Why do you chose to bow hunt?

[DaveHawk]

or better yet why do you hunt. What is the mystique about hunting?

[dave-t.]

I started becuase I was crazy about hunting in general, but my experience was mostly with small game. After many years, it dawned on me that I just like watching undesturbed deer, they got my heart pumping. I went through the phase (still in it somewhat) of only targeting one or two bucks in the woods that I went after, but if I saw any deer I had a great hunt, especially if they were in close.

I've killed my target buck a few years, but some of my most memorable hunts I never released an arrow, but saw lots of action. Making an educated guess about the area and the animals, and seeing it work out is a big part of the attration to bowhunting for me. It keeps you sharp, to be able to pick a spot where you know a deer will be within 20yds or less of you, really sharp when only one specific animal is what you're after, and you make it work.

I wouldn't call myself a dedicated trophy hunter anymore, but that is more because of my time restraints than my desire.

I maybe had 10 sits in a bowstand last year before the gun season, but I could have dropped the string on a deer most hunts, because I tend to wait for the best conditions possible before I take the stand. Either approaching rain, or after a rain, before or after weather fronts, a specific hot food tree like persimon that is getting hammered, etc. I don't go hunt just because I have an afternoon available, I make time when I feel conditions are as perfect as they can be. That is an effort to keep pressure low, and the deer easy to pattern. I used to hunt every opportunity and put in 40+ days on stand, but for effectiveness, picking your times and conditions cuts out a lot of those days where you end up staring at empty woods, and leaving sign of your own for the deer to pick up on.

I know great hunters that think I'm nuts for not having my butt in a seat every spare minute, but everyone has their own system, and I'm not ashamed of the few bucks and does I take when things come together. It took some time and experience for me to realize that one great day can give you better odds at that deer, than a whole bunch of "pushing your luck" days when the conditions and wind are so-so.

[LampLighter]

Because I find a firearm too easy and not a challenge. However, if I am low on sausage supply, I will break out the Ruger.

Just to be out there. I like the exploring most of all. I like to venture way, deep for miles if possible. I like seeing how it all fits in, on maps and on the Lowrance mapping GPS. I like scouting. I am constantly noting different species of oaks, big oaks way back in the sticks. Tree i.d. is big with me. I set waypoints on everything. Constantly looking for turkeys. I question myself alot on the kill. I let so many deer just walk pass. As long as I have my sausage for the year, I really do not shoot anything except that lifetime opportunity on a taxidermy quality buck. I am more in the hunt mode in December and January, since that is our rut. I really should be using a recurve but I am too lazy.

[purple heart]

I grew up hunting. I always said I think I was born with a 22 rifle in one
hand and a fishing pole in the other.
Where I grew up the area was pretty rural. I could shoot right off the back
porch. I hunted small game right around the house. Most all the kids I grew
up with hunted. Back then any fish or game you brought home was a meal that we
didn't have to put on the slip at the neighborhood store to be paid on the first of the month.
Around the house we got to hunt,squirrel,rabbit,partridge,ducks, and fish.
Deer hunting didn't come until my buddy and his dad got a place to hunt up in
mountains. I didn't get my first deer until I was 14. Shot it with my dads
model 94 30-30. That was a big deal for me because deer were not that
easy to get plus my dad had died when I was 12.

Bow hunting didn't start until I was back from Nam. Some friends got me started and although I wasn't very successful the first years I just got to
really liking to hunt deer that time of year. What I came to realize that
that feeling you get those first cool crisp mornings in the woods were the
same as when I was squirrel hunting as a kid. I had just swapped game.
I liked the fact that I always saw more deer during deer season and because we could take either buck or doe with a bow there were potentially more
chances to get a deer. Rifle season has almost always been bucks only and
due to a small deer heard only about 10% of hunters get their buck.
There a lot of hunters in this state that have gone many years with ever
getting a deer.
One of the best things I like to do while bow hunting is being in a tree stand
and have a deer come in and decide not to take that deer. Then I can relax and enjoy just watching the deer act in it's normal way. I like to have them
close enough you can hear them chew apples.
I also enjoy rifle season and muzzle loader season but because of the better
weather, seeing more deer, and maybe because it's the first season I'm all
fired up yo get back into the woods in hunting mode I really enjoy bow season.
And just for old lamplighter, I'm a disabled vet that hunts with a crossbow.LOL:D:D:D

