Playing the wind and controlling your scent are tactics that many rifle hunters are not familiar with. I can honestly attest that in my early years of roaming the hills with a .300 Magnum, the wind was never a big consideration of mine. But it is now, no matter what weapon I've got.

That is one of the great things about becoming a bowhunter: It makes you a better hunter overall. Bowhunters learn to be stealthy. Not only do they learn about controlling their own scent, but they get better at using features of the terrain and landscape to get close to game. They understand that the only shot to take is the one that they can make the first time.

RECURVE BOW
For two years now, I have been shooting a recurve and haven't hunted with my compound bow since I have become a competent, instinctive no-sights shooter. This year, I harvested my first deer with my traditional bow. That doe represents my most rewarding accomplishment as a hunter. The 20-yard shot was perfect, and she died within seconds.

I switched to a traditional bow not only for the added challenge and pleasure that instinctive shooting brings, but because I believe that this bow yields the hunter some advantages, especially when calling elk.

Hunting with a compound bow, I have had bulls inside of 10 yards on a number of occasions. But because of obstructions or low light conditions that made sighting difficult, I have been unable to draw and shoot.

Recurves and longbows can be drawn and fired quickly. You can shoot from all kinds of positions and angles, and hunt into the low-light conditions of dawn and dusk.

Of course, the compromise is with distance and arrow speed. With a compound bow, I have harvested deer at 50 yards. With my recurve, my maximum range is 20 yards.

In addition, it takes serious dedication to become competent with a traditional bow. I shot my recurve every day for six months before I felt ready to take a shot at a live animal. I hunted that entire first season without ever getting an opportunity that I was comfortable about taking.

Traditional archery takes serious patience and diligence, but the rewards are great. I know a few true traditional archers who construct their own longbows, make their own arrows from cedar shafts, and even carve their own broadheads from obsidian. (Stone broadheads are illegal in some states.)

These hunters wouldn't consider my recurve and graphite arrows to be very "traditional." But I draw my bow with my fingers and shoot without the aid of sights, and consider this to be a very traditional form of archery. The bow isn't really aimed, and I compare the judging of the shot as similar to throwing a baseball.

Through repetition, shooting becomes accurate -- deadly accurate. I still have a long way to go, and would like to stretch my range by another 5 yards eventually. This year, I was able to kill seven out of eight grouse with my recurve with arrows out to 20 yards, and made a heart shot on that whitetail. I'm starting to feel like a pretty effective hunter with my bow.

Some states now offer additional and separate opportunities for hunters shooting traditional archery equipment. For example, Oregon allows traditional archers the chance to hunt mule deer in the famed Trout Creek Mountains simply by applying for a guaranteed tag. In contrast, drawing a rifle tag for the Trout Creeks takes about 20 years!