Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting New to crossbows

In the area I live hunting opportunities are really rare. Everything is a development or farm land. Land that is wooded is leased off. My cousin went to a land auction 3 minutes from my house and bought 14 acres. Doesn't sound like much but here in suburban Maryland, it's a awesome opportunity to get out there. I've lucked into two double man permanent deer stands. Next is the crossbow to really take advantage and hunt as much as possible. I'm a nurse and only work 3 days a week so I'll really be hitting it hard. Through lots of reading I have pretty much settled on the Tenpoint Turbo model without the cocking gadget. Curious if there is a certain time of the year these crossbows go on sale? Seems like the $800 is the money on one of these.

Sales generally start in April and May around here.

For us Eastern types, the last doe seasons/QDM seasons are still going, our sales tend to come later in the Spring. Hunters are still in the woods, and bow sales are generally pretty consistent through March.

April is usually the start of the dry season for the bow shops in NOVA, lasting into late May. Most 3-D shoots are just starting up in April/May and the bowfishing season will pick up as the summer months start and the water are clearing up.

The Archery Trade Show is in Jan each year, and the new models are introduced there.

March/April/May is also generally when the sales orders from the Archery Trade Show start shipping, and the shop are looking to make room for the new "shiney" on the wall.

Local Gander Mountain had Carbon Express X-bows discounted $300 (%40) off of the regular price, just to make room for the new models.

April is tax month for small businesses as well, in Virginia, the shop has to pay taxes based on the store inventory. Most shop owners are moving the last year's model, and moving out any thing that hasn't sold as expected to cut the tax bite.

Thanks for taking the time to type all that out. It's appreciated. What broad heads ya like?

Rage two-blades (orange), but best to see what works best with your bolts and s-p-e-e-d. I wouldn't be afraid to try a fixed blade on it, would probably start with Slicks Tricks, and then experiment if needed.

I'm running about 300-320 (estimated - need to chrono it) on a Carbon Express CRX-1 with the CE Hunter bolts, Nocturnals, and a 125 grain Rage head.

I've moved to a Redfield Revenge X-bow scope (non-illuminated) with variable power. I found the factory CE scope was pretty lacking in low light (dawn/dusk) and removed it. I tried a Viper Vortex that I had, and it was a good scope, but I had to pick a range to zero a bolt for and the rest of the lines were going to be off a bit.

With the variable power, you are matching the speed of the bolt to the scope reticule, and it's a nock-buster now out at 40 yards, as far as I can shoot. The Redfield has a ranging feature, I don use it, and doubt that I ever will.

I've found with the illuminated scopes that I have, the illumination can "bloom" in the sight picture in low light, even on the lowest settings. I'll get a green or red haze when the light is on. I've kinda decided that If I need the aiming point lit up, I'm probably outside of legal shooting hours.

The shwackers seem to be highly thought of? Also I see they're coming out with a 100 grain 1.5" 3 blade BH this summer.

Use Slick Trick 100 gr. "Razortricks" and Steelforce 100 gr. "Phat Heads" when chasing whitetails here in PA....

Well, a buddy is using Schwackers, and he's averaging one lost deer a season. I watched him shoot a doe at 30 yards last year, looked like a solid lung/liver hit. We backed out for 45 minutes to let her bleed out, then went in to find her. Long story short, she was still running two hours later, and into the next day, and no blood trail in the snow.

So, I'm not sure what went wrong, but she should have died from the location and angle of the hit.

Tag! Thanks!
I am trying to talk my better half into getting me
a Excalibur x-bow

I bought an Excaliber Matrix 330 a while back. It's a simple bulletproof bow.

The scope has range markers and it's duck soup to hit what you want out to fifty yards I haven't shot it past that range since I don't think it's such a good idea shooting even that far because like any crossbow, it's noisy. At fifty yards it will hold a couple inches. It is so fast that at 20-30 yards I doubt Bambi will jump much. I have no doubt that a 2 inch rage will go all the way through, maybe even at fifty yards.

I took a couple of cold-shuts and put them on a piece of nylon rope as a tool to cock it so I could change the string.

like every crossbow I've picked up, it doesn't hold steady for off hand shooting like a rifle, but like I said at fifty yards it'll still hold a couple inches off hand. The only thing I've shot with it so far is a pocket gopher who chose the range to be digging in. Not much of a test, but blood is blood.

So far I still like it better than any of the compound crossbows I've tried including a very compact model.

I run a 10 point and I love it. As for tips, I use 100gr slick tricks. Shot a doe New Year's Eve and it performed amazingly. Best part is that for me ( and others Ihave talked to), the broad head shoots the same POI as my target tips.

Thanks for the information!
I wish I had seen this here in time!
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/9865724/Re:_10_Point_GT_Flex_Crossbow#Post9865724

Mechanicals are too risky and suck. If you can't kill one with a fixed, you don't need to be bowhunting.
Just IMHO.

