For much of my adult life, I have enjoyed learning about shooting and hunting with different sporting arms. Back when I was a young man just starting a family, money was tight and I continued hunting deer and wild hogs with my trusty lever action 30-30. I read the sporting magazines and was really interested in learning about muzzleloaders but I was doing good to keep myself stocked in 30-30 shells and gasoline for the old pickup to take me to the deer woods.
About that time, I began writing outdoor columns for newspapers and occasionally I would get a magazine feature. I’ll never forget Bass Pro Shops shipping me that first Hawken style replica 50 caliber smoke pole. At the time, all I knew about muzzleloading was what I had read and, I’d read a lot. In no time, I learned about the use of volumetric powder measures, cleaning jags and primers. I thoroughly enjoyed learning all about a style of rifle that I previously knew absolutely nothing about.
Those early years shooting and hunting with my muzzleloaders was the catalyst that sparked me to learn about other sporting arms and bows. I got a great deal of satisfaction learning to shoot and hunt with guns and bows that in the beginning were totally foreign to me. For several years, I hunted big game strictly with muzzleloaders and companies were soon sending me their latest and greatest models. My learning curve was steep and within a couple years, I was well grounded in muzzleloader shooting and hunting. My trusty old Marlin 30-30 remained on the wall on my gun rack!
Then after several years of shooting a wide variety of muzzleloaders I met Mark Balette who was an accomplished bowhunter. I was invited to do a hog hunt with Mark on his ranch in eastern Texas. He later became a well-known outfitter, his company is B&C Outfitters www.easttexasexotics.com. I managed to shoot a nice boar with my iron-sighted Hawken and Mark asked me if I had done any bowhunting. I replied my experience was limited to using a kid’s cheap longbow to nail a couple rabbits when I was a youngster. I’d had no experience with the then modern-day compound bows.
Mark pulled the truck off to the side of the ranch road and asked me to set up a coke can at 40 yards. He proceeded to hit it twice with his compound bow. I was impressed and remember telling him that if he could hit a can forty yards, surely, I could learn to shoot the vitals of a whitetail or hog half that distance. He agreed and soon he was setting up my first compound bow, a Mathews featherlight I think it was called.
I took to shooting a bow like a duck to water. I loved it! After six months of almost daily practice shooting a life-size deer target, I felt totally comfortable on that first deer hunt on Mark’s place where I shot an old five-point buck only twenty minutes into the hunt. I had learned a new way to hunt and spent the next several years hunting with different compound bows, I became a member of the Mathews Pro Staff for about a decade and did a lot of bowhunting.
Fast forward a decade later and at an outdoor sports show in Waco, Texas I was introduced to the power of compressed air by John McCaslin, owner of Airforce Airguns in Ft. Worth. John had a little range set up and showed me how to pressure the rifle using an air tank. He told me his company was coming out with a 45-caliber rifle that packed plenty of power to cleanly harvest deer size game. I was invited to tour the factory and was given a .25 caliber PCP that I used successfully for hunting small game.
I was all in after that and later used one of the ten prototypes of the “Texan” to put several exotics and wild porkers in the freezer. In 2018 Texas began allowing PCP air rifles for deer hunting and I killed my first whitetail buck with my Texan near the banks of the Brazos River. I was introduced to yet another new sporting arm that I thoroughly enjoyed learning about. I later became friends with Val Gammerman with Pyramyd Air who has introduced me to all the latest and greatest PCP airguns, both large and small caliber.
While learning each of these new hunting tools, I continued to stay proficient with the others. As an outdoors writer I learned that I was much more versatile if I could contribute articles about different shooting and hunting styles and I enjoyed the challenge of hunting with each method.
I am currently honing my shooting skills with my Ten Point Crossbow. About 12 years ago, a company sent me one of their crossbows and I used it on a few hunts out in West Texas successfully on a couple of deer hunts. But I honestly did little hunting with crossbows until recently when I began shooting the Ten Point which I found to be light years ahead of the model I hunted with years ago. The crossbow is easy to cock with a crank handle and easy to ‘let off’ simply by backing the pressure off the limbs with the crank handle. The scope adjusts the same as a rifle scope. It’s also extremely accurate. I’ve shot it out to 100 yards using a rest for fun but plan to keep shots at game inside about 35 yards.
Being an old bow hunter, I never understood the controversy a few years ago when states began allowing the use of crossbows during archery season. To my way of thinking, anything that gets more folks out in the woods hunting is a good thing. Crossbows are much easier to master than conventional archery equipment for sure but that is a good thing to my way of thinking. New archers can quickly learn to shoot accurately and it’s still an “up close” endeavor. I have several older friends that can no longer pull conventional bows but can still get out in the October woods with their crossbows.
I’m looking forward to hunting with my new Ten Point this fall but I won’t let that Muzzleloader, my CVA Centerfire .308, my compound bow or air rifles feel neglected. I have plans to put them all to use! We eat a lot of venison around here!
Listen to Luke’s podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” just about everywhere podcasts are found. Email Luke through his website www.catfishradio.org
