2006RUS

Bow hunting or bowhunting is one of those sports that you either love or you hate – a little like fox hunting in the United Kingdom. Town people abhor it and anybody involved with it and country people see it essential to cull wild animals that could otherwise become a nuisance.

Despite its macho image, which was encouraged by the film the Deer Hunter, there are growing numbers of women who go bowhunting. The big distinction between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow is distance. A hunting rifle with telescopic sights can deliver enough punch at 600 yards to take down a deer with a single shot almost wherever it is hit in the chest.

On the other hand, a hunter using a bow with a fifty pound draw weight will have to be within about forty yards to be able to deliver the same sort of lethal punch, if the shot is accurate to the heart.

This means that if you severely wound an animal from 600 yards, it will most likely be dead by the time you get there, climbing over fallen trees and rocks, but if you severely wound a deer from forty yards you see its anguish.

This has a salutacious effect on most bow hunters. The vast majority of bow hunters do not want to see this and they do not want the creature to suffer either, so they wait for the right shot. If it is not there, they do not shoot.

A hunting bow has to have a draw weight of at least fifty pounds to hunt large game and that used to mean quite a hefty recurve or longbow, but the compound bow was developed in 1966.

A compound bow makes use of pulleys to assist with the draw, which allows less beefy people to achieve a draw weight of fifty pounds, which has opened up bowhunting to women and adolescents.

Large wild animals are risky and some will attack without warning if they feel in danger. This leads to a danger zone around wild animals. Every sort of animal has a danger zone, for a bear, that could be pretty large and for a deer less so. This danger zone is an area outside of which you are fairly safe.

If you are hunting with a gun, you can stay outside that danger zone without difficulty, but with a bow and arrow, well, you often have to go within it. This enlarged danger supplies a greater rush for bow hunters – a bigger thrill. Especially if they are hunting bears or mountain lions.

In contrast to the Deer Hunter, most bow hunters go on organized trips these days. The hunting excursion is organized through a specialized firm which will provide accompanied trips into regions known to have large numbers of the animals you want to hunt.

These expert guides know how to bait areas to lure your prey; they can advise on safety aspects and they carry a big gun in case a hunter is too stupid to take their advice. Regrettably, the gun is to use on the animal, not the idiot.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on various subjects, but is presently concerned with compound hunting bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Archery is now a very widespread sport and hobby all over the world, but once, long ago, it was even more popular. Every army had archers and men hunted with bows for food. Every country or every region invented its own peculiar design of bow and therefore, even nowadays, there are many different types of archery bows. Modern technology has meant that new types of archery bows are still being developed.

Some bows were developed by people who rode horses a great deal. These bows were shorter, other bows were intended for long range shooting and these bows were longer. I will list some of the main types of archery bows below with a short description of each

The traditional Welsh or English longbow was crafted from a single length of yew (or other wood) at least the size of the bowman, but up to about six feet six inches (two metres). It was ‘D’ shaped in contour with the flat, bark side, facing away from the string. The rounded inner side followed the natural growth rings of the branch. The timber itself was left to dry for two years.

The draw weight of a longbow was roughly 160-180 pounds, which is difficult to achieve by contemporary man. In the days of the longbow, in the Middle Ages, men and boys were obliged by law to carry out target practice with longbows at the village butts every Sunday. The target range for a man was to be no less than 220 yards by order of king Henry VIII.

The longbow was used to great effect as long range (400 yards) artillery by the British army at Crecy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415, raining lethal three ounce, three foot long arrows down on the enemy. As the armies drew closer the longbow could be used accurately to aim at particular targets. Not long after these great victories, which can be attributed to the archers and their longbows, bows were superseded as military weapons by firearms.

Flat bows, like the longbow, can be over six feet long, are not recurved and can be made out of a single length of wood. However, they are rectangular in outline, not ‘D’ shaped.

Short bows are similar to longbows or flat bows in every detail except size and because they are shorter, they do not have the potential or the distance of the other bows. Sort bows are easy to carry and easier to use in confined situations like woods or a forest, so they were used mostly for hunting small animals.

Recurve bows are more powerful that any other bow inch for inch of length. The tips of a recurve point frontward when the bow is unstrung and look odd to the inexperienced. The recurve was very popular from the Mediterranean to the Far East from about 2000 BC until 1700 AD. Nowadays, the recurve is the only kind of bow permitted to be used in the Olympic Games.

