This makes 14 years. The first 5 years hunted with a rifle. Bow hunted my 6th year then had a son and stop for a little bit and now I've only bow hunt and been going good and hard for 4 starght years. I love guns but there is something else when it comes to using a bow to hunt with. I know you guys on here know what I'm talking about, that feeling from it
5th season of serious/dedicated/obsessed/sell everything else i own/no other hobbies bowhunting. I started bowhunting over 20 years ago, when i was 13. Hunted for the following 4-5 years, took a 3 year hiatus, hunted 2 more seasons, then 5 years ago i had a dream of hunting and it hasn't let go since. Bowhunting only, whitetails only, couldn't imagine it any other way!
3-4 years. This is the first year I won't even be buying a shotgun tag. If I can't close a deal on a deer with a bow this year I will take my sad bowl of tag soup and sulk as I watch BHOD re-runs.
Yep, definitely. Mostly what I've learned recently is strategy, deer management, and hunting mature deer. I used to be strictly a meat hunter and now I've started dedicating more time to deer management, and thus harvesting mature deer.
I've been bowhunting since I was about 16, but didn't seriously get into it until back in 2002 and I'm going to be 36 soon... so 12 hardcore years or so.
This is a hard to answer question for me. I started and stopped bow hunting several different times over the years. I sporadically bow hunted in the late 80s with an old recurve bow I bought at a flea market. I was young and wasn't even consistently killing deer with a gun yet so I struck out with the bow. I stopped bow hunting for a couple of years in the early 90s while I was in the army. Last year I was in, I bought a used compound bow and started bow hunting again. From 1993 to about 2003 I sporadically bow hunted with that old compound. I was mostly hunting public ground and wasn't really putting in a lot of time. It was just something to do when I wasn't hunting something with a gun. I got rid of my bow in 2005 since I hadn't used it in a couple of years and it was an old 80s model anyway. Got a new bow and started bow hunting again in 2012. So if we say I started bow hunting in 1988 then it would be 25 years through the 2013 season. But not really since I didn't even bow hunt some of those years. Years actually hunted with a bow would be more like 14 and some of those years I maybe hunted with a bow 2 or 3 times the entire year. I didn’t kill my first deer with a bow until 2012. I continue to hunt with a rifle and muzzleloader during those seasons as well. I don’t see me ever going strictly bow for deer hunting. I need to put at least 2 and preferably 3 deer in the freezer to keep from running out of deer meat before the next season so I hunt with whatever tool gives me the greatest chance for success during the prescribed seasons.
I bowhunted for deer the first year I legally could, which was when I was 14. That puts me somewhere around 32 years bowhunting, and I have bowhunted actively every single year. Back then, we didn't have many opportunities to learn other than from our own mistakes, and maybe from some of the hunting magazines of the day. If only I knew then what I know now. If only I knew now what I'll know in ten years... Now that I have a family and increasing work obligations, time is in short supply. Even so, I feel like I am so much more capable of killing good bucks than I was even ten years ago, despite the hectic schedule. Maybe when I'm retired I'll finally get to bow hunt like I really want to.
It also seems with new technology we are able to learn more as years go on too such as the use of game cameras.
