Primitive seasons, modern technology
An item linked in from one of the blogs we follow:
ARROWRIFLES DURING ARCHERY SEASON IN OK
I'm not a bow hunter. A lot of the hunters I know are, including ones my age and a little older. Some quite a bit older. I note that as it's not merely a matter of having grown up before there were bow seasons. At least, I think I did. I know it wasn't popular in the state until I was in my early 20s, and it followed the Game & Fish allowing some large caliber handguns to be used for hunting. I recall that coming first.
I'm an avid hunter, but I'm a modern firearms' hunter. If bows were my only option, I'd use them, but they are not, I don't. They seem retrograde in a way that isn't appealing, as firearms are more deadly, and we owe the animal that. I'm not going to get preachy about it, however, and the few hunters I know really well that bow hunt are very proficient, and no doubt highly deadly with a bow.
Anyhow, I'm okay with their being bow seasons, but the way that people use early seasons as simply a vehicle to get out first, and then evade the spirit of the original thought I don't care for. The spirit of bow hunting was to hunt with something that humans used that required skill and reflected our hunting nature in earlier times. Basically, if Ötzi would have recognized it, well then it was good to go. I'm not demanding a bow that Welsh archers or Sioux warriors would have used, but a real bow.
Well, soon enough, some people wondered if they might use crossbows.
I should know more about the history of the crossbow than I do, but I think of it as a weapon of war. It was sort of the magnum strength projectile launcher of its day, launching a heavy bolt through armor or mail. I didn't realizes they were legal for hunting anywhere until a colleague asked me about it, as he wanted to buy one, thinking that he didn't have the physical strength to use a bow.
Hmmm.
Mind you, I don't mind archery at all. I think it's really cool, and I've thought about doing it in the backyard just for fun. And I wouldn't mind pinking with a crossbow. I'm just not going to hunt with either, and I don't think that using a crossbow meets with the spirit of the original concept.
The same evolution, I'd note, occurred with "primitive rifles".
Following the movie Jeremiah Johnson, there was a blackpowder rifle craze that developed and it never really stopped. I like blackpowder rifles and I wouldn't mind at all hunting with one of them. I guess they cross the threshold of lethality enough for me that and they appeal to my interest in history.
What doesn't appeal to my interest in history is modern "muzzle loading" rifles that are expressly designed to evade the rules and be as close to modern hunting rifles as possible while still being "muzzle loading". They don't have a big following in Wyoming as Wyoming doesn't have primitive rifle seasons, but they do have one where they're allowed.
Now, as the item above notes, there are "arrow rifles". This is really a bridge too far, and is a technological development solely to get a person out before rifle season, with something that's really a rifle.
This really ought not to be allowed, and frankly, it's a good reason to go back to the original concept. Seeing that technology will always find a way to evade the spirit of something, and somebody will always avail themselves of it, there are places to restrict it, and this is one.
