In the normal course of activities, in addition to breaking bolts, you’ll ruin fletchings and damage heads. Both will greatly affect your accuracy. Personally, I’d stick with the .22

no spank intended. i thought you were validating my point - and i was acknowledging your validation.

i'll stop typing now!


maybe that's why the cowboys won? bullets vs arrows?

I own a hand crossbow. It goes solidly into the "dangerous toy" category, just like most of my throwing knives. (My throwing Ka-Bar clone is the obvious exception.)

You just can't get the oomph out of them, and the accuracy is sketchy to boot. As for recovering the bolts, the use a plastic bolt with a press-fitted aluminum tip of iffy pointiness- you miss, it will go into wood about the depth of the tip which will stay in the wood. Even the aluminum shafted ones are press fitted onto a plastic tail end. If someone was to make one that throws in the 200fps range, maybe even compound in design, and used an aluminum or fiber shaft that could use a steel broadhead, maybe.

Honestly, spend a little more, and get yourself a good .20 or .22 caliber air rifle (pump or spring, not CO2) if you are looking for something like this. They can take small rodents and birds, and you can pack enough pellets into a 20oz soda bottle to last a LONG time.

Or a real crossbow, or a bow. Keep in mind that a crossbow can have some of the same possession issues, and even worse, than a firearm, depending on where you are. And the social issues are much greater than if your neighbors see you with a hunter's bow, and the bow is generally easier to find arrows for. Yes, a bow does take more strength to use, but not by much, and the degree of skill needed to use either is similiar. And greater than the air rifle.

That's my opinion too. A good air rifle or pistol will take small game and lead pellets are cheap, easy to find, and very compact. I've even made pellets from left over lead in the past. As long as you can find something to mold them in it's pretty easy.

5,000 pellets don't weigh very much and they require very little space.

If you want to stretch things out,,carry 3,000 BB's for the small birds.

I'd tend to agree with those preferring a rifle, but what if buying and keeping a rifle is not a good option? What if you do not want to endure the permitting process in a place as onerous as NYC?

If you want to keep something in your home and you live here, you need to consider soemthing else. Of course, a wrist rocket is also not legal. I think you can own a slingshot, but not with a wrist brace.

Slingshots are banned in NYC? Wow. Well at least now we know why we don't read about drive-by slingshottings in NYC, when they're all over the headlines for other cities.

Slingshots are not banned, but ones with wrist braces are banned. I'm not sure if you can buy one with a folding wrist brace, remove the wrist brace, and bring it within the law.

Hi,

One handed crossbows are classed as Prohibited Weapons in Canada.

Full sized hunting crossbows are quite effective and widely used to take big game in Ontario.

I have taken a few grouse with a sling-shot but I never put in the time to practice, I missed many more than I got.

I have seen rabbits and grouse taken with air pistols and rifles, they work well if the game is close and the shot well placed.

Myself I prefer a compact .22 rimfire rifle or short barreled shotgun as they are more accurate and effective, especially at longer range.

Mike

"maybe that's why the cowboys won? bullets vs arrows?"

Contrary to what you see in the westerns the Native Americans lost because initially they were decimated by disease.

Then we finished them off using the tactics of genocide: destroying crops and game animals, intentional biological warfare, forced relocations, and indiscriminate killing of women and children to weaken the Indian nations. The native Americans initially had no idea of how bloodthirsty we could be until they were weak and outnumbered.

In many cases the Indians had more modern and capable weapons than the US forces. The most famous case is at "Custer's last stand" where the Indian nations had modern repeating rifles that were both more accurate and faster firing than the single-shot carbines most of the US troops had. Just one of the many reasons they lost that one.

After the 1700s the native Americans had weapons about equivalent to or better than the US military. The civilian weapons they traded for were often superior to what the hide-bound military was using. But to no avail. Disease, starvation, economic and ecological destruction had already destroyed their population base.

Lesson being that survival is a system. You can't focus on physical security while neglecting other aspects. In the long run the race does not always go to the stronger, smarter, more moral or the better armed.