Welcome to the forum huntinboy13! Yes you can, but ONLY if your shooting enough poundage. How many pounds are you shooting?
in IL you need to pull 40... fwiw - my 8yr old is legal this year... btw - welcome aboard and good luck with your hunt!!!
I hate to tell you this little buddy, but if your shooting 17-22lbs your going to have to wait. I'm not saying you couldn't kill a turkey with 22lbs, but you would most likely end up with a wounded bird. I would think at least 30lbs would be the bare minimum for turkey and 35 or more would be a lot better. I don't know much about hogs since I have never hunted them, but I do know they are tough. I would say if your talking Russian boar you would not want anything less than 50lbs. Maybe 45, but you would want somebody with a gun to back you up. These poundages would be for a good performance bow. If you used a low end bow I would add about 5lbs. When you are shooting low poundage a lot depends on the quality of the bow you have. Hopefully someone else can jump on here that hunts hogs and turkeys with a bow since I have not shot either with a bow.
You need to check your states regs, that thing only has an 80# draw and I doubt its going to put out much energy. IMO that is NOT a hunting weapon. If the kid wants to hunt, you are going to have to equip him with something that is right for the job. Meaning a real hunting crossbow or a real hunting compound bow, set to the minimum weights of your state.
Not hard to understand.Shooting a bow that is on the low end of performance shoots low KE compared to one on the high end of performance.So,if you are shooting 30# slow bow,you may not have enough penetration but if you are shooting a faster bow,more potential penetration at same poundage. I would agree that 22# isn't enough but draw length also plays into the equation.25" draw at 30# will produce much more energy than 20" draw @ 30#. My son is 11 and I am just now allowing him to hunt.I made him wait untill he could COMFORTABLY pull 40# for a whole practice session.I concentrated on form and technique with low poundage for quite a while before pumping up the poundage.He could probably pull much more but form,technique and comfort would be compromised.
Did anyone else think huntinboy13 was...uh...13. Now he has a 14 year old son? :D Just kiddin'...welcome to the forums huntinboy.
Agreed. If most people realized how much performance they lose from haveing a shorter draw length I think they would be unpleasantly surprised. My hat is off to you tfox. I think that is exactly how it should be done and exactly what my dad did with me. I was a little uncomfortable with my poundage recomendation for turkey, but I thought he was 13 (sorry huntingboy13) and didn't want to discourage him too much. I figured if he was relatively close, put it right in the boiler room and didn't use too big a broadhead it would do the job. I'm glad I wasn't the only one.
I actually let my daughter start at 30# but she was pulling 24".She was also 12 and shooting left handed as a right hand dominant(left eye dominant) so she couldn't pull much poundage.She is 15 now and still only pulls 36#'s. The important thing is to get them out there,but they need to be ready.