[Hink]

So many reasons for doing it, some selfish while others are philanthropic but all of them are acceptable. A few years ago I had the opportunity to sit down with an old man on one of his more lucid days at the nursing home and talk deer hunting. He spoke of the old camps in Randolph, Pocahontas, and Pendleton counties where the only viable populations really were. He spoke of fathers, brothers, and sons and in laws and outlaws that participated. Family, in other words, his family. They never killed any does and success was maybe a buck or two per year for the entire camp. They lived for their one week a year. They were good stewards these old timers.

When I relayed to him tales of my most recent hunts he marveled that I could easily see a half dozen any evening behind my home and if I hadn’t have had pictures he wouldn’t have believed the number of bucks and good bucks that we were normally taking. He had a hard time believing those mornings where you saw 50 to 150 deer before 10 am. I figure if things are at least as good when my grand daughter brings her husband to the home to visit me some day that I’ll have done my job and folks will still be enjoying the experience.

When I talk about the experience I’m talking about that juice that courses through your veins when they approach and offer up a kill shot. The dead calm that settles over you as you aim and pick the spot and let the arrow loose. The sudden exhilaration as seeing that arrow hit perfect and the animal pile up within 50 yards. Then the work starts.

I began bow hunting as an early teen because my dad had an unused recurve, quiver of arrows, and the gear to do it. I loved shooting the bow and I loved the trials and errors I went through learning to get close and make it count. In future years compound bows were purchased and used with success. As I’ve said in other posts the rifle season is usually just a week of hunting while bow hunting is the entire fall. It was the greatest learning experience in terms of deer hunting I think I ever got and I think it made me an even better rifle hunter as its always been pretty easy getting that buck after chasing him for a month and a half trying to get a shot with a bow.

These days there’s some satisfaction from going over the satellite imagery and picking 3 or 4 real likely spots and then going in on foot and seeing what is really there. Sometimes it’s a stand of walnut trees and other times it will be a saddle with white oaks all over it or a forgotten farmstead with a small orchard that is still producing apples. Yeah, I’ve had fun with my recent public land hunting on 18,000 acres and sparse pressure.

My dad will turn 72 during rifle season, and in 04 I carried him the last 75 yards up the ridge to his stand. He was battling stomach cancer and I figured it was out last deer hunt. He got his buck about 15 minutes after daylight and I had him back by the fire an hour later. I’ve cherished every hunt since and look at them as bonuses. My stepson is now a part of the crew and I rent a cottage and take the whole family even those that don’t hunt and we make a Thanksgiving gathering of it. These gatherings are pretty special in my book.

I reckon that’s some of the reasons I do it.

[Twanger]

Why do I bow hunt?

Because I like...
... shooting a bow.
... observing deer without gun pressure on them.
... watching the woods wake up in the morning.
... the longer season - more time to be in the woods.

[ncboman]

or better yet why do you hunt. What is the mystique about hunting?

no mystique here, more of a heritage.

I come from long lines of hunters and it's how we get a lot of groceries around here.

I bowhunt because I like the longer seasons and I'm fairly decent at it. I also very much enjoy the trophy hunting opportunities bowhunting affords in many states. :)

[Bowhunter57]

no mystique here, more of a heritage.

I'm part Cherokee and I've always hunted. I've trapped, but it doesn't appeal to me as much as the "one on one" of hunting.

I prefer bowhunting, as it offers a greater challenge. I like getting closer to the intended game, before taking the shot. Matching my instincts with the game that I'm hunting by stalking and/or waiting for the best shot has always maintained my attention. :cool:

Good hunting, Bowhunter57

[LampLighter]

I really should be using a recurve but I am too lazy.


