The deer strikes back. What do you think about hunting?

[Sea Skimmer]

What about them? A crossbow with a 150lb draw force is only going to have maybe 125 foot pounds of energy in the bolt, which is about 1/3rd the energy you get from a freaking 9mm handgun. They don’t really even make ones with more then a 200lb draw, because you already have to be in super good physical condition to draw with that kind of force.

The only way you kill anything big with arrows is either getting real lucky with hit placement, or hitting them a bunch of times and waiting hours for the thing to bleed out. I’ve seen videos of freaking mountain goats still standing with three and four arrows in them.

With guns heavier slower projectiles are generally more deadly, but arrows are so slow that they simply never have that much energy to begin with, and don’t have any real shock effect.

[Stuart Mackey]

My father said he had used some expressions that you should really not say to a Captain, but the man let it slide.

Which I why I really dislike bow hunting, its cruel. When hunting wild pig, either shoot it, or have dogs to hold and dispatch it with a good knife.

[Rogue 9]

Would this count as the result of "natural" selection through hunting? Aggressive deer?

How would pressures caused by hunting favor aggressive deer? It's not like deer that attack the hunters have a much better chance of surviving.

[Darth Wong]

Hunting to eat is just survival, and the cycle of life. What gets me is hunting for "sport", and the silly rules hunters use in order to convince themselves that they're actually being "sporting" about this. It annoys me because it's such a lie.

Just admit that you're giving yourself a huge advantage by using weapons and that it's not really a "sport" at all. Hopefully you just like the taste of venison or you enjoy the feeling of hunting something, and you're honest enough to admit that's why you're doing it. Not some bullshit pseudo-spiritual "commune with nature" and "sport" nonsense.

[hawkwind]

Killing power of projectile like an arrow cannot be compared to firearms on terms of KE. Also its penetrative power is not dependant on KE that much but more on momentum. Arrows have much greater sectionall density than bullets and they cause different type of injury.
There is scientific work done on that. Do search on dr. Ashby reports.

Bowhunting is not cruell. Or not in terms you imagine it - certainly it is not worse than hunting with the rifle. It happens usually at short distances up to 20 yards and most of hits to torso on animal like deer are lethal. In fact its reported that these animals can continue to eat grass and die quietly after couple of seconds. Placing the arrow is the key, but so it is with bullet and there is enough pricks with guns to assure that there is also going to be enough of wounded and suffering animals.
I m professionall bowyer, with more than 1000 bows made, in buissnes since 2000 and I shoot 100# warbow. I have also made 20 or so medieval crossbows and by that I mean with friction bedded antler roller nut mechanisms and sinewed prods, not your usual SCA crap.

(That off course does not justify a shout into darkness "crossbows" in one of previous posts.)

(That said crossbows store much less energy than bows, all else being equal, they dont shoot nearly as well, deliver lighter projectile (that when it comes to modern crossbows) and they are less accurate as the distance from target grows, because there is more inputs into the process.)
J.

[Gil Hamilton]

Which I why I really dislike bow hunting, its cruel. When hunting wild pig, either shoot it, or have dogs to hold and dispatch it with a good knife.

To be fair, my dad wanted to let the boar go, due to the fact that boars (and this one proved this) are very hard to kill with a rifle, let alone a bow. Like I said, it took 6 arrows to kill the boar after hitting it in the lungs and heart and the thing still died by bleeding out.

[hawkwind]

There is numerous people killing them by single arrow easy, I suspect something else is going on. Fact that he "put in 6 arrows" tells me that the animal was incapacitated with the first one. For you dont put any more if it runs away.
Hits into lungs and heart will put it down pretty quickly, there is no magicall resistance to lungs full of blood and heart not beating.
That with a broadhead cutting in the channel wound.
Off course I have not seen your arrows.

Anyway - bowhunting is illegal here and rightly so, because local people are pricks, but shooting an animal with an arrow at close, hunting distance or shooting it with rifle is not a big difference in what it takes to kill it. That said I have only shot dead things and measured damage done.

[hawkwind]

One of hardest animals to take on with bow is water buffalo (well save the biggest game like rhino) and there are still people around which do that with single arrow. Fact that boars are killed in high numbers by single arrow from bows of low to mid power tells me that it is not terribelly difficult. Deers are rather gracile creatures and so is human.

[Superman]

Hunting to eat is just survival, and the cycle of life. What gets me is hunting for "sport", and the silly rules hunters use in order to convince themselves that they're actually being "sporting" about this.

I think they usually claim to be controlling the population of the animals.

[Stuart Mackey]

There is numerous people killing them by single arrow easy, I suspect something else is going on. Fact that he "put in 6 arrows" tells me that the animal was incapacitated with the first one. For you dont put any more if it runs away.
Hits into lungs and heart will put it down pretty quickly, there is no magicall resistance to lungs full of blood and heart not beating.
That with a broadhead cutting in the channel wound.
Off course I have not seen your arrows.

Anyway - bowhunting is illegal here and rightly so, because local people are pricks, but shooting an animal with an arrow at close, hunting distance or shooting it with rifle is not a big difference in what it takes to kill it. That said I have only shot dead things and measured damage done.

If it can be done with one shot, I have no problem.

[Molyneux]

There is numerous people killing them by single arrow easy, I suspect something else is going on. Fact that he "put in 6 arrows" tells me that the animal was incapacitated with the first one. For you dont put any more if it runs away.

He already said that they "put in 6 arrows" because it chased them up a tree.

[hawkwind]

Oh. That says me that one of two things is going on
a) The person in question cannot shoot crap
b) His setup, particullary arrow and broadhead is not good

For normal person 6 arrows is at least half a minute (Unless you are Bob Powell that is). How far was the animal when first shot was taken?


As I said, it is not terribelly difficult to do it with single arrow, ethical shots are taken at distances up to 20 yards (that is not because arrows do not have enough killing power past that, but because arrow as a slow projectile has to "be there to not spoil the hit when the animal moves", which in case of game with fast reaction time is just about the distance.
I do not care for this as "sport" either, altough it requires some stalking skills to get that close to animal and strenght to draw bow and again some skill to shoot it well.
My point concerns only the point "Bowhunting is cruel to animal" - which I deem nonsense and I can elaborate on killing power of bow and arrow, because those are tools of trade in my case and I know them well.

Of course you have to place arrow well, but the same can be said about bullet and unfortunatelly the whole "hunting" thing is connected to certain type of people. (Simple look at all those "hunting accidents" is enough.)

[andrewgpaul]

I think they had plenty of time to shoot the last 5 arrows once they were up the tree

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I don't see a problem with hunting in principle one's doing it for a practical necessity. If you need to do it to save lives and prevent suffering in the long run for a given population due to overpopulation, they are going to die anyway, and I'd rather those that need to do die quickly instead of starving.

Another good reason would be to save human lives; I don't see a problem with the concept.

I am not really fond of canned hunting or people who actually derive pleasure from killing things. I don't see how killing something is fun for some people. It's a sad necessity, but that's about it.

[Feil]

With regards to deer hunting in the American northeast, the animals need a predator, and we've displaced the local wolf population. Frankly, nobody really wants the wolves back, because they're a danger to domestic animals, and to some degree to people as well. And even if we wanted them, from what I've read it's really very difficult to successfully transplant an animal population to a new environment. Without a predator the deer population will grow to unsustainable size, starve in the winter, die worse deaths in greater numbers, be harmful to the rest of the environment, and invade cities and towns in search of food, thereby becoming a nuisance to people.

[Kanastrous]

...and we all know what happens to critters that become a nuisance...

K-CHAKK!