Global Sports: Some Points About Bow Hunting

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Some Points About Bow Hunting

By Owen Jones

Bow hunting or bowhunting is one of those sports that you either love or you hate - a bit like fox hunting in the United Kingdom. Town people hate it and anybody involved with it and country people see it necessary to cull wild animals that could otherwise become a pest.

Despite its macho image, which was encouraged by the film the Deer Hunter, there are growing quantities of women who go bowhunting. The big difference between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow is distance. A hunting rifle with telescopic sights can provide enough punch at 600 yards to kill a deer with a single shot almost wherever it is hit in the chest.

On the other hand, a hunter using a bow with a fifty pound draw weight will need to be within about forty yards to be able to deliver the same kind of lethal punch, if the shot is precise to the heart.

This means that if you seriously wound an animal from 600 yards, it will probably be dead by the time you get there, clambering over fallen trees and rocks, but if you severely wound a deer from forty yards you see its pain.

This has a salutacious effect on most bow hunters. The vast majority of bow hunters do not want to see this and they do not want the creature to suffer either, so they wait for the right shot. If it is not there, they do not shoot.

A hunting bow needs to have a draw weight of at least fifty pounds to hunt large game and that used to mean quite a sturdy recurve or longbow, but the compound bow was developed in 1966.

A compound bow makes use of pulleys to help with the draw, which permits less beefy people to accomplish a draw weight of fifty pounds, which has opened up bowhunting to women and adolescents.

Large wild animals are dangerous and some will attack without warning if they feel threatened. This leads to a danger zone around wild animals. Every sort of animal has a danger zone, for a lion, that could be pretty large and for a deer less so. This danger zone is an locale outside of which you are fairly safe.

If you are hunting with a gun, you can stay outside that danger zone without difficulty, but with a bow and arrow, well, you often have to go within it. This enlarged danger supplies a greater rush for bow hunters - a bigger thrill. Especially if they are hunting bears or mountain lions.

In contrast to the Deer Hunter, most bow hunters go on organized trips these days. The hunting trip is organized with the aid of a specialized firm which will provide guided excursions into regions known to have large numbers of the animals you want to pursue.

These expert guides know how to bait zones to lure your prey; they can give advice on safety aspects and they take a big gun in case a hunter is too stupid to take their advice. Regrettably, the gun is for use on the animal, not the idiot.

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