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Bow hunting or bowhunting is one of those sports that you either love or you hate – a little like fox hunting in the United Kingdom. Town people abhor it and anybody involved with it and country people see it essential to cull wild animals that could otherwise become a nuisance.

Despite its macho image, which was encouraged by the film the Deer Hunter, there are growing quantities of women who go bowhunting. The big distinction between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow is distance. A hunting rifle with telescopic sights can deliver enough punch at 600 yards to take down a deer with a single shot almost wherever it is hit in the chest.

On the other hand, a hunter using a bow with a fifty pound draw weight will have to get to within about forty yards to be able to deliver the same sort of lethal punch, if the shot is accurate to the heart.

This means that if you seriously wound an animal from 600 yards, it will probably be dead by the time you get there, clambering over fallen trees and rocks, but if you severely wound a deer from forty yards you see its pain.

This has a salutacious effect on most bow hunters. The vast majority of bow hunters do not want to see this and they do not want the creature to suffer either, so they wait for the right shot. If it is not there, they do not shoot.

A hunting bow has to have a draw weight of at least fifty pounds to hunt large game and that used to mean quite a hefty recurve or longbow, but the compound bow was developed in 1966.

A compound bow uses pulleys to assist with the draw, which permits less beefy people to accomplish a draw weight of fifty pounds, which has opened up bowhunting to women and adolescents.

Large wild animals are dangerous and some will attack without warning if they feel in danger. This creates a danger zone around wild animals. Every sort of animal has a danger zone, for a lion, that could be pretty large and for a stag less so. This danger zone is an locale outside of which you are fairly safe.

If you are hunting with a rifle, you can remain outside that danger zone easily, but with a bow and arrow, well, you often have to go within it. This increased risk provides a greater rush for bow hunters – a bigger thrill. Especially if they are hunting bears or mountain lions.

In contrast to the Deer Hunter, most bow hunters go on organized trips these days. The hunting trip is organized with the aid of a specialized firm which will present guided excursions into areas known to have large numbers of the animals you want to hunt.

These expert guides know how to bait zones to lure your prey; they can give advice on safety aspects and they take a big gun in case a hunter is too stupid to take their advice. Regrettably, the gun is for use on the animal, not the idiot.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is presently involved with compound hunting bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Archery is as old as the hills. The oldest bows to have been found date back to about 2000 BC and bows are almost certainly older than that. Archery is so old that no-one knows where or when the bow and arrow was invented. It has always been used in hunting and warfare. Buddhist monks in the Far East have utilized archery in their martial arts regimes for centuries as well.

Archery is even now being used by some tribes around the world for hunting purposes and many millions of ordinary people practice archery for recreation. Buddhist monks still use it in their meditation routines. There are essentially three kinds of archery recognized: primitive, traditional and modern archery.

Traditional archery includes such bows as the longbow and the recurve bow. Bows of both types have been found dating back to 2000 BC. It appears that the longbow was more common in northern Europe and the recurve bow was more widespread in southern Europe and east from there all the way to Japan.

The modern compound bow can achieve a heavy draw weight by expending comparatively little physical strength compared to traditional bows by the use of a set of pulleys or cams, however still many people prefer to use traditional bows. People seem to want to get back to the root of archery.

Longbows are very simple implements, traditionally made from one piece of yew or ash. Recurve bows could also be made from one length of wood, but more often, the tips would be made from wood and horn or bone. Remember that the tips of a recurve bow point to the front when the bow is unstrung.

Because of the recurved tips, a recurve bow is more powerful than a longbow weight for weight or inch for inch, but recurve bows are normally quite short, so the standard longbow is much more formidable than the average recurve bow.

However, both types of bow require quite an amount of physical strength to draw them to full power and hold that draw to take aim.

This sequence of drawing and holding without shaking or trembling takes a lot of strength and concentration, which normally has to be acquired. It can take years of training to master traditional archery. The British longbow men of the 14 th and 15 th centuries trained all their lives.

In fact, Henry VIII made it law that all English and Welsh men had to train with a longbow at the butts every Sunday aiming at targets at least 220 yards away. Nowadays, 90 metres (100 yards) is about the furthest archers shoot. It would often take ten years to become this proficient, but some archers could cast an arrow 400 yards and more.

In order to cast an arrow that far, traditional longbows used in warfare had a draw weight of between 160 and 180 lbs, which would send a three ounce, armour-piercing arrow about 300 yards. Not many men could pull a bow like that these days These days, a typical draw weight for a longbow would be 100 lbs and for a recurve something over 60 lbs.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on various topics, but is currently concerned with archery bows for sale. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.