I'm sure this thread has been done but it's something I wanted to bring up again. I'm sure many of you started with traditional equipment and stuck with it but I'm sure a lot of us like myself started with other equipment and gradually drifted to stickbows. Personally I started hunting with rifle then muzzleloader then compounds and this will be my first fall going after deer with a recurve. For me it's the challenge and the fact that I like to watch the arrow fly. What drove you to trad?

It was more fun.

It put the "hunt" back into hunting!

Well I started over 50 years ago and never liked the looks of them shootin' contraptions .
I stick with traditional because of the simplicity of the device .
Not much can go wrong .
Break a string in the field and you go "DANG " and just put on another one .
Try that with one of the machines .

There wasn't any other way back in 1958.
Jack

Old black and white photos of my Dad hunting and taking deer with longbow and recurve lit the fire in me .

Exactly what everyone else said, I've been a bowhunter since I was 12 years old, killed a deer that year with my Bear Whitetail hunter, I have always shot with fingers, a flipper rest and one pin, my bow blew up in the late summer of 87, I could not find a bow to fit a finger shooter, so I ordered a Brackenbury Legend and never looked back.

Outside of the very few years in my early 20's, I've always shot a recurve or a longbow. Its archery in its truest sense to me... something I believe is born inside us that do it, and is a type of gift. Not everyone CAN do it, not everyone WANTS to do it, only those who are meant to do it have both qualities. Modern weapons bow industrys , put bows in anyone's hands, and anyone can come to shoot a bow with one because they are definitively mechanical, like math, 1+1=2. Not so with trad bows, it takes something more that comes from within.

I do it, because thats what im bred to do...I dont know anything else but this.

For me compounds lost their challenge...  it just got too easy and it wasn't fun for me anymore...  I've had more fun the last few years with my longbow than I did the last 10-15 years with my wheelie bows.  I'm full trad now and don't see myself getting back on the technology wagon anytime soon!

Good luck, shoot straight and God Bless,

Rodd

I got a bad case of target panic after shooting compound many years. Figured if I was dumping the sights I might as well shoot a pretty bow. I'm glad it happened that way or I may still be shooting a compound.

for me bowhunting is not about using sights and gadgets on it to make me shoot good with bad form, i like the challenge and the flight of the arrow and the pleasure it has when hitting the mark, i will never go back to a wheel bow, something magical about trad gear and more satisfying to me.i believe its more where we came from our ancestors

I was hunting on a ranch where a guy there was using a trad bow. He was an older man, very friendly and could shoot that thing GOOD. He talked on and on about it but I guess I didn't really understand at the time. I thought it was cool though as I had no idea anybody hunted like that really. This was probably 3 years ago. I had it stuck in my mind from that day that it was something I'd like to get into but of course life happens and I never took the time to look into it any further.

Then last year somebody posted a Clay Hayes video on another bow hunting forum. I watched that video and remember thinking how cool it would be to just simplify things, but at the same time work a little harder and put a little more effort into what I already love to do, which is bowhunting. I decided I was going to try it.

So then I asked for advice on that forum about what bow to buy to get started. Lots of people recommended different bows, but then the classifieds on this site came up as a place to look for one. I ended up coming over, and of course couldn't cruise the classifieds without signing in so I did.

Then I spent a day or two cruising this forum, reading all the stories, looking at the pics, and I was hooked. I got that first recurve and from the first arrow I shot, which missed the target completely I might add...I was hooked!!

I've shot a few squirrels with trad gear, but didn't start shooting until December so this will be my first year to deer hunt. To say I'm fired up would be an understatement. I've shot thousands of arrows, through sore shoulders and fingers and in the heat and cold and everything else and just can't stop. I've got a couple compound bows I have completely 100% lost interest in. I may not kill a deer with my longbow this year, but if I don't it won't be for lack of trying!!

I started trad, although it wasn't called that then.  Compounds are killing machines, no doubt, and I gave em hell.  I decided they were not me and I came back.  I became a better hunter after doing so, in my opinion.

I too started with a rifle. Then switched to a compound. A friend of mine shot instinctive with his compound and kept telling me that for hunting it was the way to go. So I gave it a shot stripped all the gadgets off my bow except a flipper rest. Even dropped the release. I shot a few deer that way and loved the way instinctive shooting felt but something was off. Shooting the way many of us do (just looking at the spot we want to hit and nothing else) really lends its self to one steady fluid movement, at least to me anyway. I came to realize I could never have that with a compound so I put it down, shot a couple trad bows at archery shops and never looked back. The abrupt movements and long pauses that a compound almost requires kinda goes against what I think archery really is.

Because I like it the best.  I no longer own a compound.  I do own and hunt with firearms as well, but I refer to that as "grocery shopping." and bow hunting with my longbow as "hunting."

It's all there was.

My first year was spent with a 58 Bear Alaskan that my dad bought new. He got me a compound the next year. A couple of years later I started hunting with my granddad a lot and he was a recurve shooter, it just struck a cord with me.

I started out at the age of 10 with a compound and once in my 20's I saw a recurve that my friend had and I bought me one it was a bear 65#, I put one pin on hit and hunted with it from 87 til 91 killed several deer with it, then a friend of mine was shooting a longbow so I ordered a Big Horn longbow and started shooting without sights. Ive always been fascinated with trad gear..

First kind of shooting I wasn't naturally good at. Beautiful woods and the pure connection to nature.

When I started shooting a bow, trad was the only archery there was.