HIGH-POWERED HOGWASH

It was inevitable and we've all been waiting for it to happen. 

On December 28th 2014 it was reported that an elderly man lay critically ill in hospital after having been shot with a "high-powered bow" in an attack at his home in Dandenong. Of course every syllable of "high-powered bow" was emphasised for dramatic effect.

To date archers and bowhunters have been largely spared the sensationalist attentions of Antis such as the Greens and their adoring fans, the media.

Mention the bow & arrow and the public thinks of The Hobbit, Brave, Avatar, the Hunger Games and of course Robin Hood and his band of merry men gallantly stealing from the rich to give to the poor; no easy job when you’re dressed in unflattering green tights.

Archery is looked upon as a sport requiring great skill and discipline and because bows seldom figure large in criminal activity, the public has always viewed them with a certain benign ambivalence.

The Greens, the RSPCA and the National Parks Association have each striven in turn to promote an alternative view of archery and indeed archers themselves.

Carefully contrived campaigns depicting native wildlife carrying arrow injuries are fed to an eager media, accompanied of course by demands to ban or at least heavily regulate the sale of archery equipment.

Happily the community has so far failed to succumb to the allure of rampant hoplophobia (a morbid fear of weapons) and this has resulted in a change of tactics employed by the likes of NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge. 

That which you and I may call compound bows, David Shoebridge has taken to calling “high-powered hunting bows”, the better to terrorise the public and justify his demands for regulation.

And his comrades at the RSPCA and the National Parks Association have likewise picked-up the torch, albeit to a lesser extent to date.

As George Orwell demonstrated in his novel, 1984, when the objective is to control the public through fear, the manipulation of language is all important.

Thus in order to make the pedestrian seem terrifying the anti-archer introduces terminology never used by expert archers and bowhunters.

So what are the simple facts the public is seldom told about compound bows?  I’m glad you asked...

Compound bows are not hunting bows. They may certainly be used for hunting, but throughout the many millenniums bows have been used to hunt game, the vast majority was brought down long before Holless Wilbur Allen patented the first compound bow in 1969. 

The term “hunting bow” refers to a bow’s application by the individual and not its inherent design.

The majority of compound bows purchased in Australia today will be used solely on target ranges and they will be configured with sights, stabilisers, arrows & tips etc for this application.

A bow identical in design may be used for hunting and it will be configured with different sights, different stabilisers, different arrows & tips and perhaps a camouflage finish suited to this purpose.

The same can be said of the modern recurve bow as used in Olympic competition.

In fact if any bow deserves the title “hunting bow” it is the more traditional recurve bow and longbow of antiquity.

The longbow singled out England as a formidable power in Europe for many centuries and the recurve bow enabled the Mongols to conquer and rule over the largest contiguous land empire in history.

The allure of the modern compound bow lays in two main characteristics - the capacity to hold the bow at full draw for long periods with comparative ease and its unparalleled accuracy, the one being largely responsible for the other.

The cams fitted to the tips of the bow’s limbs distribute energy equally and store it within the bow with great efficiency. When the bow is tuned as it should be the result is a far more efficient release of energy resulting in a very flat trajectory.

Additionally, the design of the cams is such that when the bow is at full draw the archer is holding only a fraction of the bow’s stored energy.

Some compound bows boast as much as 80% “let-off”, which in simple terms means that a bow that might otherwise require, say, 50lbs of strength to draw fully and hold, will suddenly lighten-up as the cams engage, leaving the archer with a mere 10lbs or 15lbs of force to resist.

This means not only that archers are able to hold a compound bow longer and far more steadily while taking aim, they are also able to draw their bows more frequently, with less fatigue during competition.

Few people are aware that compound bows have perhaps demonstrated their greatest value in competition, where they have served to level the playing field between male and female competitors, or that the compound bow has opened the sport of archery to thousands of people with disabilities who lack the upper-body-strength to draw the more traditional bows.

Unfortunately the public knows little about archery, other than what can be absorbed watching reruns of Robin Hood or Rambo on late-night tele, where, thanks to the fantasy world concocted by Hollywood special effects, all things are possible, up to and including grenade tipped arrows and  13th century British outlaws with American accents.

The anti-archers’ use of the term “high-powered hunting bows” is nothing more than a linguistic ruse designed to manipulate and deceive the public and of course the man most quoted using the term is Greens’ spokesperson on all matters ‘weapons’ related, Mr David Shoebridge MLC, himself a barrister by profession and thus no stranger to the business of using emotive terminology to twist facts and manipulate an argument.

But if the compound mechanics briefly outlined above are too complex for the average Aussie to process, perhaps the following comparisons will put the power of the modern compound bow into some perspective.

A high-powered hunting rifle, such as the common .308 calibre deer rifle, can propel a projectile in excess of 3,000 feet per second (fps).

The average .177 calibre air-riffle of the type once so popular among children, can propel a projectile at around 1,200fps.

The average compound bow of the type impressively ignorant Greens politicians and their trained media circus will invariably refer to as "high-powered” (oooh, boogy!-boogy!) can shoot a projectile at a dizzying 370fps – that's three-hundred & seventy feet per second – a speed seldom achieved anywhere but in the laboratory.

Speeds of 320fps are far more common and in terms of cheap, over the counter stock-jobs you can bring that down to around 280fps.

Or in terms so simple as to defy even Greens ultra-thickiness, your so-called "high-powered" bows are in excess of 3 times less powerful than the average slug gun and more than 8 times less powerful than a deer rifle.

Put like that, it kinda takes all the puff out of the need for immediate action don't it? 

Which is precisely why they never put it like that!

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now....

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