I'm certainly not anti-archery -- more on that in a minute -- but it's not for me. I gave up bow hunting in the mid-1960's after I shot a little buck, it ran off and died, and I couldn't find it.
I made an apparent perfect shot at about 20 paces, burying the arrow up to the feathers behind the deer's shoulder. But the triple-bladed broadhead didn't kill the deer. It went bounding away through a dense red-brush thicket.
I spent hours futilely searching for the deer. It left no blood trail. I managed to follow its tracks into a swamp, where I lost them.
I crisscrossed the area looking for fresh tracks and/or blood, but could find nothing. I was certain I'd killed the deer, but I couldn't find it.
About a week later another hunter in the area (my uncle's farm) found the dead buck by following circling buzzards. It had run deep into the swamp and collapsed into a thick tangle of honeysuckle vines and brush, buried from sight.
That's when I quit bow hunting.
Back then just seeing a deer was a big deal. You might hunt for years -- as I did during one stretch -- without getting a shot.
To finally kill one and lose it was, for me, unconscionable. I wasn't going to do it again.
Even today, with deer plentiful, I feel the same way. No matter how many deer I kill (I got eight during my best season) I don't want to risk wounding and losing one.
Granted, I occasionally miss with my muzzleloader or old 30-30. But very seldom. I wait for a good, close shot and make a clean kill almost every time.
With a bow -- with which I occasionally target-shoot -- I can hit the kill zone eight or nine shots out of 10 at a reasonable range. Some might think that's good enough. I don't.
Instead of being content with the eight or nine deer I'd have killed (maybe), I worry about the one or two I'd have wounded.
Unfortunately, there are some bow hunters who don't feel the same away. I was talking to one a few years ago, explaining that I don't consider myself a consistently good enough shot to bow-hunt. He chuckled and said he's not a great shot either, "but I've got plenty of arrows and I just keep shooting till I hit something."
The late Bob Steber, Tennessee's greatest outdoor writer, called archery season "pin cushion season," because so many deer were wounded. Steber believed bow hunters should be required to pass a proficiency test to get an archery permit. This was back before modern advancements in archery equipment made for more accurate shooting.
There are articles online that discuss how 50% or more of animals shot don't die right away - AND ARE NEVER FOUND by the morons who shot at them in the first place. They get shot in the gut or the eyeball or they have a broken leg, punctured lung... and die of thirst and starvation. It is rarely a "clean shot" where the deer is standing there minding its own business and then boom it's dead.
I'm sure that the majority of today's bow hunters are proficient. They practice long and hard and make sure their shots are vital. Most of my gun-hunting buddies are also bow hunters, including one, Barry Stricklin, who uses flint-tipped home-made arrows shot from an Indian-vintage bow. Last season he shot one arrow and killed one deer.
At the other end of the archery spectrum from primitive bows and arrows are compound bows and crossbows, the latter legalized by the TWRA a few years ago. I support their use. I'm for anything that helps a hunter make a more accurate shot. As proficient as crossbows have become, I might give one a try at some point.
But for the time being, I'll stick with my muzzleloader and old 30-30.
When I squeeze the trigger I'm confident that the deer I'm aiming at will meet a quick and humane death. I lack that confidence with a bow -- and just one wounded deer is one too many for me.
(Lebanon Democrat-Oct 14, 2014)
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