Compound bows use very stiff materials in their assembly so have pulleys or cams to help bend or draw the bow. This mechanical aid to drawing the bow to the best distance means less physical force on behalf of the archer, which means that the archer con concentrate on the target more.

Crossbows have the limbs mounted crossways on a length of timber and the draw string is held by mechanical means until it is released with a trigger. The arrow, or bolt, is much shorter. They are well-nigh half-way houses to guns.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is presently involved with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

People have been involved with archery for a minimum of four thousand years, but very nearly certainly for a lot longer than that. Sections of composite recurve bows have been found dating back to the second millennium BC, but the parts that were found were the non-wooden, composite parts, usually of horn.

The wooden sections usually rotted away thousands of years previously, but a wooden longbow from the same period was found in Somerset. Most probably, people had been using all wooden, single piece bows long before they started constructing complicated composite recurve bows.

The skill of archery has always enthralled mankind and, in spite of the fact that guns have made archery obsolete, it still fascinates people today, although nowadays archery is practically exclusively used for sporting purposes. It is a thriving sport and hobby and is the national sport of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

If you are interested in practising archery, you will first have to make your mind up which kind of bow you prefer. Among other varieties, there are the longbow, recurve bow, reflex and decurve bows, deflex bow, pyramid bow and crossbow.

To a certain extent, the arrows are not interchangeable either. For instance, a longbow can cast a three foot, heavy-gauge arrow, whereas a crossbow shoots a six inch bolt. The bows also had distinctive uses although there was a certain degree of overlap.

For example, longbows were the heavy, rapid-firing artillery of their day, being able to lob a heavy, armour-piercing arrow hundreds of yards; whereas a short recurve bow was perfect for attack from horseback. Crossbows took less ability to operate but were slower than a bow.

There are different types of arrow as well. Historically, arrows were made of wood with a sharp metal tip, but these days arrows can be made of aluminium or carbon fibre. The arrowheads are distinctive for different applications as well. A simple brass tip is adequate for everyday shooting whereas a vicious, slashing broadhead is used for killing.

The majority of people who take archery seriously use carbon fibre arrows these days which is the typical arrow shaft in use at the Olympic games. The flights are usually of bird feathers and are used to stabilize the arrow in flight to reduce wobble. Plastic flights are also available as they are less susceptible to damage.

The Welsh (and English) longbow was perhaps the most powerful hand bow extensively used. These longbows were typically six feet or more in length and made of one section of seasoned yew (or other woods). The draw weight of a Welsh longbow at the time of Henry VIII was between 160 -180 lbf and that would shoot a heavy three ounce arrow up to about 280 yards.

An account of the damage that one of these arrows could wreak was given by Gerald of Wales in the 12th century:

“… in the war against the Welsh, one of the men of arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron cuirasses, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal”.

It took years of practice to draw and shoot one of these longbows bows accurately.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on various topics, but is presently concerned with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Archers have played a key part in warfare and hunting for thousands of years. Primitive bows were made of a single piece of wood, but composite recurve bows were being manufactured from Greece to China as far back as the second millennium BC.

Recurve bows, those with the ends facing the ‘wrong way’ when unstrung, are more powerful inch for inch in length than one piece wooden bows, which made them more suitable to confined conditions such as on horseback, in a chariot or in wooded areas.

Bits of composite recurve bows, usually made from horn, have been found in many parts of the world. Early arrows were made from naturally straight twigs or pine needles with napped flint tips affixed. Wooden bows did not preserve so well and exemplars are scarce.

It seems that archery was being developed in the early Mesolithic or late Paleolithic Age. Archery was especially well developed in some Islamic countries and in Asia, where Zen Buddhist monks utilized archery as an element of their meditation techniques.

In the early days of archery, there were mixed sentiments about archers. In those days, people fought hand to hand with swords and spears and some of the traditionalists thought that archers were cowards because they attacked from a distance out of direct danger. This point is made very obvious in ‘The Iliad’, Homer’s account to the siege of Troy.

