@Colton Deline when I was a younger there was a lot of them around. We had beagles and snowshoes were everywhere and it was a lot of fun to take the little hounds out and fling arrows at the hares. I shot at a lot of them with some success I actually got pretty good at shooting them on the move. Now we have cotton tails and they are very good practice also. This last year just before the bow season opened I was in my yard shooting and there was rabbit everywhere in the yard. I had a couple of arrows in my quiver that had judo heads on them and I thought that I should probably do a little bit of pests control seeing they were eating the gardens up. I connected on two of them at around 20 to 25 yards and missed one at about thirty yards. But once I did that them little buggers never came back in my yard during day light. The rest of the year. They were smarter than I gave them credit for.

I am using a ilf set up the Hoyt satori and I have been shooting it from the shelf for the last two years. But about a month ago went to a pat Norris spring rest . It bare shaft tuned incredibly well it was the easiest I have ever tuned one. I have bare shaft tuned it out to thirty yards and the bare shaft hits in the same group as the fletched shaft’s. I have seen were guys from the Pacific Northwest use them and they say they will not use anything else. And that is almost rain forest conditions. I have ordered some of the iron will hybrid trad vanes and I saved a couple of shafts from the dozen I just fletched. I love tinkering with stuff like that so I will find out. Besides they are a lot cheaper than feathers are anymore so it’s not going to break the bank to find out. If I don’t like them I still have a couple hundred feathers to work with. Don’t think I will ever go completely away from feathers. I will let you know what I think of them.

@Joe Daniels thank you Joe . I am praying for a great 2026 for everyone. May the lord Jesus Christ continue to bless everyone.

Good luck Douglas . I have a friend that was diagnosed with leukemia in July he has done a couple of rounds of chemotherapy. Did not get to hunt the bow season at all. But got out of the hospital after a week of therapy just before the rifle season started. He couldn’t shoot a rifle but his doctor said it would be fine for him to hunt with his bow. He had to hunt close to him so he had a ground blind set up behind his house. The second afternoon he shot a real nice eight point buck. He called it His leukemia buck I don’t think I could have been any happier if I would’ve been the one to shoot that buck. I still get a smile on my face when I look at the picture of him with the buck. I will be praying for you to have many more years to bow hunt. Good luck.

@Jarrod Floyd I agree. Too be a successful hunter you need to know the area that you are hunting as well as the animal you are hunting. I have a cousin that has an airplane he would fly me over the area that I am wanting to check out. You would not believe how much deer trails show up from the air. Then I would go and walk the area that I was wanting to hunt. Now we have aerial photos on our phones which can help but it doesn’t show you all the stuff you see when you are actually flying over it. I hunt big woods in northern Wisconsin. And to cover all the land that I hunt I would have to own a company that produces trail cams. And they would not do the job that I can do if I put time myself in that area.

@Grant Richardson A-lot of the people that are in the hunting community don’t get far enough off the road to know what is happening in the woods. Hunting has gotten to a point where it’s all about success. Between the crossbow and the baiting people are not really hunting anymore . A couple of days ago there was a group of us setting around and talking bow hunting most of us there were traditional bow hunters and the crossbow came up and it was not a favorable thing for them. But there was one guy there that pipes up and says well I have one and I use the crap out of it. I could not believe he even said anything like that. Because we all knew that his stile of killing is not hunting at all. His deer stand is his truck all the deer that he shoots is shot out of the window of his truck. And most of them are shot after most people are in bed. A few years back he shot deer in my yard. Which I would not have cared but I know he shot the deer after dark and from the county road. Everything thing about it was illegal . And he is dumb enough to actually brag about doing it. What I don’t understand is how he doesn’t get caught. The same thing with baiting it is illegal to bait deer in our county but you can’t walk through a piece of property where there is not a corn bait with a trail camera and a tree stand set up on it. Even where I hunt there it’s private property and I have total control of it. It is over 300 acres.But the property owners that are around it have baits just over the property lines. So they pull the deer from our property to the baits. And they are also crossbow hunters at least they are hunting from a real stand not a truck from a road. Some of those guys that hunt with a crossbow actually think they’re hunting with a bow . They need to change the name of them from a crossbow to a crossgun that would clear up a lot misconceptions. And why not call a spade a spade. I don’t want to think about what is going to be called ethical hunting 20 years from now. Most people will never know what true hunting is actually like. Or the rewards that come along with being successful or why do it the way we do. I know this the day when I can’t hunt with my traditional equipment I will be done hunting. I will probably get of lite poundage limbs. And just shoot targets. I love to shoot my bow shooting a animal is just a bonus.