Crossbows- Why not?

Dustin Gabrielson
10-30-11
Last year I attended the Spring Hearing to hear all of the issues concerning Natural Resources for this upcoming year. The most heated topic I heard that night was the broad legalization of Crossbows during the states archery season. As of right now the only people that can legally carry a crossbow are senior citizens 65 and older or physically disabled individuals. There were very few people in the room that supported Crossbows. I found everybody’s arguments for why we shouldn’t have them asinine.
The most common argument against the legalization of crossbows was that all the deer would be killed before the gun deer season. People’s idea of what is crossbow does are very much altered from reality. It sounded almost as though people thought the act of carrying a crossbow into the woods would cause a mass kill off of our whitetail deer herd. There were photos of AR-platform crossbows brought in that were show cased as the norm. They stated stats that this bow will hold a 2 inch group at 150 yards, and they went on and on saying that this is what’s going to be in the hands of every hunter in the woods come archery season. People that only gun hunt were standing up stating that if crossbows are legalized there will be no bucks left come gun deer season. WHAT!! These arguments just sound so crazy to me. Your average crossbow in the hands of an average hunter in WI will only effectively shoot 30 yards. Are you going to get a few people with high end equipment and fair amount of skill shooting farther, sure you will. I however, with my regular compound bow can shoot 50 yards and hold my group in the vitals of a deer very easily. I could shoot farther if I just had more pins. I have friends that can shoot 100 yards no problem with their compound bows. Are they going to shoot this far in a hunting situation, most likely not? Modern day compounds are much more efficient than most cross bows with their very short limbs. There is a reason a crossbow has to have a draw weight of 100 pounds to be legal.
In reality of majority of hunters still would not hunt with a crossbow. The legalization of crossbows would however open up another avenue to our younger generation to participate in the wonderful sport of archery hunting. The state of WI has a 30 LBS minimum draw weight for conventional bows. This weight is still a barrier to many younger hunters that are 10-12 years old now. If they could carry a crossbow I believe that it would be a gate way to get them into the sport, and I really believe that most people would advance into shooting a vertical bow once they matured enough to handle the draw cycle. It would also let older citizens under the 65 year old mark extend their bow hunting career. Research shows that many peoples participation in archery hunting drops off in their 50’s because they can’t handle drawing a bow anymore.
To sum it up, in times such as these with hunters numbers dwindling and the number of people trying to rob us of our right to hunt growing hunters need to stick together. This same controversy happened when compound bows came out, traditional archers didn’t want these things in the woods. Today they are everywhere. It is just how things change in time. Hunters need to stop fighting against each other and except that not everybody is going to have the same preference over equipment. If they can do that we will recruit many new hunters to the woods and we can use our growing numbers to fight for something worthwhile that will benefit the whole hunting community.