Compound Bows/Bow Hunting

I gotta disagree. My son's Mathews Genesis bow is set to the highest draw weight it has, which is only about 20 lbs, which is comparable to a 35lb recurve in stored energy. It can kill deer. It's all about shot placement.

You see a lot of bows these days for youth and women starting at 30 lbs - they kill stuff too. Very, very few youngsters and women could ever pull the 50lb minimum you speak of - so I have to take issue with that statement.

I pull 54#. If my bow were set to it's max 60# draw weight, I would only get about 2fps more and at what cost? A shoulder or two. Maybe an elbow.

I'm being conservative... If you're going to hunt deer with LESS than 50 lbs of draw weight, I'd offer two or three suggestions: take a hard look at those images of the Aftershock mechanical broadheads I posted above, don't take any quartering shots, and don't shoot anything more than about 25 yards away.

The Aftershock website shows a picture of a woman with a 45-lb bow and a fairly big hog she killed with it.

If youve ever seen Woodland Culture arrows and arrows used by the Plains Indians to bring down bison, youd notice that there is a balance between the point /arrow and the bow . Indians, when the bow was introduced, learned that they could bring down big game ny being close in and using rather small tips of volcanic glass or jasper. They are often erroneously called "Bird tips" , but these arrows, shot with rather low draw bows, were quite lethal .

On the plains that would work. The places I hunt on the other hand are so thick that if a whitetail deer makes it more than than about60 yards from the point where he was shot, your chances of finding him go under 50%. I've never had one go more than about 35 yards with a decent shot with one of those Aftershocks.

Again, http://www.aftershockarchery.com

That's why I got me one of these:

No real way to keep a dog around where I live and not certain a dog could track one particular deer through the area I hunt. I'd like to have a dog who was bright enough to sit up in a tree and keep his mouth shut until AFTER I'd shot a deer and then immediately jump down and follow the fricking deer off to wherever he goes down and stand there and bark until I got there. THAT would be a useful dog.

Strategies/Treestands

Yeah, there are a few other animals you might hunt with bows and strategies for them will vary, but the most major thing which people hunt with bows and the most major untapped source of animal protein out there is the ordinary whitetail deer.

Somebody who was good enough at it and didn't have to work for a living doing other things has the option of trying to stalk deer from downwind and shoot them in a bedding area; everybody else including anybody reading this thread as a sort of a primer, hunts from tree stands.

The basic idea is that once you get to where you can consistently hit a softball-sized target out to about 30 yards, the thing becomes an engineering discipline in which the objective is to place a stand within 15 - 30 yards of some sort of a believable path area.

The most major reason for tree stands is to get human scent off the ground; once you're 15' up or thereabouts, human scent goes off into the air and they are very unlikely to make you by scent. On the ground you'd have no chance, a deer's sense of smell is said to be three or four orders of magnitude better than yours.

Understand this: there are only two kinds of tree stands which you should ever consider using under any circumstances at all, i.e. the ladder type and the climbing type: all other tree stands are basically death traps looking for ways to happen. It's astonishing we don't get more rednecks (like me) killed every year than deer, tree stands being the most major reason.

This need to be able to move stands around as deer habits change leads me to the following observation as well: you need a high degree of access to the land in question to be able to hunt deer with a bow. Trying to hunt with a bow on public land or any sort of a private hunt club with which you have to sign up for given areas on given days is problematical at best; you'd be better off hunting in those areas with firearms, unless the areas are far enough out and far enough off the beaten trail that you're not encountering other people on them.

i am woundering what poundage of compound bow is needed to kill pigs/goats and maybe the odd deer now and then i currently have a bear odessy 2 and it is set at its max of 50lb is this enough?

Marginal, but enough if you use the right broadheads. The Aftershock mechanicals in particular go through hide and ribs and then open to a huge cutting edge INSIDE the animal and there's at least one case of a woman killing a large boar with a 45# bow and one of them. The downside is that finding animals can be problematical since the animal bleeds out internally and not much blood gets onto the ground. The upside is that most animals don't make it past forty yards with good shots and Aftershocks.

Other than that, I'd still be happier with a 60# bow.

Generally a compound bow is recurved bow which is coupled with pulley. This type of bows is much classier. And its restoring force and draw are far from being proportional to one another.

I want to enter in the world of archery. Will you please tell me which archery supplies will be best for me?

The most major thing about a compound bow is that it has to fit the individual who will be using it. In other words, draw length and poundage are both important, but draw length is totally critical. The first thing you need to do is find some local archery club and get somebody to help you figure out the draw length and poundage that you'd be looking for.

its really beneficial idea