Crossbows

[davidlt89]

Well, up here in the great state of Maine, they have "caved" and are letting crossbow hunters in on archery season. I actually started bow hunting about 18 years ago. I started doing it because it was in October up here, when it is nice and warm, and, we were also allowed to take a doe without a tag, so it was like having a free doe permit.
The state of Maine has doe permit lottery system for rifle season and doe permits are allocated by zones, some zones are much more populated with deer so one would obviously stand more of a chance to receive a doe permit. For example, there is one zone in Maine where they give out about 12,000 permits, in my zone, they give out 150.
So along with that, and the influence of this forum (there were quite a few bow hunters to talk to back then), I decided to start archery hunting.
It was not long after that and taking some deer and bear with my bow that we had the worst winter we ever had and it roughly killed almost half of our deer herd. With that, they took a lot of doe permits away, and they took does out of bow season all together, so I quit archery hunting. 
As of last year, they started allowing does to be taking during archery season again and it "sparked" my interest to get back out there. As I was reading the laws, I then noticed that they now counted crossbows as "equals" to regular bows and they were allowed all the same rules. As to be expected, this made a lot of archery hunters mad as we all now compound and crossbows really are not the same, especially when you have a bolt all knocked and waiting. And it would put more people in the woods during bow season which archery hunters really did not want.
At first I felt all of that, and as a "bow hunter", I was going to stick with the bow and not be a "sissy".
Then, I borrowed a bow from a friend, went out and shot it, and found out that I really suck at it now. My eyesight has a hard time lining up the peep sight, I seem to have a "should problem" in the hand I draw with, and obviously since i have not shot in awhile, I got tired easy. I also decided to find all this out a week before the season started.
Now, as God would have it, I had a friend who's wife got a moose permit. He bought a savage axis in 6.5 creedmore and wanted me to mount a scope on it and get it sighted in for him. He also had a crossbow that he had never really used and was more than willing to let me try it out.
With as bad as I was with a compound now, I thought, what would it hurt. I had already taken, deer, bear, grouse with a compound, I might as well try it.
I will admit, I was a little nervous at first, I know crossbows are not a toy and one can loose a finger or two awful fast if they do not pay attention. The first bolt I sent at 20 yards was little off so I made the proper adjustments on the scope and got a dead bulls eye at 20 yards. I then proceeded to hit almost dead center at 30, 40, 50, and 60 yards. I was definitely hooked at this point.
As I researched crossbows, it seemed any crossbow shooting at least 400fps was fully capable of taking a deer out to 100 yards. I was simply amazed.
So, I believe for this year, I just may purchase my own. Are there any crossbow hunters on here with experience they may be able to share? God Bless.