Compound Bows/Bow Hunting

Anyway, I'm being silly. I don't mean to throw this discussion off-track.

Of course, a more complete quote would show that I was addressing the accuracy issue. A mastodon at 40' might be dangerous as hell, but is no difficult target. I'm surprised at you, David.

The basic idea is that you have a new hunting weapon which can be used in places and situations in which modern realities absolutely preclude the use of firearms. Starting from inside the D.C. beltway in Virginia I'd have to drive at least a hundred miles to the nearest place I could feel halfway good about trying to hunt deer with firearms of any sort. People are taking deer with compound bows these days inside the beltway.

I m on YOUR side.
I agree with your point.
I did not see a need to reproduce EVERYTHING
in that it is already there and we all read it already.





David

I gotta say: bows control their projectiles
much, much better than atlatls do.
( Admittedly, I have not tested to confirm this.)

I d feel a lot safer around guys with bows or guns
than hunters with atlatls; scary. That does not look very stable.





David

Woomera = atlatl. I've never seen one used so I cant attest on accuracy either way but Australian aboriginals used them to feed their families. so they must be reasonable.

I 've seen them on TV.
I don 't deny that thay can hit the target.
I suspect that this woud not be a humane way to take game;
make a mess of him when it hits hits him,
as distinct from a bow or a gun, relatively speaking.





David

As I understand it its a spear thrower. So no more or less messy than an ordinary spear.
The implement just extends the length of your arm.

Yes.
I don 't know much about spear hunting.

Noone denies that a skillful atlatl chucker can bring down a large beast. The problem with atlatls is that they DO require more skill . The PA legislature deals with hunting laws that affect over 2 million of our states nimrods. Imagine some batch of weekend hunters, straight from Philly, armed with atlatls that they bought at Cabelas and they wanna show off their pubes by bringing down a deer (or three). There would, in our legislatures collective wisdom, be a surfeit of non mortally wounded deer limping about the countryside, scaring the children and making a nuisance of themselves.
So they took the heroic action and banned atlatls as an approved hunting weapons, right up there with rim fire rifles, RPG;s and full auto rifles.

We have one of the most enlightened legislatures in the nation.We have even allowed our stores to remain open on Sundays. Top that Kansas.

Carbon fibre arrows


Back on topic for a while...

Arrows over the last 100 years or so have gone from pressed wood to fibreglass, to aluminum, and finally to carbon fibre. The carbon fibre arrows are superior to the others in several ways but are more expensive; the idea is to start out with the least expensive halfway decent carbon arrows you can find at Gander Mountain or Bass Pro or whatever UNTIL you get good enough to stop losing/breaking them (until you don't ever miss an entire target at 30 yards...), and then switch over to decent ones.

Carbon fibre arrows are lighter and stiffer than aluminum and fly faster but the most major thing they DON'T do is bend. A carbon arrow is either good or it's broken, there is nothing in between and you don't have to GUESS like you would with aluminum; the aluminum arrows are still being sold but they're basically outmoded.

The lightest mechanical broadhead which kills deer quickly enough to allow them to be found is around 85 grains; therefore you want 85 or 100 grain target points.

The arrows I recommend once you get serious about the thing and don't lose them or break them unnecessarily are these:

http://www.carbonrevolution.com/

CarbonRevolution appears to be a spinoff from High Country Archery and the arrows have been marketed directly by HCA until recently. They are significantly lighter than anything else and are as stiff as anything else you could put your hands on including safari arrows three times as heavy.

I would love to own some of those explosive tipped arrows that Rambo used in his last movie? Cabelas handle them?

Maybe carve the arrowpoints out of Dynamite ?

Let us know how that works out, farmer.

Explosive tipped arrows wouldn't leave much of Bambi to eat, which is the main purpose of the whole deal.

What you want is this:





http://aftershockarchery.com/

Those things open INSIDE the animal (i.e. they don't waste any energy getting past hide, fur, ribs etx.) to a huge cutting edge which is beyond what all but the most lethal bullets can do as far as quick kills and what not. I use the 85 and 100 grain versions of those. They claim that the 125-gr version produces quick kills on cape buffalo, which is difficult to do even with magnum caliber rifles.

Mechanical Broadheads

The fastest anybody ever got with longbows was around 180 fps. They thought it was remarkable that the very first compound bows were able to shoot at 220 or 240. Up to that point you could still use the ordinary broadhead hunting arrows which had been there since the days of Alley Oop.

