Have you ever wondered why some hunters use a bow, especially when a wide variety of firearms exists for hunting use? It might seem odd that a lot of people would prefer to hunt by way of how indigenous people and our ancestors used to thousands of years ago, when a more efficient and clean way of hunting animals for sport exists.
Indeed, bow hunting is a fairly common way that hunters hunt, where instead of using rifles to aim and fire at deer from afar, they instead prefer to approach their targets slow and steady, bow in hand.
If you’re curious to find out more about bow hunting, then read on. Perhaps you will be able to find the same appeal that many of these hunters do.
What is bow hunting?
Bow hunting, as the name suggests, is the act of hunting wild animals where the weapon of choice is a bow, rather than a gun.
It is rather specialized too, as bow hunting requires immense amount of dedication to learn.
Indeed, unlike conventional firearms where you simply need to point at and shoot at game animals, something that can be learned with enough shooting practice, bow hunting requires you to use your entire body. You cannot just aim and shoot arrows at game deer like you would a gun, you need to take note of things like angles and wind direction, both of which play a very large role in determining where your arrows are going to end up.
What important things do you need to consider if you want to go bow hunting?
Bow hunting is a completely different experience from using a gun. For starters, to properly aim with a bow, your arms will need to have sufficient exercise to draw the bow and shoot the arrows. Not exercising enough will mean that you will have trouble properly aiming at the game deer that you wish to shoot at.
What about the rest of your body? Well, you will be on the move a lot to follow game deer. Bows have a significantly shorter range than guns, as you might have already guessed, which means that their effective range drops massively. You will need to practically be all up in their faces to have a shot at hitting them. What this means is that you will need to be fit if you want to stand a chance in catching up to deer. They are constantly on the move, which means you will too. If you have not done a lot of exercise, you’re going to have a lot of trouble executing this.
You will likely also need to camouflage yourself under the grass or trees while making sure that the wind isn’t blowing your scent in their direction. While it is true that you also need to camouflage yourself if you’re using a tree stand, you’re much more likely to get spotted by the deer you are hunting as someone who is trying to move slowly while hidden under the grass, rather than someone sitting on a stationary place.
Is a bow better than a rifle while hunting then?
Honestly, it depends. It is easy to see what the advantages of hunting with a rifle are: They are much simpler to use and much easier to learn (at least when compared to the ins and outs of using a bow effectively), and you don’t need to move around a lot.
If you’re not too fit, you won’t have to chase deer all across the forest, you can just wait for them to come to you.
Hunting with a rifle is much more efficient all around.
With such distinct advantages that hunting rifles have, what do bows have to offer, and why do some recreational hunters use a bow?
First, the practical reasons in what a bow has that a gun doesn’t: The element of stealth. A gun is like a firecracker: loud and proud. This means that you’re going to spooking away every deer within earshot once you pull the trigger, so you want to make your first shot your best one. Ideally, it is the only shot you would need too.
A bow though? So long as you have arrows, you can keep firing at nearby deer. There is no noise in shooting (and even missing) your shots, which means that the biggest thing you’ll be worrying about is how many arrows you have left. That means that you can do many more attempts with trial and error, rather than relying on one shot for all the deer around with a gun.
There is also the aesthetic reason. A lot of hunters just want to get in touch with the primitive life of nature and hunting the way that our ancestors once did helps them feel this. A gun doesn’t make them feel in touch with nature; it feels artificial, probably no-thanks to how easy it is to operate in comparison to a bow.
Finally, related to the above point, bow hunting is a sport that relies one to be extremely active. That means that this is a sport that pushes exercise in your direction, leading to a much healthier lifestyle overall.
Is bow hunting worth trying out?
If you have the dedication and the wills, there is no reason not to. Just remember to be prepared for a more challenging experience than if you were to use a gun. However, it feels much more fulfilling to come home from a successful hunt using a bow.
Still, there is no shame with sticking with a hunting rifle. Bow hunting requires a lot of dedication and work to get things off the ground in the first place and can be frustrating while starting out.