one bow range opportunity per year.I was lucky enough to kill a deer every third year for the first 9 years. Most adults I knew who had been bowhunting since the late 50's had never killed a deer. My friend's dad was a celebrity speaker at our school because he had bow-killed 1 deer (a fine doe) in 9 years of bowhunting! He brought his bow, the arrow, quiver, and even the tanned doe hide to school -- wow, this guy (an optometrist) was a real mountain man to me.
The reason I think these are the golden years is because, at least in the east big game populations abound. Outside of Missouri who would even have thought turkey would become common place and a reasonable quary for the bowhunter?
I don't resent the compound bow for anything. The compound brought a swell of bowhunters into action. This and increasing deer populations caused success rates to triple and quadruple. This caught the attention of game managers who then lengthened seasons for archers (in many areas).
The only thing sort of negative I attribute to the compound is that it stole some of the mystique of bowhunting from the traditional bowhunter. During the traditional-only days and even the first 10 years or so of the compound, others (gun hunters and nonhunters) thought bowhunters were sort of super hunters (and many bowhunters are by the way). They recognized that we had to be good woodsmen, great shots, persistent, and that we placed a premium on HOW we hunted more than WHAT we killed. However, after more people got into bowhunting, with the compound and killing deer with arrows became more common place, people didn't think us bowhunters so special or elite anymore.
Our success rates increased mainly due to higher populations not the equipoment -- the average traditional kill was 14 yards and compounds 17 yards in the last survey I saw about 10 years ago - so not that big a difference.
I'm thankful and impressed that many of you fellows stayed with traditional or came back to it sooner than I did. By so doing you kept alive and even caused expansion of the custom bowyer businesses.
I'm also thankful as a bowhunter and a retired wildlife biologist that you folks started and kept alive the state bowhunting clubs. Traditional guys are very often the most numerous of the members of these small but very vocal and often effective hunter organizations. In my state we could almost always count on the United Bowhunters or Traditional Archer's Association to step up to the plate in the name of sound wildlife management regulations and policies. We almost never heard from the firearms fraternity because they weren't organized.
Some bowhunters would like to be the only ones in the woods. However, if we don't stay strong in numbers our seasons will be eroded and time in the woods is number 2 on my list of why I bowhunt. I firmly believe there will be more bowhunters when my grandson (now 7) starts bowhunting in about 5 years)than there are today -- a lot more.
Topic: Are we in the Golden Era of Archery? (Read 1606 times)
