Bows - A basic guide to different types

[Brian]

My son bought a crossbow a year or so ago, I think it cost about £250 and I tried it out recently.
It was very hard to cock (you can get a pulley system which reduces the effort significantly and only costs a few pounds) but I was surprised with the accuracy and power it delivered. Zeroed-in at 40 metres the grouping was less than 2 to 3 inches, as far as I could determine shooting free handed and the trajectory was very flat over that distance. The energy at the point of impact was also quite impressive - we were using aluminium bolts about 12cm long with target tips which easily penetrated 20mm ply. Other tips are easily obtained for fishing, game hunting etc but one of the problems with aluminium bolts is that if the bolt hits something too hard it deflects and becomes bent and is difficult to straighten. Carbon fibre shafts are supposed to be better but I haven't seen these in use.
Overall I think a crossbow would be a fine hunting weapon and useful for self defence but is unwieldy and slow to reload - you certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end though, that's for sure.
Brian