:eek::eek::eek::D

[ncboman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Roanoke%20River%20Wetlands/Israel6-point196.jpg

:)

[LampLighter]

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm148/manygobbles/turkey09018.jpg


:p

[DaveHawk]

I'm part Cherokee and I've always hunted. I've trapped, but it doesn't appeal to me as much as the "one on one" of hunting.
Good hunting, Bowhunter57

BH57 there are a few of us here who have Cherokee in there blood.

I chose to bow hunt with a compound but ripped the tendons out of my shoulder along with 50 cent size pieces of cartilage which could not be repaired. So a good friend gave me a crossbow back in 81 and said you don't have to stop hunting. But if I had one weapon to chose from it would be a flintlock.

[Chuck S]

I hunt for most of the reasons given thus far and have hunted since I was nine or ten. (BB Gun, sparrows, and starlings for the first couple of years then graduated to rabbits and squirrels) I hunt with the bow and any legal weapon that lengthens my season in the woods while making it a tad more interesting than, say, photography or bird watching. We also have yet to find any wild game that's not fine table fare if handled properly. (well almost since once there was a nice Carp:rolleyes: and then that Merganser:eek:)

I, like a couple above, like shooting also, rifles, shotguns, BP, Bows of all types and even air rifles and slingshots. Likely Rifles and Recurves are my favorites but most hunting weapons pique my interest. Since the late 70's I added another big reason and that's getting kids and grandkids to join my wife and I in the outdoors, hunting and fishing. :)

Good hunting
Chuck S:cool:

[GF.]

I got into it originally because I've loved shooting a bow since I first picked up a fiberglass recurve at Scout camp. Point. Shoot. Thunk. As elegant as a hunting weapon gets, and - I suppose - something that speaks to the Ojibway in me.

I stuck with it while I was out west in part because the deer & Elk season was 4 weeks instead of 4 days; too, I'd gotten my fill of modern rifle season after just one year's effort. I'm sure that changing my location made a huge difference, too, but in the bow season, I found I could hunt 14 or 16 hours a day for probably 14 or 16 days a season and only come across one or two other guys the whole time. And one other thing--when I hunted with my 7 Mag, I was practiced and solid out past 300 yards, so I figured all I needed was for a bull to come within a quarter mile of me. And sure enough, none did. Once I started trying to figure out how to get inside of 20 yards, getting inside of 100 got to be stupid-easy.

Then I came east and bowhunting became in addition to my CF & BP rifles, rather than instead of. No sense looking a gift horse in the mouth, eh? ;)

But once I got this stupid 100-mile-a-day commute going and started keeping hunting hours during the business week, I pretty much had to scrap the bowhunting in favor of some see-the-deer, shoot-the-deer, drag-the-deer efficiency. Just couldn't carve out the time to stay sharp with a recurve at anything but 'gimme' range. This year I hope to be back in a tree with some leaves on it, and- maybe later on- have a chance to enjoy watching grey shapes glide through the woods on a carpet of gold.

Even if I have to use training wheels to do it. :p

[ncboman]

Bowseason opens here in little over a month. :)

Yesterday I went and scouted some new to me public land about 50 miles away. It was a rainy and perfect for an August walk. The grass around the fields was about knee high and I could clearly see that I'm the first human that's walked any of it since turkey season. :)

I'm sure others will have a look before the season opens but I was there first and got to watch the undisturbed animals come and go. On the first trip I learned where a good many of them are bedding on several tracts of land, all I really need to know. ;)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Ourdeer---experimental012.jpg

I think, zerefore I bowhunt.

:rolleyes:

[DaveHawk]

I've come full swing.

Yesterday I started a new club on a property I killed my 1st deer, nice little 7 point at 5'
4 of us made the sweaty treck arounf the 40 acre track of woods bordered by 4 farms. It has always been a great spot for bedding and I have now hunted it in 20+ years. Old built woods stand still up LOL and the thickets were heavenly over grown.
Land owner said it has not been hunted in 5 years, except for a loc on we found the property looks un molested.
Looking forward to to this years hunts.