Man I love this topic! Just not enough info here for me to make a judgment, there are too many variables (the numbers are close but one side could have a bunch of crappy hunters, different hunting set ups, etc.) What I do not like about this article is that instead of just stating the facts and making it an informative article, he makes it a persuasive speech. He compares his argument of cross bow vs. compound bows to another argument of judging a deer's age by the wrinkles in his ears, and implies if you believe that one of his arguments is true...they must both be true. He tries to make you feel incompetent if you don't agree with his "scientific" study by using lines like "Their indisputable claims–at least in their minds–can be entertaining in some cases, but under the glare of scientific scrutiny their wildlife wisdom withers into a mishmash of myth and misconception". I don't like people trying to make me feel stupid if I don't agree with their OPINION! I have nothing against cross bow hunting but I do personally believe (my own opinion) that the crossbow is a more efficient weapon than a compound bow when hunting deer. He then goes on to basically state that almost everybody else agrees with his study by using the line "Fortunately for the rest of the outdoor community". I really wish this article was written by a lifetime bowhunter rather than some clown that is good at shooting skeet and cooking. This "author" is exactly that, he's a writer of cookbooks and a skeet shooter, that uses persuasive writing to try to get others to agree with a flawed study. The subtext at the bottom of the article states that he's an award winning writer...well I want to read an article from an award winning archer, not a quack writer, but that's just me. Funny thing is he states two sets of facts in the article and one goes directly against his argument. He states that the kills that occurred with the crossbow were at an average of 26.3 yard compared to an average vertical bow kill of 22.3 yards. He basically thinks his readers are idiots and that they will agree that this is an insignificant difference...well that's far from the truth. Hear me out...that's a difference of 12 feet (79ft vs. 67ft.) or almost an 1/5 (18%) range advantage. To me if you can cover more area (and almost a 20% range advantage when using a short range weapon is major...for me at least) you can kill more deer. Hear me out one last time, I promise, lol, if you have a kill range of 67 ft in a circle you cover approximately 14103 square ft. (simple math, Area of Circle= 3.14x(Radius squared)) and a crossbow would give you a kill zone of 19607 square ft. This would give the cross bow hunter 39% bigger killing zone (5504 square feet more of kill zone). And sorry to Mr. Ralph Winingham, but mama didn't raise no fool, logic tells me if you have a larger kill zone you will kill more deer. On a larger scale my example would be a rifle compared to a bow...bigger kill zones relate directly to more deer killed. I rarely type up a response but this quack writer really got under my skin, lol! I did look into some UNBIASED studies by professional ARCHERY HUNTERS!!! Here are two good ones
http://www.marylandqdma.com/files/Download/Pedersen-31-34.pdf and
http://onlineathens.com/stories/091411/spo_885563824.shtml These articles are written without a biased opinion and show that vertical bow actually have a higher kill rate that crossbows, great articles. I still believe (just my own personal opinion and stereotyping from life experience) that this is due to the difference in hunters that use a crossbow and a vertical bow, but that's just a personal opinion. Anyways I would love to see the rest of the study to see if they counted the number of wounded deer by vertical bows vs. crossbows the article only seems to give the success rates. There are about another million question I have about this study that I would love to see, unfortunately the d-bag writer has spoiled it for me! (can I say d-bag on here???) Anyways, hope ya'll enjoyed this write up and can't wait to see when a real study is completed and released to the public on this topic, but I believe it will almost be impossible to do because every hunt, hunter, and killing situation is so completely different. Last thing...I'm raising a beer in cheers to the sport of all kinds of Bowhunting (not skeet shooting and cooking) and toasting the great debate of the vertical bow vs. the crossbow! Can't wait for the season to start and good luck to everybody no matter what your shooting with!
