Crossbow Hunting by William Hovey Smith

Author:William Hovey Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811742733
Publisher: Stackpole Books

10

Deer Hunting with

a Crossbow

Religion and crossbows crossed paths in 1139 when Pope Innocent II called the crossbow “deadly and hateful to God and unfit to be used against Christians.” In my case, the biblical admonition “If you have done it to the least of these you have done it to me” influenced the selection of my first crossbow. Because of a writer’s perpetual state of poverty, I decided to try to take a deer with the least expensive crossbow that I could buy. If I did, I figured there may be something to this crossbow stuff.

Sportsman’s Guide, the discount catalogue company, featured an ad for a Barnett Ranger at $130, which included a red-dot sight, quiver, and four arrows. It was a price that I could afford, but would the Ranger kill deer? The crossbow was advertised with a 150-pound pull, which would give the crossbow adequate power to take deer-size game. With its skeletal stock, it had a total weight of slightly less than 5 pounds, an important feature since I planned to take it on a hunt to the Cumberland Island National Seashore, a wilderness area that required me to pack in all of my stuff and drag out any game I shot.

When the crossbow arrived, I found it to be a simple instrument with a fiberglass rod for a prod and an inexpensive Chinese red-dot sight with two different brightness levels. I tried it out and found it shot adequately with Barnett’s 412-grain Stalker arrows and Muzzy’s 125-grain skeletal broadheads, a heavier point than is usually used on crossbows but since I owned them I thought I would use them. (This was not a bad selection for my purposes because many first-time crossbow buyers install the same points on their crossbow arrows that they previously used with their conventional bows.)

I was impressed with how the little crossbow shot. It may not have been a tack driver, but I had no problems keeping broadheads in less than 2-inch groups at 20 yards. I also shot the crossbow at 30 and 40 yards and taped the amount of drop for each range below the shooting rail for easy reference.

I decided to try out the crossbow on 13 acres of undeveloped urban wetlands in my hometown. I often bowhunted there, and although it was a small parcel, I invariably saw deer. My game plan was to sit inside the woods within sight of a small grain patch that I had planted. With any luck, the deer would walk to the edge of the woods, and I would have a shot. The first afternoon, I discovered I was too far back in the woods, and the buck stayed just out of range until dark. The following afternoon, I moved my stand closer to the food plot and resumed my hunt.

This time, a doe came out of the woods opposite me and walked toward my stand. When she was about 20 yards away, she turned broadside. I had already switched on the red-dot sight and taken the safety off the crossbow as she approached.

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