I’ve finally done some serious hunting with the crossbow. I had it out a few times over the weekend in between hunting for turkey with Angus. Nothing really went wrong with any of it. It just wasn’t as much fun as my bow and certainly not like a rifle.

For the most part a bow is flat. It can have a stabilizer or a cable guard sticking out, but the everything is fairly flat and easy to carry. Rifles are fairly stick-like. There’s not a whole-lot going on there either. Crossbows stick out in all three dimensions in one way or the other, and it’s just a lot harder to do everything with them. Wearing them on a sling is a problem, getting in and out of trees is more of a problem. It just wasn’t as much fun.

There is no polite way to load, reload or unload a crossbow. Loading is best done on the ground. Reloading is not going to happen any time soon, so you’d best forget about taking a second shot. Unloading? It’s a bit like muzzleloading. At some point, you’re going to have to fire the weapon to get it unloaded.

The one NICE thing I can say about a crossbow is that it is great to prop over a shooting rail. Vertical bows have to be held or put on an overhead hook or something. Rifles are always a bit of a problem in the blind. They always want to fall over or slip or roll, so you just have to hold on to them constantly. I had the crossbow up in the buddy stand with me, and this is the one place it shown. I propped it up on the corner of the shooting rail and it remained at the ready the whole time. It acted like it wanted to hunt.

There is one other really nice thing about a crossbow. I unloaded it by putting a field point on and firing into the ground before I got down from the stand. At 20 yards there was absolutely no doubt where that bolt is going. I picked out a nice oak leaf out in front of the stand and the bolt went right where I aimed. JPH or somebody will gnash their teeth and tell me that this is unfair. Frankly I’m done with being fair. I’ve been 3 years off my compound bow now, and I’ve gotten to like hunting at compound bow distances with a 30-06. Same idea– it takes the worry out of it.

I’ve been watching D&DH a lot on the DVR, and they always go and pick apart some guy’s shot on a deer. It’s always a guy with a bow they’re critiquing isn’t it? Hmmmm. I wonder if I sent in video of nailing a nice buck at 15 yards with an M1 Garand if they’d spend the time on it? Why is that? Oh well.

I had one deer come in Sunday morning, and it was moving fast and it was too far out. I’ve still not had anything to shoot at, but we’ll see.

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