I wanted to ask this question lots of times, but my fear was it would come across as looking down on others.

I use a crossbow because I can no longer pull and hold a compound. I did use a compound for over 30 years and only got 3 opportunities to shoot at deer. I now have rheumatoid arthritis and it hurts bad enough just trying to get up a tree. I'm going to shoot whatever is legal. Call me lazy, unskilled, or whatever you want. I have killed a couple a year with the crossbow the last few years.

Ahhh, the yearly chest thumping "real bow hunters" don't use xbows, thread.

Never used one but I don't care how anyone else chooses to hunt and won't look down my nose at anyone that uses a xbow to kill one.

Bill feel free to bite me. It takes no skill to sit with a cocked crossbow and shoot a deer. while I shoot a compound I have respect for every archer and guys that can't shoot a bow due to age or injury. Most of tgem would choose a bow if they could. It has nothing to do with beating my chest. please refer to thge first line of this comment.

Because it's legal and they want to?

Just curious why people use crossbows? Seems to me that it takes a LOT of the "bow hunting" out of bow hunting.

Now, I know folks who have health/injury reasons (can't pull back a traditional bow), but the majority of folks I know who use crossbows could otherwise use a regular bow.

I've asked this before and got sarcastic answers, such as "the same question could be asked by recurve users to compound users." But that's actually not true, with either a recurve or compound, the process, moves/action, and skillset is still the same. However, a crossbow is more like a gun than a bow. It's basically like a short-range gun that's more difficult to cycle a bullet.

Don't want this to turn into "why do you use sights instead of instinctive" or other ridiculous comparisons. It's just to me, a crossbow is more similar to a gun than it is a bow.

I'm with Claims. Everybody do what they want. Stay within the law.