My home made xbow shoots at 220fps and can certainly take big game. I would not want to face a charging animal with a big bore rifle but that’s not what hunting is about.

Anyways, for those of you that have a broken bow I would recomend using Common Juniper as a material (dont know the english name for this but hers a link for wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniperus_communis) the can handle a lot of presure and is very flexible. I only recomend them because it is a widely common tree in Norway (where i live) and if you can get some common juniper wood it would work grat as bow material. If not you could also use some wood from the “rubber tree” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hevea_brasiliensis).

I have made 5 bows for this project. They all have broken. I have used Red Oak, Cherry, Hickory, Black Locast, and now Red Elm. The Red Elm is still working but it is cracked. I think I only have about 30 lbs draw weight. I am not happy with it. I started making the Bows 38 inches long. I quit fiberglassing them, cause they keep breaking. I will let you know if I come up with a solution to this problem.

That’s because they generally WALKED everywhere.

I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere, ladies.

And you gotta love Musdar Effy Djinis. Mussy old chap, you have to work on that whole abstract concept of 1953.

These are the guys that see a map in a shopping mall that says “You Are Here” and then spend ten minutes wondering “How do they know that?”

Well, for a start, they don’t make a huge noise like a rifle or shotgun does when in close proximity to your prey.

All prey animals get ‘gun shy’. It’s a fact of life. They become so used to the ‘bang’ of a powder weapon that it becomes near impossible to go back to the same spot and hunt again.

But with a bow or crossbow, you get in so close you can ‘smell’ the target animal. Then you draw a bead on the animal. Then you depress the trigger. Thump! And your prey is dead, it just hasn’t had time to assimilate that fact, plus, it has no idea where the shot came from. No noise, get it?

An animal will, after the herd member has been shot, will go back to eating or grazing, not sure why one of it’s kind has fallen down and died. So, you get another shot, which doesn’t happen if you have a noisy cannon with you.

Thanks