Wisconsin is the latest major whitetail state to allow crossbows during the regular archery season, which opens September 13. A crossbow license costs $24 for a resident and $160 for an out-of-stater. Up until 10 years ago, this would have been big news, and it would have caused a firestorm amongst bowhunters, many pro-crossbow and a fierce minority anti-crossbow. But when Governor Scott Walker signed the crossbow bill late last year and the Wisconsin Assembly passed it on a 91-0 vote, there was hardly a whimper. Crossbows are here to stay in most archery seasons across the U.S. and people, some begrudgingly, have come to accept that. We have a lot of hard-core bowhunters from Wisconsin on the blog, and we have [...]

For some reason that I always found odd, the Pope and Young Club never allowed animals killed with an arrow with a lighted nock to be entered into their archery record book. The thinking was that a lighted nock somehow gave the hunter an "unfair electronic advantage" over the deer. How, by maybe helping a hunter to make a better and more lethal shot in low legal shooting light? To my mind, a lighted nock can help a hunter to know more precisely where he or she hit a deer, and in many cases that helps in the recovery of that animal. All good. Well, P&Y has finally come into the 21st century of archery hunting. Beginning August 1, 2014, the club [...]