I have to ask, and I promise that this is no slight against crossbows. Is there a reason that you need to use a crossbow, rather than a compound? In my experience, the sound of a crossbow makes them less effective than compounds. If I had to use a crossbow, I would get the quietest one out there and do everything I could to make it quieter.

How does the sound a crossbow makes, make it less effective? Can we apply that logic to rifle calibers also? Your gonna get one shot so make it count. About the only time I have had a second shot is on a group of pigs that would spook and come right back in again. Tom

They are normally a lot louder than compound bows and pressured, or mature, deer almost always jump at the shot of a loud bow. It won't matter with unwary animals.

Plus, the crossbow bolt is moving below the speed of sound, the rifle bullet is well over.

I've killed two deer in the same group, and same spot/stand with a bow, could not have done the same with a crossbow. My CRX is loud, not doubt about the noise playing a factor.

I guess we need to get the manufacturers to start listing the noise levels that xbows produce. I'd hate to shoot at a big 12 pointer at 20 yards knowing the shot was gonna be noisy. Yep, might have to pass on that shot. C'mon guys, some xbows produce more noise than others just like compound bows. My 2 compounds are quieter than any of my 4 xbows but that doesn't stop me from using any of them. I agree that a quieter xbow may be desirable but loud ones kill them just as dead. Tom

They all kill them just as dead...if you can connect the shot, before they can jump the string.

I do a significant amount of urban archery with a crossbow, loud noises are not as much of a factor.

Back in the woods, it becomes a consideration, YMMV.

laugh if you will. I also limit cross bow shots to 15 or 16 steps max. The few times I've used it, the bolt has hit within an inch or so of aiming point, have never hit anything but hearts so far.

But the noise is there, like a 22lr or mag crack mostly. Since I shoot out of a box, its really muffled though.

Why use one? Body won't let me shoot a compound some times due to fire fighting injury.

Other than that I prefer the regular bow. Like as in recurve, but now and then I can shoot my compound and have not been able to shoot my brackenbury since the injury a few years ago...

Like I said, crossbows are loud. But... they are also fast, very fast. At 20 yards or so Bambi is not going to jump the string even from a crossbow with no noise suppression whatsoever. Spooky deer at 40 yards probably can manage it though. Just because they're loud doesn't mean Bambi will be jumping at the noise, urban deer or deep woods deer. I have seen a lot of deer just stand still because they're no sure where the noise came from. One of the deer last November just stood and watched while the one I shot with a muzzle loader dropped so hard and fast it bounced.

Unless Bambi is on high alert and homed in on you, a normal 20 yard or so deer just isn't going to be able to move enough before the arrow gets there to make a difference.

As far as mechanical broad heads are concerned, I would be willing to be a pretty fair chunk of change that as many or more deer are lost with conventional fixed braod heads as with mechanicals. Shooting deer with arrows is not a very high success rate proposition. The last numbers I saw were 30 some per cent of the deer hit were lost. That's versus 19 percent loss for rifle hit deer. Both numbers are pathetic. The numbers of arrowed deer I have found dead in the woods seems to agree with those numbers. The rifle hit numbers also seem to agree with what I have seen. Bow or rifle, it seems that there's a lot of people who should be a lot more careful about what and when they shoot at.

Evidently our skills must be better than what you see. There are a lot of folks that do not have any business in the woods, that is very true. But good bowhunters loose extremely few mortally hit deer. Extremely few.

I've taken over 100 head of big game when I quit keeping tabs in teh late 90s with a bow.

I lost 1 deer to a gut shot over those years, learned HOW to find gut shot deer in case they did jump string and hit further back.

Hunting with a group of 8 bowhunters for close to 20 years as group, I can count on one hand the number of deer lost. And we shot our limits most years.

Now other hunters may be sloppier and less adept at following a trail, but not the case here.

What is the case is that mechanical heads can fail. I"ve seen it. Wife has seen it. Others hunting have seen it. Seems when they work, they do awful good job and may cut the trailing distance to a dead deer in half, but mind you I've never had a problem finding a lethally hit deer.

When they fail, they do so miserably. Wife and I each had tough issues with mechanicals... mine failed to open, hers had the blades bend over and become dull.

Her deer took us about 5 hours to find him. I found him once, early on when he was not nearly sick enough... and then waited quite a bit more before trailing and shooting him again in his bed.

My deer was shot at almost 9am exactly one morning, double lung shot, just over the heart arteries. Blades failed to open. Deer was found after a long grid search by myself, around 730pm that evening. I did go back to camp twice to eat and did take about a 30 minute nap after lunch....

I'll not use mechanical ever agian.

I doubt the skills are much if any different. The numbers I got were from the DNR and represent the whole state. They don't seem out of line with what I know of other states as a whole.

