By Joella Bates
have been a compound bow shootshooter since 1989, when i bought my
first bow (a High Country trophy
Hunter) that actually fit me. that is
not to say that i hadn’t tried archery
before. Back in the mid 70’s, i tried dad’s
recurve bow, but when i turned my left
forearm black and blue from repeatedly
hitting it with the string, my excitement
for archery was turned off. in 1983 dad
bought me my first compound bow,
but since it had a 31 inch draw-length, i
experienced a repeat of painfully bruisbruising my left arm all the way up to the
bicep. My enthusiasm again was short
lived, but once i had a compound bow
that fit me, i was home free and couldn’t
get enough of it. the challenges of hunthunting with a bow and arrow kept me comcoming back for more.
Several years later, the same man
that helped me tape sewing pins
with big brightly colored heads
on the riser face, so i would have
a sighting device on my first comcompound bow, also introduced me
to shooting a crossbow. at the
time, i had matured into
a “real bowhunter”
and had shot sev
several deer with my
Lynn began
bowhunting
with a crossbow
as a youngster with
her mom and dad,
Cindy and Matt Futtere.
This is just one of the
nice animals that Lynn
has arrowed using a
crossbow.
bow. i had even begun shooting 3-D
archery tournaments locally, regionally,
and then nationally. i had even won the
iBO Women’s Bowhunter release 3-D
World Championship in 1993.
shoot my compound more accurately.
He was happier with much larger groups
than i had become accustomed to since
i had spent several years as a competicompetitive shooter. He believed as long as he
stayed in the pie plate that he could
in my own eyes, real bowhunters shot take down deer and he did. i believed
compound bows. Compound bows that his crossbow was far inferior to my
were way more accurate than any other compound.
kind of bow. a good compound shooter
could hit their target at longer distances We bowhunters tend to become judgjudgthan the traditional archers that i had mental when it comes to other styles of
watched at tournaments. i had shot a few shooting, often times thinking that we
traditional bows and found that it took a are the only “real bowhunters” or the
lot more practice to shoot them well. So i best bowhunters. i went through a stage
was a die-hard compound shooter.
where i fit that mold too. My experiexperience with Cliff’s crossbow left me feelfeelBut Cliff, one of my father’s friends, want- ing that it was an inferior weapon, but
wanted me to try his crossbow, so i shot it other shooters seemed to think that the
with him in the backyard. He was way up crossbow was a lot like a gun and that
in years. to him the advantages a person could kill deer with it at long
of being able to cock the bow ranges of even 100 yards or more. this
with an aid that reduced the was definitely a turn-off for me. i did not
feel of the poundage and feel that a responsible hunter should be
then for the string to be taking that kind of shot with a crossbow
held at full draw, provid- because of the lack of accuracy that i
provided him real advantages had witnessed. i believed that crossbows
over shoot