Every self-respecting podcaster these days seems to have an episode about the “controversy” between tradbow shooters and compound shooters in his line-up. It is a big deal right now. The compound shooters call out the traditionalists that they can’t hit the broadside of a barn from the inside, and the traditionalists blame the compound shooters for taking irresponsible shots at unethical distances. The debates are laced with with sweeping statements such as “Compound shooters are substituting hunting skills with technology!” or “For a tradbow, the hunt begins at distances where it would end with a compound!”, an observation that, by the way, is also often used by compound bow hunters to disparage rifle hunters, and my favourite from a tradbow hunter (if I hear it one more time, I may smash my iPhone): “I could have shot it with a compound!” (Sorry Aron). In the process of trying to get on the victorious side of the debate, there is also a lot of talk about wounding: “If you are going trad, expect to wound a lot more animals than with a compound!” or “How often do you think those compound shooter wound an animal at 80 yards?”
What on earth are we doing?
We are not having this discussion around the campfire in the woods, with nobody listening but the birds and the trees. Have we become so entrenched in this debate that it is OK to use every argument, even arguments that could easily shine a less-positive light on hunting as a whole? Apparently it is not a problem to confess on public media to having wounded not-insignificant numbers of animals , without providing some context about the circumstances, the follow-up, the (hopefully) happy ending. It makes me cringe.
Let’s step back for a bit and analyze the issue. Killing animals with a bow (among other less discriminate killing methods) has kept our ancestors alive for a long time. However, when rifles appeared on the scene, the bow became a lot less popular quickly. It is probably safe to say that towards the end of the 18th Century not too many white men ran around the woods trying to get dinner with a bow.
Generally Saxton Pope and his buddy Art Young are credited with reviving the lost art of hunting with a stick and string. Pope’s book “Hunting with the bow and arrow” published in 1923 is an interesting read (https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/pope/hunting-with-bow-and-arrow/). There are earlier publications though, by fellows who took to hunting with a bow, such as “The witchery of Archery” by J. Maurice Thompson published in 1877 (https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/witchery/). All their equipment and materials used were what we now refer to as traditional or primitive.
In the 1940s one Fred Bear initiated his bow company, and towards the end of that decade started incorporating fiberglass in his bows. It wasn’t until 1953 that he patented the recurve bow limb. Fred and his contemporaries used these bows on all matter of game. They shot at distances that would make even the most open-minded traditional shooter these days scratch his or her head. Some old footage of Fred Bear’s hunts even shows an archer using a “traditional” bow with a sight pin! (http://www.3riversarchery.com/fred-bear-dvd-collection.html).
This little journey back in time goes to show that what some so lovingly refer to as traditional, is only about a century old, as far as use by non-native North Americans is concerned, and the recurve bow made with modern materials is even younger. It is, in fact, only about two decades older than the first compound bow, which emerged on the scene in 1969 when a fellow by the name of Holless Wilbur Allen was granted a US patent for a bow with pulleys at the end of the limbs.
Though I have no numbers to back this up, I would argue that the majority of bowhunters that would claim they hunt with traditional equipment, in fact use technology that was patented exactly 16 years earlier than the patent that kickstarted modern archery equipment. I own several rifles that are older than that.
So now that we have filled up some trenches, knocked over some pedestals, and we are looking each other in the eye, what is the commotion really all about? We all hunt with a bow. The technology that we use was developed within two decades of each other. Even most individuals that build their bows from trees often use modern tools to get things done. And what does it all matter, really?
Unfortunately, the trend of pitching one kind of hunting or hunter against the other started early. In Saxton Pope’s book already you can read: “For by shaming the “mighty hunter” and his unfair methods in the use of powerful destructive agents, we feel that we help to develop better sporting ethics”. The “powerful destructive agent” in this case was the rifle, and “we” were the emerging breed of bowhunters, in Pope’s mind clearly having the moral high-ground.
In the end, we are all hunters. Long-range shooters, regular rifle hunters, muzzleloader enthusiast, crossbow people, compound shooters, traditional-method hunters, the primitive guys, the gap-shooters and instinctive aimers, and even the poor fellow with the spear, we all get out into the field to follow our passion. We don’t have to agree on our choice of technology, but it would be nice if we could agree to not criticize each other on every imaginable media outlet at every opportunity.
If we could put only half of the time and effort we put into fighting each other over frivolous things towards conservation initiatives, promoting hunting as an essential wildlife management tool, educating ourselves about what is happening to our public lands, and writing to our elected officials about our issues that affect us, we would be in a much better place. Yet we take to the keyboard with vitriol in our fingertips ever chance we get, and bash the ones that do not exactly do as we do, or think as we think, or use the equipment we feel is superior. “We have met the enemy…”
Frans Diepstraten
(this article, with some edits, has also been published in the May 2017 issue of the Journal of Mountain Hunting
My first foray into traditional archery ended abruptly, when a brutal swing of sharp-edged axe cut my bow in half.