Author: Crossbow Magazine Staff

Friends – I have published Crossbow Magazine for over 11 years and because of you it has grown into the highly recognized publication that it is today. I am immensely grateful for this success. Crossbow Magazine along with all of its assets was recently purchased by Outdoor Specialty Media Group from central New York. With their significant publishing and digital media resources soundly in place and our ability to leverage this new technology, Crossbow Magazine will instantly ascend into areas otherwise not possible under its current infrastructure. The future looks beyond bright for the magazine and we’re all very excited…

Last fall, a friend was telling me about all of the scrapes he’d found along a ridge behind his house. The more he talked about it, though, the more confused I became about what exactly he’d found. And then he asked if it was possible to tell the size of a deer’s antlers by the scrape it had made. Finally, I asked if he had a photo of the scrape, and just as suspected, he showed me a 4-inch diameter tree that had been shredded by a mature white- tail. “You’ve got a big buck around,” I said, “but that’s…

The hunt doesn’t end when you let that arrow fly. In fact, the moment you finally get that opportunity and make the shot is when a new hunt begins, and this one is for all the marbles. There is no celebration, after all, until the animal is recovered. Bad shots happen. Hunt long enough and eventually fate seems to conspire against you. A twig appears out of nowhere. The deer jumps the string or turns as you re- lease the arrow. Or it could be as simple as just making a bad shot. Nobody likes the feeling – that emptiness…

I packed up my truck and drove to my buddy’s farm for what was to be my last archery hunt of the season. We gathered up all of our gear and made the uphill climb to a food plot that was located on the backside of a hay field, close to a thick bedding area that several groups of does call home. The ground blind and camera equipment were set up to cover the two trails that the deer were utilizing to enter this winter food source. After everything was ready to go, and some brassica stubble ranged, we settled…

If any of you are like me, you cannot wait to spend time with your hunting bud- dies at deer, elk, or turkey camp. There is just something about this gathering of like-minded individuals who happen to share a passion for the outdoors. The camaraderie, swapping of hunting stories, formulating plans, sharing pictures of past hunts, and good food, combined with the anticipation of the hunt ahead, is something special. It’s something that many sportsmen look forward to more than the hunt itself in many ways. For some of us, this occasion may only be once or twice a year,…

I knew for a fact that this year marked the beginning of a new hunting challenge for me. My years and years of hunting when and how long I wanted, had come to an end. I now had to balance hunting with not only work but being a full-time college student. I would come to find out this would prove to be a challenging but also rewarding task. This is something that so many people have to work around in their life. Having to race home and gear up in time for a hunt was proving to be very difficult.…

As I usually do before my archery hunts in November, I tossed and turned for a while as I went about deciding where I was going to try to get an arrow into a rutted-up Pennsylvania buck the next morning. Although I already had several stands set where I was seeing good deer movement, the older bucks seemed to be somewhere else. The previous morning, I could hear bucks grunting and chasing across the valley from where I was sitting, but I knew the climb would be difficult from my access point and I did not have a stand set…

KILLER INSTINCT, INC. OF FRANKENMUTH, MI KNOWN FOR THE DEADLY ACCURATE CROSSBOWS HAS ALIGNED WITH OMEGA SIGHTS OF MEDINA, OHIO TO OFFER A UNIQUE OPTICS PLATFORM SUBSTANTIALLY DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER IN THE INDUSTRY Killer Instinct will outfit their impressive line of crossbows with the new 2022 Omega III Sight that was launched just this year. The Omega III Sight is more than just an optics device, it’s also a rangefinder and HD video camera, all-in-one. “This provides the shooter with a more precise and accurate shot while recording the hunt to be re-lived time and time again,” says Jason…

The goal of every hunter, regardless of the tool used, is to successfully harvest an animal. We dream about it all year. Most of us are diligent and determined to learn new strategies and techniques that will help us achieve that goal. We spend countless hours scouring catalogs, searching for new equipment or garments that will aid us in our pursuit. Some of us will travel great distances to investigate an object reviewed in catalogs because we want to touch it and hold it before making an expenditure. We purchase maps and or location apps for our smartphones, so we…

There’s a lot of emphasis nowadays on becoming a year-round deer hunter. More time spent afield observing whitetails during all four seasons leads to a greater understanding of the animal and its habits. Also, there are a number of summer projects, such as planting food plots and making habitat improvements, that can contribute toward success later on. In terms of actual scouting, though, can you really learn anything beneficial about deer patterns that will help you this fall? IDENTIFY SEASONAL FOOD SOURCES Some would argue that whitetails go through so many changes between now and the first day of archery…