I’m a big fan of crossbows and I’m very pleased Michigan hunters will be able to use them this fall. However, I think the speed limit put in place by the Natural Resources Commission is silly.

The law states a crossbow capable of shooting more than 350 feet per second is illegal to use for hunting.

I realize that restriction was instituted to placate the anti crossbow crowd, but it makes no sense. We don’t limit the speed of traditional bows or even compounds, so why should crossbows be singled out?

To make the law even more ridiculous, I don’t believe it can be enforced. The only way to effectively monitor such a speed limit is to equip all Michigan Conservation Officers with chronographs, or maybe radar guns…and that’s not going to happen.

There’s no money in the DNR’s budget for such items these days and Officers barely have time to handle much more important complaints.

The official line from the Department is that CO’s will use information provided by the crossbow companies about how fast their bows are. Those claims are often exaggerated by the manufacturers and don’t always provide a true gauge of a crossbow’s performance.

Even if those specs are accurate, most crossbows can be slowed down to shoot less than 350 fps by using heavier bolts (arrows) and broadheads. Wardens would have to take all of those factors into account in deciding if a bow is legal.

I don’t think that’s a good use of their already limited time and resources.

The speed limit puts Conservation Officers in a tough spot. Their bosses (DNR commissioners) say Wardens must enforce the law, so publicly that has to be the policy.

Click here to listen to an excerpt from an interview I did with Lt. Craig Grey for the Outdoor Magazine radio show talking about this issue.

Realistically, I doubt many Officers will go out of their way to enforce the crossbow speed limit. However, it puts law abiding Michigan bowhunters in a very uncomfortable spot. They can disregard the law that’s obviously silly, or choose to obey that law even though it has no basis in fact.

The crossbow regulations are scheduled to be looked at again in three years. I hope it doesn’t take that long to correct this problem.