Bow hunting or bowhunting is one of those sports that you either love or you hate – a lot 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 numbers 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 be 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 severely wound an animal from 600 yards, it will most likely be dead by the time you get there, climbing over fallen trees and rocks, but if you severely wound a deer from forty yards you see its pain.

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

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

A compound bow uses pulleys to assist with the draw, which allows less strong 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 inside it. This enlarged risk provides a superior 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 prearranged trips these days. The hunting trip is organized through a specialized firm which will provide guided trips into areas known to have large numbers of the animals you want to pursue.

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

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

Archers have played a key part in warfare and hunting for thousands of years. Primitive bows were made of a single piece of wood, but composite recurve bows were being manufactured from Greece to China as far back as the second millennium BC.

Recurve bows, those with the tips facing the ‘wrong way’ when unstrung, are more powerful inch for inch in length than single piece wooden bows, which made them more suited to cramped conditions such as on horseback, in a chariot or in wooded areas.

Bits of composite recurve bows, usually made from horn, have been discovered in many parts of the world. Early arrows were made from naturally straight twigs or pine needles with napped flint tips affixed. Wooden bows did not preserve so well and exemplars are rare.

It appears that archery was being developed in the early Mesolithic or late Paleolithic Age. Archery was particularly well developed in some Islamic countries and in Asia, where Zen Buddhist monks utilized archery as part of their meditation techniques.

In the early days of archery, there were mixed sentiments about archers. In those days, people fought hand to hand with swords and spears and some of the traditionalists thought that archers were cowards because they attacked from a distance out of direct danger. This point is made very obvious in ‘The Iliad’, Homer’s account to the siege of Troy.

There are or were many types of bows made to suit different fighting or hunting requirements. Some varieties of bow are the; long bow, short bow, recurve bow, composite recurve bow, reflex bow, decurve bow, deflex bow and crossbow among others.

The longbow was extremely hard to learn to use and the archer had to have massive upper-body strength. The bow was often six feet long with a weighty three foot long arrow. The draw weight for maximum power was around a hundred pounds and the use of the bow on a battlefield was as long-range artillery.

The heavy arrows and fierce armour-piercing arrow head would rain down on the enemy from a hundred yards or more and pierce shields and armour as if were not being worn. Shot horizontally, the three-foot arrow could pass through a couple of people.

In fact, the longbow was so essential to the triumph of Great Britain that a law was passed making it compulsory for men over a particular age to practice with their longbows every Sunday on the village green in order to develop the required expertise and upper-body strength in case war came.

The arrows are made to suit the different kinds of bows and the different bows and their specific arrows are suited to different types of hunting – whether you are hunting men or animals.

There are essentially two types of shooting: instinctive shooting, which is very demanding as the archer does not take his eyes off the target, but does not look down the arrow; and sight shooting where the archer makes use of sights to align the arrow with its target. Most people find sight shooting simpler.

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