Pennsylvania Game News - May 2010 - 55

THE AUTHOR shooting his Horton Vision 175. This model represents the newer streamlined crossbows that are now available from most crossbow manufacturers.

deer. This is a critical moment of truth, as the game animal is just as likely as not to detect the motion or sound of the archer drawing back and immediately head for the hills. Hypothetically, at least, crossbow hunters do not face these problems. This “crossbow advantage” is at the heart of the argument espoused by crossbow detractors. Crossbow advocates counter that opponents who claim to be archery purists have another thing coming. Unless you are hunting with a traditional longbow or even a recurve, they say, your argument is moot because the modern compound bow actually boasts more sophisticated technology than a rudimentary crossbow. But now that the use of crossbows during archery season is the law of the land, there’s nothing to prevent archery traditionalists from going out and purchasing a crossbow of their own. That is just what I did, and the season that followed proved to me that crossbows are hardly the foolproof hunting devices that detractors portray them to be. I don’t really consider myself an archery elitist, but I’ve enjoyed enough success with my Hoyt RazorTec compound bow that I would have been perfectly content to esMAY 2010

chew the temptation to purchase a crossbow. But when I ran into a representative from Horton Crossbow who introduced me to some of his company’s current models, one of them really caught my eye — the Vision 175 — a scoped, compact, radical-design crossbow that had the look and feel of an AR15. When I put the crossbow to my shoulder I discovered that, in terms of size, weight and balance, it fit me like a proverbial glove. I then convinced my wife Patti to buy one for me as a birthday present a few months later. It was time to indulge myself in this guilty archery pleasure and, after some minimal assembly, I was good to go. The trickiest part was cocking the bow. The cocked string angle of this particular crossbow’s radical “frontal string technology” design is so acute that it is virtually impossible to cock by hand. After poring over the instruction manual, I finally deciphered how to use the cocking strap — a device included with the crossbow package, along with a 4x32 scope with lighted reticle and three practice arrows (bolts) with a clipon quiver. Application of the cocking strap is a complicated procedure at first, but I finally got the hang of it. But even then, cocking the crossbow remained a meticulously time-consuming effort. Once I cocked the crossbow for the first time, I nocked the arrow, shouldered the Monte Carlo stock, sighted through the scope, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Of course I had forgotten to click off the safety, a device alien to traditional vertical bows, but a safety precaution that automatically locks in the moment this crossbow is cocked. Immediately recognizing my novice mistake, I eased off the safety and again squeezed the trigger. Upon release of the arrow, the mechanism
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Pennsylvania Game News - May 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - May 2010