Man all things being equal. I shoot rifles 400-800 all the time. In excess of 2k rounds a year. Last week I fluked out a .66 moa 3 shot group at 500 and a .55moa 5 shot group at 400. I gut shot a deer at 300 last year. I’m not even sure how it happened but it did and its embarrassing. Thats a chip shot for me anyday but that one. Practice makes perfect and even with tons of practice bad things happen. I still think its unrealistic to say you can pick up one of the most difficult weapon systems and claim to be able to be proficient inside a month. In fact, I don't believe personally it’s a good idea to pick up any weapon system and plan to hunt with it a month later. There are plenty of guys in the firearms section that can’t get better then 3" groups at 100 and plenty of compound archers that cant nail the 40 yard plate in the cold bow challenge. I'm not saying one should never hunt but lots of guys should take a step back and be honest with themselves on what they are actually capable of.
I also shoot long range, well beyond 1000 yards and shoot between 2000-3000 rounds a year probably and have shot several PRS comps. I’ve also had the similar experience of making a bad shot when I’m capable of making a good one; on the same day I shoot guy shot a deer at 400 yards and made a perfect shot on one at 750.
One huge difference for me between learning to shoot a rifle and bow is the fact that I can shoot the bow every single day.
I have an endless amount of private land to shoot my rifles on just right down the road but still shooting two days a week with the rifle is difficult for me to do just because of the amount of time it takes me to reload and keep up with having steady ammo supply as well as the time commitment. Usually when I’m shooting a lot, at most I shoot 2 days a week. I can and do dry fire but it’s not anywhere near the same as live fire practice.
Being able to shoot everyday with a bow is huge benefit to picking it up quickly. I don’t know how “proficient” I actually am yet, shooting a target I feel like I’m starting to get pretty decent but we shall see if I feel the same after deer and elk season.
I will argue that if you already understood the concepts behind shooting a rifle, mainly ballistic concepts and how to figure drops/wind drift you could probably pick up how to shoot a rifle pretty effectively to 1000 yards with a months worth of shooting everyday (Not 1000 yds at animals, I don’t do that but at targets). It’s really not that hard after you get the basics down but if you have to learn from scratch on your own, then yea it could take some time months-years even.
My previous post I said I had only been shooting a recurve for 2-3 months, I looked back at some of my photos and I actually started shooting in April. So I’ve been shooting 4 going on 5 months now and feel pretty good out to 35 yards. I would say after 2 months I started felling pretty good though but I had someone to show me the basics too and didn’t have to figure those things out on my own.
I agree with you though, one month likely is not enough time to pick something up and ethically shoot an animal with but there are probably some people who are exceptions to that. Someone who had someone to teach them, evaluate them and shoot everyday could probably do it. Someone who went to a rifle/bow clinic and immersed themselves in it for 5 days straight could probably do it as well. Somebody who just has a natural shooting ability and practiced everyday too.
Back to the original discussion though, I agree with the people saying if you took all the benefits of a compound away then you are not making any kind of proper comparison. It is really an apples/oranges comparison. It’s would be like comparing a rifle to a crossbow: if you you took the speed of the bullet away and made the bullet the length of a bolt from the crossbow and did this or that somebody could learn to shoot just as good with a crossbow at 200 yard as you could with the rifle.