There are or were many varieties of bows made to match different fighting or hunting requirements. Some types of bow are the; long bow, short bow, recurve bow, composite recurve bow, reflex bow, decurve bow, deflex bow and crossbow among others.

The longbow was extremely hard to learn to use and the archer needed considerable upper-body strength. The bow was often six feet long with a weighty three foot long arrow. The draw weight for maximum power was around a hundred pounds and the use of the bow on a battlefield was as long-range artillery.

The heavy arrows and fierce armour-piercing arrow head would pour down on the enemy from a hundred yards or more and pierce shields and armour as if they did not exist. Shot horizontally, the three-foot arrow could pass through a couple of people.

In fact, the longbow was so essential to the triumph of Great Britain that a law was passed making it obligatory for men over a certain age to practice with their longbows every Sunday on the village green in order to develop the required skills and upper-body strength in case war came.

The arrows are made to suit the different kinds of bows and the different bows and their specific arrows are suited to different kinds of hunting – whether you are hunting men or animals.

There are essentially two styles of shooting: instinctive shooting, which is very demanding as the archer does not take his eyes off the target, but does not look down the arrow; and sight shooting where the archer uses sights to align the arrow with its target. Most people find sight shooting easier.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

South America will host the Summer Olympic Games for the first time in 2016, as Rio De Janeiro, Brazil was awarded the honor on Friday. Rio beat out the US choice of Chicago, Illinois along with Tokyo, Japan and Madrid, Spain to earn the right to host the games. Despite a high pressure effort from the American power elite–including President Barack Obama and TV gabfest queen Oprah Winfrey–Chicago was the first city eliminated from contention.

Bookmakers offered odds on the host city choice, with Rio listed as second favorite at +200. Chicago had been the wagering favorite at most books, particularly after President Obama got involved personally in the US bid effort. Chicago was bet as high as a -300 favorite, while Madrid and Tokyo were priced in the +250 range. Some suggest that Tokyo didnt deserve to have such short odds, but was the beneficiary of regional pride from the notoriously enthusiastic betting population of Japan.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil, got the better of his US counterpart with a passionate speech that stood in marked contrast to Obamas typically baleful collection of talking points;

“It is a time to address this imbalance. It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country.”

The Olympic committee was apparently swayed by this presentation and paid no mind to Rios many downsides. It is without a doubt the most dangerous of the finalist cities, where drug cartels and armed bands of thugs roam without impunity. Well do to Rio citizens are used to removing watches and jewelry before they drive anywhere lest they be targeted by carjacking brigands. Rios murder rate is also one of the highest in the world. Brazilian bid officials have stressed that security will be a priority at the games and it better be lest the Olympics turn into a bloodbath.

Some IOC members suggested that the summary dismissal of Chicagos bid was more of a rebuke of the notoriously corrupt USOC. The last two Olympics held in the US were tainted by crime and corruption. The’96 Atlanta Olympics were disrupted by a terrorist bombing, while the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games were marred by a well known bribery and corruption scandal. Some suggested that US President Obama’s quick and perfunctory visit was taken as more of an insult by the delegates than anything else.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and noted authority on football betting. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sports news and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Las Vegas with three Jack Russell Terriers and a kangaroo. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

The Federal ban on sports betting has been blasted by anyone who knows anything about the subject for a number of different reasons. Though the US professional leagues suggest that sports betting threatens the integrity of their games, the opposite is the case. This is important because there would still be no shortage of outlets for college sport wagering, be it offshore or with your local illegal bookmaker. The professional bookmaking industry is usually where any type of compromised or fixed game is discovered. Ultimately, the true injustice of banning sports betting lies in its contempt for the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the Congress of the United States has shown very little respect for the Constitution in recent years. Were it to abide strictly by the role outlined for it by the founding fathers, the Legislative Branch of our government would have to relinquish any number of its powers in a variety of areas. The primary problem with our Congress is that it has increasingly become a collection of career politicians rather than a body representative of its constituency. As a result, the overriding concern of the average Senator or Congressman is increasing the power that he is able to wield, and as a result the power that his body is able to bring to bear.

The Federal prohibition of sports wagering which was enacted a few years back is of very dubious Constitutionality. Were it not for the grandfather clause, which allowed it to remain legal in jurisdictions in which it already existed, it would have certainly been struck down as unconstitutional on a number of different fronts.

