The march of societal progress often follows the march of progress in technology. Cries of outrage and concern accompany each advancement in tech. The line of how far is too far for hunting gadgets faces heated debate.
Let’s break down the issues and the upsides. On the positive, hunting popularity has increased in line with accessibility to the sport. The more people that can hunt, the more that do.
The richness of competition also doesn’t degrade because of new technology. That some people will use gear to accomplish what someone else can do with skill takes away nothing.
If you are the one with the skill you can excel either way. Of course, it isn’t quite that simple and not all changes provide performance advantages. Many pieces of gear are about comfort and accessibility.
Hunting as Sport
To be clear, this article discusses hunting as a sport. When it comes to hunting for subsistence the virtue is to succeed. As long as the process doesn’t destroy the animal herds or the animals meant for harvest, anything goes.
We don’t live in the kind of scarcity society where hunting for food needs to be that grim. Most hunting is done for the sport and ethical hunters use their kills for more than a trophy.
Ethics
Ethical hunting practices come in two forms. The first is protecting the hunt for future generations. This includes not taking more game than can replenish. It also includes not ruining the environment which forces out animals.
The second set of ethics is about reasonable rules for the sport. Using the wrong weapon in a category is dangerous and irresponsible. Spotlighting and other night hunting practices have long been frowned upon or made illegal.
Enjoyment
Hunting is about enjoyment. There is a thrill to the chase, the grace of taking aim, and the thrill of a well-placed hit.
While standing in the rain for a few hours might be necessary to achieve any of the above three, it isn’t exactly comfortable. Gear and tech that keeps the rain off and the body warm isn’t unsporting, it is simply not masochistic.
Inclusion
Hunting technology also allows more people to engage in the sport. Women and youths get more involved with technology lowering the physical bar to access.
Not everyone can be accommodated – hunting is still a physical activity. It requires some amount of strength, endurance, and know-how. However, it is nice to let people achieve without strict limitations.
The following lists of technology explore how each fits into these three rubrics. A device that provides none of these is a device that goes too far. In the wrong hands, anything can be abused, the point is to establish a reasonable bar for what can still be counted as hunting.
Bow Tech
We’ll start with a review of the improvements and changes to the bow itself.
Part of the enjoyment of bow hunting comes from the skills needed to succeed with the weapon. To use it effectively, it requires a dedication to a whole set of skills involving getting within range of a target. We’ll explore that next.
Check your local state requirements or a quick list like the one here to see what gear restrictions may apply.
As for the bow itself, since the 1970s, the compound bow has gone through rapid advances. Some of these provide more power, others more accuracy and still others create opportunities to improve range and impact.
Arrow Rests
An often overlooked but significant advancement brought about by compound bows is the arrow rest. The cut-outs in a modern riser allow arrows to avoid the wobble that so engrosses physicists.
Arrow rests create a burst of short-range accuracy, certainly, but their real virtue is in shots over 40 yards. Competing with the wobble of an arrow and the gravity drop made shots beyond 30 yards difficult.
Statistics show that accuracy drops off after 20 yards and reaches into the 1 percentile at 50 and beyond.
Arrow rests change a component of the arrow physics but doesn’t challenge ethics or accessibility of hunting. Some purists are certain to point out it takes less skill but nobody would say it negates skill or enjoyment.
Sights
Sighting on bows presents a more difficult issue. Part of this is the range of different sights that exist. While most bows use pins or notches, some use scopes. A scope on a bow starts into a contested area.
Pins
Most hunters use pins set at 10-40 yards in iterations of 5-10 yards each. This allows you to aim and calculate gravity drop visually.
In the past, notches or pins had to be added and moved manually. Newer systems employ computer applications to measure and inform adjustments automatically.
Pins create no ethical or enjoyment changes to hunting. The automatic versions are great for saving time, which makes them good for accessibility.
Scopes
A bow with a scope runs into rules denoting it as a crossbow. Largely, the restriction in the field of view creates an issue and magnification shouldn’t be needed. A bow doesn’t shoot beyond what you can see with the naked eye.
As for adding in lights or rangefinders into the scope, these are discouraged on sporting grounds to prevent abuse.
Rangefinders
Rangefinders close the loop in the “cheat” that sights create. No point in having pins meticulously set if you don’t know how far away the target is.
Rangefinders make setting pins easier and also setting up a shot simple.
Again, purists have a complaint about skill versus shortcuts that can be valid. The enjoyment of a perfectly placed shot goes up when one does the calculations without aid. For those with issues of depth perception, it creates an artificial barrier.
As long as the rangefinder doesn’t allow low-light or night targeting, there isn’t anything ethically wrong with them.
New Arrows
The crafting and ability of arrows reflect a sharp increase in functionality over the last 30 years.
Arrow changes are not negligible to the sport of hunting. The wrong arrow for the wrong game spoils meat, creates wounding and bleeding issues, and creates waste.
