Talk:Bowfishing

Untitled

Hi, my name is Tom, I'm from Poland, i've just seen a short film about bowfishing and i'm shocked. How can anyone call this an outdoor recreation? It is barbaric!

Hi there Tom,

It's easy to call it outdoor recreation because that is what it is. It is hunting for fish. If someone is opposed to either hunting or fishing as recreation then they would likely find a combination of both "barbaric!".

Also please note that bowfishing is limited to fish classified as non-game which are often non-native or invasive species. The common carp, a common quarry in the USA is a particularly successful non-native fish that often overpopulates. Their feeding habits then cause poor water clarity which can adversely affect many other species. New species such as such as bighead and silver carp from China which have recently (accidently) been introduced into some areas are already causing a variety of problems.

In a nutshell, bowfishers target only non-game fish, most of which are considered nuisance species. Even so, bowfishing has very little or no impact on populations of these prolific breeders.

Steve in OK, USA

Hi guys, My name is Shane. I live in Nebraska and bowfishing is a popular activity during the spring and summer months. Here in our state, you can bowfish for all species of fish as long as you have a current fishing permit. It is a great way for sportsmen involved in archery to extend the archery season. Best wishes to all. Shane in NE, USA

It is no more barbaric than any other method of fishing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.130.62.234 (talk) 16:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

History?

Fred Bear indicates when writing in 1968 that "In the past ten or twelve years this fast-growing sport has gained thousands of enthusiasts who find it a new source of excitement when the regular game seasons are closed."

That would place the 1956–58 time period as the beginning of popularity in the west...but I haven't found a good reference. Bowfishing is clearly older than that.[1]
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 02:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Bowfishing. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081218170148/http://www.reelfishingreports.com:80/archery-fishing.html to http://www.reelfishingreports.com/archery-fishing.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:56, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Legality

In several countries outside the U.S., bowfishing - like bowhunting - is illegal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C0:DF30:6F00:69DF:6203:42B2:6DF7 (talk) 23:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

These countries lack freedom, and many other basic human rights as well. It should not be surprising that even possessing objects like a bow with a string attached to it might constitute jail time somewhere. The real question is why defenders of natural rights would allow atrocities like the existence of such restrictive legal codes to exist anywhere in the world. 65.34.72.48 (talk) 13:00, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Overly editorializing

This article displays an aggressive bent against its topic, with strong declamations of it in wikivoice and frequent WP:OVERCITE. Even if there are reasonable grounds to be opposed to it and there are scientific sources that call for more stringent management and so on, we should not be taking sides in the dispute ourselves in the article (e.g. WP:EPSTYLE), but rather dispassionately reporting that calls for better management and the like simply exist. The fact that there are usable, reliable sources which take a position against current bowfishing practice does not imply that the article itself should take a stand either way—this is an encyclopedia, meant to inform and not polemicize. For those who want to make a case against bowfishing here, I think an impartial presentation is far more convincing anyway; if the weight of the evidence really does come out against the practice, the reader will be more convinced by it if it's presented without an axe to grind, and it's far harder to argue against that way. I personally have no investment in bowfishing and have never done anything like it, but it grinds my gears every time I see an article like this—I start to feel suspicious of everything it says. If our goal is to inform, it really reduces the perceived quality of the information for it to be so polemical. 🍉◜⠢◞ↂ🄜𝚎sₒᶜa𝚛🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 00:31, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, looking into the sources from that section, even though there's a lot more citations than are really necessary, they all seem to be papers by the same small group of researchers—Alec Lackmann, Ewelina S. Bielak-Lackmann, Malcolm G. Butler, Mark E. Clark, Reed I. Jacobson, etc. Alec Lackmann in particular is a co-author and often first author on every paper cited. His work seems reasonable to cite in this article to some extent, but I don't see why we should base an entire section on it alone, especially since it doesn't really seem to have been been given wider coverage outside of the journals it's been published in—surely we could cast a wider net, so to speak? :P I sure hope that he wasn't the one who wrote that section—the tone of it seems pretty strongly reminiscent of text on his website—but in any case, I think that part of the article should be pulled back somewhat from his work, to avoid giving it undue weight. 🍉◜⠢◞ↂ🄜𝚎sₒᶜa𝚛🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 03:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)