Call it odds and ends if you like but
trying to keep this blog fresh while also tending to my bride of 41
years' post-op surgical demands hasn't left a wheel-barrel full of
free time.
That being said, we'll go over some
territory all ready covered but with a few fresh-ups.
Nothing appearing in this blog over the
past several years has sparked more attention and more comments than
the demise of Horton Crossbows and its patent remnants gobbled up by
competitor TenPoint.
On a personal note regarding this
matter I own a couple of crossbows made by the now-defunct Horton
company.
One is a many-year-old conventional Hunter model and another
is a much-younger Vision; the one with reverse limbs that excels in
speeding a bolt to its target with less noise and less vibration in
the process.
The Hunter is a model that just keeps
going and going while the much-more high-tech and fancy Vision is an
accident-prone technical marvel.
Just over one year ago I had to have
Great Lakes Outdoors' Madison, Ohio store replace the Vision's
bowstring which self-destructed into a fit of many loose threads.
Okay, so all crossbows need a new
string every once in a while.
Problem is the replacement Vision
string lasted a shade longer than just one year when it similarly
unraveled unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago. That occurrence was a
bit disconcerting and disheartening to say the least.
In short order I had Great Lakes
Outdoors replace that shredded string with a new $18 one.
When I went to launch a few test
crossbow arrows late last week to check for zero with this bowstring
I was more than a little surprised when it also failed in an
identical manner as the first two.
Fortunately I had the foresight to
order a backup string when Horton's untimely (though not unexpected)
death notice appeared in various outdoors publications.
Word from the outdoors supply store was
that Horton was forced to upgrade the original Vision model's cams
because their small size whipped around so quickly and sharply that
they ate bowstrings for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Of course I just had to have a Vision
when the model was introduced, neglecting the first rule of
car-buying: Never buy a model when it is launched and before the bugs
can be corrected.
Now I am left with the decision as to
whether I'll use the Vision as my primary crossbow and the Hunter my
back-up or do it the other way around.
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
On another previously noted blog item.
I've all ready ranted on the incredible nonsense adopted by the Ohio
Division of Wildlife as it relates to this year's duck and goose
hunting seasons.
Here in the Lake Erie Canada
Goose-hunting Zone the season's first segment went out this past
Sunday and won't reappear until Nov. 9.
Meanwhile the first segment of the
state's North Duck-hunting Zone's season continues through this
Sunday, Nov. 3 after which it will go on hiatus until the end of
November.
So today when I took my two Labrador
retrievers to my waterfowl hunting blind on a very accommodating
fair-sized Northeast Ohio farm pond.
Here – and according to the Wildlife
Division's bizarre set of waterfowl-hunting regulations - the ducks
(which are legal game) were in very short supply while the Canada
geese (which are not legal game) were swarming all over the
water.
In fact, when the younger of my two
black Labrador retrievers sat on the bank of the pond and watched a
flock of perhaps 50 geese, the birds actually beginning to swim
toward her.
Of course, it's been that kind of week.
Done in first by an extinct crossbow maker which had some serious
engineering problems and then scuttled by a state agency with equally
inept foresight.
There has to be a better way.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
It was a shame that Horton would give up on its tradition.
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