Heads
Newer broadhead designs, for example, don’t work at shorter ranges. The fins need to fly 20 or more yards to open for impact. This shapes the trajectory and acts to create more efficient kill shots.
Tagging and practice heads have become common for different purposes.
Heads should be rated for the animal being harvested. Too large will destroy the meat. Too small will wound without much chance to kill.
Shafts
The widths of shafts have gone from ‘whatever’ to very specific. You need the right arrow width for your bow draw and let off to prevent buckling and to carry the force adequately.
Fletchings should be colored to prevent being lost in the underbrush. Collecting arrows saves money and prevents injury to hikers and scavenger animals.
Bow Design
Changes to the shape and size of bows while upping or maintaining performance is the single biggest tech focused on inclusion. Ease of use and durability of materials are basic concepts in the evolution from recurve to compound bows.
In shopping for a bow, the modern hunter has the option to change their draw-length, limb height, draw weight, and let-off velocity.
Each of these once came at the expense of one or more other qualities. This is where technology does its best work.
The enjoyment of a hunt can be tuned as well. Nobody is stopping you from using a single shaft longbow or self-bow. The modern compounds bring more people into the sport without restricting or emoving anyone else.
Draw Weight and Force Magnifiers
There are limits to the allowable maxes on force magnifiers. Part of this restriction is about harm to the animal. Blowing an arrow straight through a target may be cool, but does little to kill ethically. We discuss more on draw weight here.
Force magnification limits also exist to prevent adverse risk to hunters. Tune a bow high enough and you risk it snapping in places under load.
Hunting Gadgets
Now that we have the weapon out of the way, let’s discuss the periphery gadgets that make hunting easier or more tolerable.
These devices don’t change hunting practices in a fundamental way. These all modernize techniques and ideas that hunters employed for millennia.
The question with these is less about inclusion and ethics and more sportsmanship. The fuzzy line starts to appear as more and more hunting is done without the hunter involved.
That slippery slope is where the sport of hunting gives way to being a game of the best toy wins.
Scent Control
Every hunter knows that getting noticed by the prey animal leads to failure. Camouflage is so ubiquitous for this purpose that it isn’t even included as technology.
Hunters have worn leaves and bark or hidden in the grass, up in a tree, or stood very still since hunting was a thing.
The bigger tech advances have been in how to mask smells.
Sprays
Chemical concoctions designed to maks smells by covering it with something else. Many of thee use pheromones from other animals to cover up the human smell.
Some go so far as to entice by using sex pheromones to bring in target animals.
The earliest versions were little more than scent gland secretions or urinary byproducts. Modern versions use a lab to carefully create something that animals will smell more than humans.
Outside of allergic reactions, sprays make the user suffer as much as they help.
Sprays that attract animals are not always permissible in every state or hunt. They fall into the category of bait.
Ozone Machines
These new mechanical marvels do almost the opposite of sprays. Instead of covering up the human smell with a familiar smell, they delete smells altogether.
Ozone bonds with other fluorocarbons easily. Most odors have a fluorocarbon component that will bind and be removed. This is the basic idea behind ‘odor eliminating’ cleaning products.
Aside from creating more battery waste, ozone machines don’t create environmental issues. In general, they are an overpriced solution to a half-existant problem.
For hunters looking for up-close shots in high traffic areas, they make sense. Otherwise, you are better off being higher up and picking more isolated targets.
Trail Cameras
Scouting out animals feeding patterns and migration routes was once a lengthy practice. It required a lot of time and a team of like-minded hunters helped it along.
However, as hunting seasons shrink other methods become necessary. Studies on hunting season length focus on animals harvested, not the timing of harvest. Hunters can use the non-season time to scout but doing so is difficult for working people.
Trail cameras let a hunter scout and gather data without needing to be in the forest. Hunters have to collect and download trail cameras but some upload remotely.
Tech of this sort allows some hunters to participate in hunts in a more visceral way than they would be able to.
As for ethics and enjoyment? Given the choice between seeing animals on camera or being out there themselves, most hunters would pick the forest.
Tracking Devices
Trackers, usually fired from a low impact arrow that will catch with only slight wounding are the devices that cross the fuzzy line.
A tracking device on a proper broadhead made to kill provides a faster way to track down a wounded animal and finish the hunt. This saves the animal suffering and lowers the number of wounded animals that get reported each season.
Smaller load trackers create a real problem. These trackers are used to simply tag an animal from a distance and then track it for a better shot.
Tracking creates a larger ethical question about leaving a wounded animal in general. It is better to find an animal than to abandon it. This is especially true when given the perspective that hunting is about population control.
Wounded and unclaimed animals throw off control numbers in addition to the suffering they cause.
Hone Your Skills
Now a better idea about what cool hunting gear is out there and how they bear weight on the sport. Hunting gadgets should increase the enjoyment and make the sport accessible for all. What they shouldn’t do is give unfair advantages and exploits.
To learn more about bowhunting gear and contact us for more information.
