REDFISH WITH A BOW
Bow Fishing and Deer Hunting -- The Similarities
Editor's
Note: As an outdoorsman, I enjoy hunting and fishing.
I like to participate in both sports all year. However,
often the seasons conflict. However now, folks can hunt
with a bow when deer season and turkey season end, although
the game has neither fur nor feathers but rather scales.
If you want to get a fight started in any fish camp
along the Gulf Coast, just start talking about hunting
redfish at night with a bow. Most folks won't jump your
case if you talk about shooting sheepshead with a bow,
because outdoorsmen generally don't consider sheepshead
the sacred cow of the Upper Gulf Coast. But many sportsmen
feel very strongly about bowhunting for redfish. I think
I speak for outdoorsmen when I say that many of us,
regardless of how we feel about how anglers take redfish,
probably perceive anyone who takes redfish by a different
method than us as using an immoral and unethical method.
But I personally think that a redfish in the skillet
is still a redfish in the skillet, whether you take
it on hook and line or with a bow and arrow. Too, as
long as bowhunters don't take over their legal limit
of redfish, why do we have controversy? "Well,
bow hunting for redfish just ain't sporting," a
whiskered, leathery-faced fisherman told me recently.
However, he also admitted he'd never hunted redfish
at night with a bow, but the idea of that just didn't
seem sporting to him. This past
year, friends and I traveled to Louisiana and hunted
redfish and sheepshead with bows and arrows with my
friend Bo Hamilton.
Here's some of what I learned on my hunts with Bo Hamilton.
* You may shoot 50 times at fish with a bow and arrow
at night and still not get a limit of redfish or three
or four sheepshead.
* I can't think of a bow-hunting trip more fun and exciting
than flying through the shallow marshes on an airboat
at night.
* People who don't know how to shoot bows and/or don't
know how to fish still can participate in this sport
of bow fishing for redfish and sheepshead at night.
* A shooter doesn't need great strength, nor does he
or she have to have mastered the sport of bow hunting
to shoot at fish at night with a bow.
You'll enjoy far more sport taking a redfish with a
bow and arrow than catching a redfish on a rod and reel.
The redfish has a better chance of escaping from the
bowhunter than it does from the angler. When the lights
at night hit that redfish, the fish reminds me of a
deer when it hears a
pack of hounds coming after it and has a running chance
of getting away. But, when you catch redfish on a hook
that's placed in the food the fish wants to eat, it's
much like a deer standing in a green field while you
stay in a shooting house. I've always had the opinion
through the years that any legal way someone wants to
use to take deer or redfish is okay with me. I don't
hunt deer with dogs now, but at one time I did. Today
I mainly hunt deer over green fields. I personally see
nothing wrong with either tactic of hunting deer. I've
caught redfish all my life on hooks and lines before
bow fishing for them this year. I've enjoyed both sports
immensely.
TOMORROW: MY FIRST NIGHTTIME
BOW FISHING EXPERIENCE
|