It’s OK to get cross about your bow

I’ve been writing about fisheries in the Northern District of Cook Inlet almost relentlessly this year. Other than a couple of moose hunting columns and the what’s happening around the area commentaries, it seems like the condition of our fisheries has occupied all my writing energies. It’s time for a break and a look in a different direction.

We have two fish and game regulatory bodies in Alaska – the Board of Fisheries (BOF) and the Board of Game (BOG). Obviously, one handles fisheries issues and the other deals with game concerns. The BOG will hold a meeting in Anchorage in mid-January to address several statewide issues like sale of big game trophies, archery and crossbow regulations, statewide big game seasons (including sheep), various methods and means, sealing and bag limits, black bear baiting, trapping, intensive management issues and the ever popular miscellaneous concerns.

I’ve been looking through the BOG proposal book, and the archery and crossbow regulations series of proposals definitely caught my eye. I’m not a hard-core archer like some died-in-the-wool types I know, but I definitely enjoy the sport. One of the first animals I ever harvested was a cottontail rabbit taken using an old solid fiberglass recurve bow and wooden arrows back in my early teen years in Illinois. This era predated the invention of the compound bow for those of you looking to put my exploits in some sort of historical perspective.

My brother and I were heavy into archery, shooting recurves for most of our target and hunting efforts and longbows for our bowfishing adventures. We took rabbits, squirrels, carp and one large, mean snapping turtle in our youthful hunting endeavors. We hunted deer, but never got a shot opportunity. We even tried bird hunting with bows and had a couple of near misses on in-flight pheasants.

I fell off the archery bandwagon and into the muzzleloading movement back in the mid-1960s and never looked back. After retiring at the end of 1999, I looked around and realized there were numerous drawing permit hunt opportunities right here in Game Management Unit (GMU) 14 for bowhunters, so I got back into the sport. Damage to my hands over the years dictated that I became a compound bow shooter, using a release aid attached to my wrist. I’ve been on moose, caribou and sheep hunts since with my bow, but have yet to kill a large animal — although I just barely missed a really nice caribou up in the Dalton Highway Corridor one year!

My point to all this is that I’m no expert, but I do have a working knowledge of archery and bowhunting. I have never fired a crossbow, but I have done extensive reading on the subject because I’ve been looking into the possibility of buying one for some of my hunting. Crossbows are legal for hunting in Alaska during a general season where no weapons restrictions exist.

Why hunt with a crossbow when you have a compound bow already in hand? First and foremost, I’m not a kid anymore and shoulder issues will preclude drawing a bow not too many years down the road. Second, a crossbow presents a different hunting tool opportunity; it’s something different to try. Third, it looks like fun. And fourth, a crossbow is no more effective or efficient than my compound bow is already, so I wouldn’t have any special advantage in the field.

That’s right, a crossbow brings nothing special to the bowhunting venue. In fact, a crossbow can have more disadvantages than a compound in the field. A crossbow is several pounds heavier than a compound bow to carry, it’s bulkier and clumsier to carry in brush and offers no advantage in speed or effective range over modern compound bows. A crossbow is noisier and is harder to silence than a compound bow.

Does it have any good points? Yes, ease of use. A crossbow is easy to sight in and shoot once you learn proper cocking technique. A novice hunter could learn to accurately shoot a crossbow and be hunting more quickly than a person new to compound bows or especially traditional archery equipment. However, a person shooting a compound bow with sights and using a release can also be up and hunting pretty quickly, too.

Nearly half the states allow crossbows for hunting during their archery seasons because crossbows have no significant advantage over the compound bows most bowhunters already use. Public perception has crossbows as the preferred tool of poachers. Many erroneously think crossbows have more power and range than vertical bows. These are both false perceptions.

While the analogy is not an exact fit, crossbows are to compound bows like modern in-line muzzleloaders with 209 primer ignition are to traditional side-lock muzzleloaders. Crossbows and in-line muzzleloaders are easier to use, but offer no improvement in the ballistics of the projectile fired over the more accepted compounds or side-lock firearms. Alaska allows in-lines during muzzleloading-only seasons. Why not include crossbows as archery gear allowed during bowhunting-only seasons?

Providing hunting opportunity while protecting the general health of the resource is the duty of both the BOG and Fish and Game. Allowing crossbows during the archery season provides another form of opportunity without endangering population health any more than any other archery equipment does, and it would allow older, injured or disabled hunters wishing to continue bowhunting to do so. Why is that not a win-win situation?

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.