In the mid 1990s however, compound bows started shooting around 260 - 290 fps and at that point, the old style broadheads started to over-control the arrow and what you started seeing looked like a sinker ball in baseball. First time I ever saw it I was totally floored; the arrow went out about twelve yards from the bow and then it looked like the hand of God simply took it and it landed a foot down and six or eight inches to the left of where the same arrow would have with a target point.

It was possible to tune most of out of some bows simply by getting components lined up as straight as possible, but it was generally more time consuming and difficult than most people could deal with. That was the original reason for mechanical broadheads; they generally fly like target points without requiring any super tuning of components.

Release Devices

Most of us are familiar with the idea of shooting bows with three fingers and either a protective leather tab over the fingers or a leather glove of sorts. This works with longbows because of the wide angle the string takes; the fingers do not get pinched.

East of the Carpathian mountains and particularly for the little composite bows which Huns, Avars, Magyars and Mongols used from horseback, the angle of the bowstring would have been too sharp for a three-finger release. What they actually used was a thumb-ring which amounted to a release device of sorts:



The ring was grooved; the idea was that you locked the grooved part of the ring over the bow string, locked the index finger over the thumb, and then snapped the thumb loose to shoot the arrow.

Compound bows generally have a string loop behind the arrow and a mechanical release device locks the string loop and a gun-style trigger releases the arrow. Funny thing however, most release devices still use designs from ten or fifteen years ago before people started using string loops and the device locked the string itself under the arrow, with a metal nock clamped to the string just over the arrow.

There are only a couple of release devices which are basically up to date and designed for use with string loops and the one I like is the Scott Archery Silverhorn.



The trigger on that thing involves a roller bearing and is particularly precise and smooth. A certain amount of paraphernalia goes into compound bows and this is one of the more major of such items.

Back to deer hunting (more important topic than high finance...)

CAMOUFLAGE

Of all the money spent on hunting paraphernalia, the least well spent is probably spent on camouflage and scent blocking gear. Deer see movement very well, but they see forms badly if at all. I've heard tales of people shooting deer with a white shirt and tie on to prove to themselves it could be done.

Likewise a bar of soap is significantly less money than many people spent on chemicals and clothing purported to eliminate human scent. ASSUMING you are hunting from a tree stand so as to get human scent off the ground, this should not be a factor. I've never yet been made by scent.

I normally wear a pear of black denims, loafers, and a camo sweatshirt of some sort and some sort of a little camo netting thing with eye slits over my face when hunting deer. That has invariably sufficed.

One and only one caveat along such lines. Deer DO see in ultraviolet and will see the uv sheen which some detergents will leave on clothing. There are in fact spray products to knock that sheen off, e.v.

https://www.natchezss.com/product.cfm?contentID=productDetail&prodID=YE1341&src=sim

The MSDS for the UV absorbant chemical (BMDM) indicates that its fairly non toxic although it may be a skin irritant. Obviously they dont recommend that the spray be dosed onto your clothing while going in the field.

Its kinda weird in that they market this when, all you really have to do is to hand wash your hunting duds in a basin using a normal SOAP Not a detergent with "brighteners" or other additives. Many detergent brighteners come with a healthy dose of TiO2,a whitening agent that will flouresce nicely under a blacklight (Might as well paint yourself with neon lights.

Try some Fels Naptha and wash your camos a couple of times.

I saw an article about this new "computer generated" camo which is supposed to be based upon a whitetails vision patterning. I only heard a little bit about it and would love to hear more about the basis for its generation.

DISCUSS HUNTING KNIVES ALSO

Several kinds of things you might want or need a knife for on a hunting trip. Two of the most major would be field-dressing deer and, if you're hunting with a bow, self protection against anything OTHER than a deer which you might encounter in the woods. I've never had it happen but you never know....

A knife for field dressing deer should be as strong and sharp as possible and it should have a tab for peeling hide:



An extreme case...

Buck makes folding knives with cutting and peeling blades:



That one has a saw blade as well and the thing you'd normally want that for would be taking small limbs off trees while using a climbing tree stand.

Of all the knives which could be carried around in a pocket or clipped to a belt there is one which I generally recommend as the strongest and sharpest folding knife I've ever come across, i.e. the CRKT M16:



That one opens easily with one hand and you'd have a hard time telling it was a folding knife once it's open. I've heard that the military uses it.