A good strong knife may cut a stray arrow out of a tree, trim the thread on the serving in the field, skin or gralloch (opening the stomach cavity using ones fingers to prevent puncture to the intestines) the quarry. Folding knives have their own advantage. Their use is more discreet, sparing on the machismo. Worn in a secure belt-pouch, they are generally perceived as much safer than their rigid cousins when use aboard floating craft, in vehicles on rough terrain or on horseback. However, they can also have mechanisms which can fail, blades which close on fingers, and may be too slow to deploy when needed urgently. In such circumstance, it pays to get the best.

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My curiosity about TenPoint’s new Defender CLS immediately went off the scale the moment I laid eyes on it at the 2009 SHOT Show. My first thoughts were: this looks a lot like my TenPoint Phantom CLS, minus the camo pattern on the riser and barrel. When I read the specs on this new crossbow, I knew I had to have one. My test sample arrived at home base not to long after I had finished unpacking my bags after returning home from the SHOT Show. I eagerly opened the box, and began to assemble the crossbow. It was still early enough in the day to take it out for a test run. I quickly laid down a layer of string wax and rail lube, grabbed my chronograph and headed outside to the test range.

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For just about 16 years I have been “confined “to a wheel chair following an ATV accident.  Being an avid hunter and outdoorsman prior to my accident it has been very difficult for me to “settle” for the very limited access to the outdoors that I loved and still love so much.  Tim Swenson from Action manufacturing is now selling an item that redefines more than just confinement it redefines life for me.

The Action Track Chair by action manufacturing in Marshall Minnesota has come a long way in removing common obstacles from the person wanting heck needing to be outdoors.  Though not capable of going anywhere, it definitely makes most places and terrains accessible to the ambulatorily impaired individual.  From the elderly person that simply has trouble getting around the yard or garden. To the paralyzed folks that want to go to that place they used to go.  Hunting spots, fishing holes, hiking trails, beaches, swamps and just plain adventurous people have gained significant access once again!

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Bad River Outdoors offers bow-type open sights for field or hunting crossbows, with mounts tailored to suit the crossbows made by the principal bowyers. When I was invited to test one I requested a mounting to suit my Excalibur. This is my favorite bow for shooting with the open sights with which it is already fitted, so I am use to how it performs without the now ubiquitous telescope sight.

The Tagged-Out aperture sight is a simple, robust peep, adjustable for windage and elevation and which mounts onto the rail normally used for the telescopic sight option on the Excalibur. Immediately I could see a practical advantage in this in that, were a telescopic sight to receive serious damage in the field, perhaps a far and foreign field, the aperture could be ready to replace it on the scope rail...

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This British made sight from Hawke Optics is the one Jim Kempf selected for his Scorpyd crossbow. It is a conventional multi-reticle sight with a particularly nice image quality and evidently, as you will see, robust build.

To the uninitiated, it might seem that a telescopic sight is just a telescopic sight, but actually the application for which it is intended has critical implications for the design, one size done not fit all. For a crossbow, parallax adjustment has to be within the same parameters as the normal shooting range of the bow, units of adjustment for elevation have to be realistic and the delicate innards have to be protected from vibration and done so specifically with regard to the directions from which impact will arrive – the recoil patters of a crossbow may feel like a medium bore rifle but are actually quite different...

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