Just because I can pick and choose what deer I want to shoot hasn't got one iota of bearing on the majority of hunters in the state who have an overall success rate hovering around 30% and are doing well to get a deer once in a while.

Maybe in Minnesota. I promise you that you won't get away with that in some places. Like I said earlier, with unwary animals it doesn't matter.

Sure shows a lot of folks being dumbazzes then.

Which has no bearing on my comment that mechanical heads can be trouble.

You used fixed or mechanical? How many archery deer you kill? How long have you bowhunted?

Well I know a sure fire way to make everyone happy. If you believe that a deer standing at 20 yards is going to jump the string because of the noise the xbow is going to make then aim low. Kind of like aiming where you don't want to hit. Problem solved.

Been my experience a lot of folks are dumbazzes. Makes no matter what they shoot.

With this crossbow I will be shooting mechanicals. Looks to me like they'll hit hard enough to work right every time. Might be wrong, but I don't think so. More prone to have a problem than fixed? Yeah, probably if you don't count that fixed cant fly as well. Looks like a wash to me all things considered.

I killed my first deer with a bow in '62 or '63. Not many though compared to what I kill with rifles. All with fixed blades though. I plan on killing four this year and they will be all butchered by me, so I'll know what the blades can do, and have some idea of their potential for failure if I'm lucky.

Good advice.

I have had to hunt with a crossbow for the last 6 to 7 years and have killed probably 20 deer with them. For me, deer do jump the string much worse than a compound due to the noise. But, the magic number for me is around 26 yards. Less than that and the bolt is there before they can react. More than that and I risk a bad hit as the deer will be moving. Thus, I limit myself to 26 yards shots or less. Really pretty simple to figure out with a little experience.

Just in case anyone is in the market, I've got an Excalibur crossbow that was my father in law's. I believe it's the ExoMax an he used it for about 2 seasons. It's left in his estate and my mother in law has no need for it. If any of you guys are interested just shoot me a PM.

On another note, I ended up with a bunch of Bass Pro points on my credit card and thought I needed a crossbow. I bought the StrykeZone 380. It's been a really good bow, but I can't make myself use it much. I hunt with my recurve and compound much more. If I need to hunt in a blind I'll use the Xbow, but that's do to being able to draw and anchor correctly versus the size of the blind. I've had no issues with it, and would recommend one, but I've pretty much stuck my dad with it so he can use it and we can hunt together.

Carry on.

I kinda figured this was common knowledge among bowhunters.

But it does not solve all the issues, they will not only duck but they will whirl also.

Have friend that shot at one, not all that far away, and the deer turned 180 by the time the arrow hit it. No big deal as he got lucky.

I have no clue if the deer was relaxed or what, as I was not sitting there and I tend not to totally believe every one all the time, as we've all made bad decisions and this was his first 10 point ever.... but the shot was not 20 steps, probalby 18 as I recall, there were trees there that started at 19 steps at that stand....

I'll stick with fixed heads, just too many issues over the years wth mechanicals. And fixed work so good. Fly so true. And if they are not accurate enough for ya, I suspect you and the bow both need work or are shooting to far.

"Shooting at where they're gonna be" is a lot easier with something already in motion than it is with something that will PROBABLY move SOMEWHERE. Doing everything you can to not make them move is the best bet, and the only way I know to do that is to avoid alerting an animal prior to, and at, the shot.

I wish the best of luck to any bowhunters reading this and truly hope you don't have to blow as many opportunities at a "buck of a lifetime" as I have to learn these lessons.

I've shot under bucks, thinking they would duck, the way they were acting...

No guarantees in life...other than mechanicals suck.

I saw this query, and thought I'd respond, as I've been following this thread with interest too. In my case, I had Congestive Heart Failure a couple years ago and they put a pacemaker/defibrillator in my upper left shoulder. I can't draw a bow any more, as per the dr's orders. In Minnesota, you have to get a certificate of medical necessity to use a crossbow, and I'll have the dr. fill one out for me so I can crossbow hunt this fall. I haven't bought a bow yet, but am looking at models that offer an optional hand cranking device, as I'll need that to load the bow.

I saw this query, and thought I'd respond, as I've been following this thread with interest too. In my case, I had Congestive Heart Failure a couple years ago and they put a pacemaker/defibrillator in my upper left shoulder. I can't draw a bow any more, as per the dr's orders. In Minnesota, you have to get a certificate of medical necessity to use a crossbow, and I'll have the dr. fill one out for me so I can crossbow hunt this fall. I haven't bought a bow yet, but am looking at models that offer an optional hand cranking device, as I'll need that to load the bow. [/quote]

Jeff,

I have an Excaliber and I really like it. It's simple and bullet proof. VERY fast. Very acccurate. You may not need the crank cocker. You're welcome to shoot it if you'd like.