Unfortunately, the mere fact that a proposed law or initiative is unconstitutional offers little protection for the citizenry. In fact, the concept of state sovereignty is one of the most important–and most abused–in the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The overriding concern of the writers and framers of the Constitution was that the personal liberty of the individual not be violated by a too-powerful central government. In other words, unless the power in question has been expressly given to the Federal government by the Constitution, and/or unless it has expressly been prohibited to the states (as in the case of treaty making) it is the right of each individual state to govern themselves as they see fit. If an individual state chooses not to regulate a certain activity, it is the right of each individual citizen to make their own decision.

So, you should be asking yourself at this point, where exactly does the Constitution delegate to the Federal government the right to make policy on sports gambling? The answer is that it doesnt, and it is very questionable that they have the Constitutional authority to do so. Fortunately for all freedom loving Americans the founding fathers would beg to differ.

The entire premise of a social contract between a government and the governed is that individuals give up a certain degree of personal liberty for a certain degree of protection. The problem is that too many Americans are willing to give up just about any freedom for even the illusory promise of protection. If theyre not personally willing to cede this freedom, theyre often indifferent or unconcerned about it. The danger to broader concepts of personal liberty may seem a million miles away, but with each additional law intended to protect us from this or that the Federal government becomes larger and more powerful and the rights of the sovereign states”and the individuals that comprise them”are shrinking and being weakened.

Ross Everett is a experienced freelance writer specializing in travel, casino gambling and sports handicapping. He is a consulting handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, falconry and deep sea diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.

Alexis Arguello, one of the greatest boxers to ever compete, was found dead in his Managua, Nicaragua home in early July of an apparent suicide. He was 57 years old. Arguello was the mayor of Nicaragua’s capital city at the time of his death.

Arguello is best known to fight fans for his epic battle in’82 with Aaron The Hawk Pryor when he moved up in weight after dominating at lighter weight classes. Though Arguello would lose via knockout (amid some controversy due to an apparent mystery drink offered to Pryor by his trainer Panama Lewis) it was a thrilling toe to toe battle that even the most knowledgeable boxing experts remember fondly to this day. Promoter Bob Arum offered these thoughts on Pryor/Arguello:

“It was a brutal, brutal fight. That was something I will never, ever forget as long as I live. That was one of the most memorable fights I ever did.”

While the first Pryor fight may have brought him the most mainstream notoriety, boxing cognoscenti are aware that Arguello is arguably the best lightweight and junior lightweight in the history of the sport. Arguello never lost a fight at-0 pounds and would end his career with an astounding 82-8 record with 65 knockouts and championships in three different weight classes. At the time, he was only the sixth man in boxing history to hold title belts at three different weights.

Ironically, Arguellos career didn’t get off to a good start and he lost his debut in’68 via first round TKO. After that, he seldom lost again and would go on to be respected as one of the best pound for pound fighters of his day. He was at his best against his toughest adversaries including Ray Mancini, Bobby Chacon and Ruben Olivares. Bob Arum remembered him not only as a great fighter, but as a great man:

“Not only was he one of the greatest fighters I’ve ever seen, he was the most intelligent fighter. He was a ring tactician. Every move was thought out. And he was a wonderful, wonderful person.”

Arguello was also very quick to remind younger fighters on their responsibility to the sport and how champions should conduct themselves. Here’s he speaks of his attitude toward his opponents:

“Of course after the fight you want to make sure that you’re okay and so is the other guy, its a brotherhood in there, so you want to make sure everyone is okay after the war is over.”

Arguello would frequently admonish boxers who didn’t show the same respect for the sport or their status as champion:

“When you won that title you should know now that you are representing a whole country or nation with your actions and you are now in a glass house or under a microscope and you better be ready to make your people proud.”

Arguello loved boxing and fought to protect it from those who would undermine its greatness:

“I respect boxing because it has given me so much and thats why I will never allow anyone to mistreat the sport of boxing if I can help it.”

While the modest Arguello would never say it himself, that was for from a one sided debt and he contributed more than his fair share to the sport of boxing with his grace, intelligence, talent and toughness.

Ross Everett is a freelance writer and highly respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and betting odds portal sites. He lives in Las Vegas with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.