You Want To Shoot A WHAT??

With my kids playing sports, reading a book, making crafts or turning a wrench.  If they enjoy it and it will help them learn skills, coordination and develop socially, then I will support them.  When raising my children I tend to let them make their own decisions on what they want to do as activities.  Well, to a point.

If they are bored with softball and don’t want to play anymore, then pick something else to do.  I don’t have a problem with that as long as they are doing something that is challenging and they can learn from.  If they find something that excites them, then I will do all I can to help them.  But when my son told me he didn’t like shooting a longbow and wanted a compound, I almost had to put my foot down on that one.

To me, hunting is a whole different ball game when it comes to life lessons.  I truly believe their is an order in which this skill needs to be learned and developed.  Its kinda like baseball.  Your not going to teach them how to turn a double play before teaching them how to actually throw the ball.  Which shooting anything whether its a bow or a gun, I feel a new shooter really needs to learn how to shoot from the first rung of the ladder and work their way up.  If its a rifle, then they should master open sites.  If its a bow, they should at least learn traditional instinctive shooting.  I know archery is a whole other ball game then guns.  That’s why I say they should at least learn traditional shooting first.  Then they can move up to sites and wheel bows.  Traditional shooting is an art that is rarely mastered and that is the reason why its very rare in the hunting community now.  It takes patients and in most cases, years to become a good shooter.  Unlike a compound where in most cases a new shooter can shooting consistent 8’s after a weekend of practice.  I am a traditional hunter because I enjoy the challenge it brings me and I also make my own bows.  I love the fact that I can build a bow and then hunt with it.  But I also shoot a compound and hunt with it from time to time.  I am not a die hard and will never preach one is better than the other.

When my son told me he didn’t like shooting the longbow and wanting to shoot a compound, I reluctantly let him.  Maybe it was just me that thought maybe he wanted to be more like his Dad and shoot traditional.  I guess I was hoping that anyway.  But it was to the point where he was loosing interest (as all kids do) in shooting so I let him make the switch.  Yes, he is more consistent.  Yes, the arrow flies faster and hits harder.  Yes, he thinks he looks cooler with this bow.  But the biggest Yes out there is that he is enjoying archery.  That is all a hunting father can ask for.  As long as he is happy shooting a bow and an arrow, then I am as well.