For me it was pretty simple. As a kid I was always building bows out of the poplar whips that grew all around my parents property after the feds did their early clear cuttings in the 80's. A little braided fishing line from my dads salmon snagging days(when legal) and I was free to go.
My family though had no archery back ground. Simply gun hunters, and fall/winter sports and school work didn't offer me any free time to hunt during the archery season, so didn't get my first bow until the summer before my Freshmen year at GV(2001). Didn't know what I was doing, I just knew my big full length 2317's out of my old Darton 400mx with a single brass pin and TM Hunter rest seemed to go where I wanted them to. never tried fixed heads as the magazines said rocket mechs were the ticket...and not gonna lie...I used Rocket Steelheads for a decade with 100% recovery rate.
Anyways, after that first fall season I found a archery shop a few blocks from our downtown Grand Rapids campus and literally went down the rabbit hole of competitive shooting. By the next fall I was tagging out with ease and never took my trusty Remington 700 out of the gun safe back home. Set a state record(since been broken), won a few state 3d championships...and that was all by 2006. Got into a career that didn't offer me weekends so my competitive shooting has since been completed. I could still pick up my old Mathews Outback that I kept from those days and post a 300/50+ on a 5-spot even having not shot it for 4 years now.
Anyways, I found myself focusing on the wrong aspects of the hunt....or not at all. I was more focused on the kill above the how. I realized I wasn't setting a very good example for my daughters as to what to emphasize when we go hunting, and found Traditional archery to be my gateway to finding real purpose in my outdoor adventures. It came down to seeing all of these pics and photos of parents setting up tripods with crossbows and teaching their kids that the kill is what matters most...5-8year olds killing deer and turkeys having absolutely zero participation in the actual hunt, just being the trigger person. Kids not having an understanding of what it means to take the life of the animal....I didn't want to be that parent that focused only on the kill. Traditional archery helps me slow it down, and focus on the 'how'. Because I'm always still learning, and year in and year out I discovered more and more that the 'How' matters. So it's not about the kill...it's about taking long evening walks with my daughters, listening for turkeys to roost, how to identify animal tracks, deer trails, direction of travel, mass producing trees, browse, etc. My 8year old probably won't kill a turkey this year, just like last year, but she sure loved getting up at 4am and carrying her pack with yoga mat and fleece sleeping bag liner to the turkey woods and catching a couple hours more sleep to be awoken by the sounds of turkeys gobbling as a blanket of fog covers the forest floor. Eating her oatmeal out of her thermos while daddy heats a little water with his jet boil for hot cocoa. She's limited to headshots only, but she's capable. I tell her she can bring out a shotgun, that her friend uses a shotgun and she's already killed a couple..."So, I'll be the first to kill one with my bow," she simply replies. Now I'll admit the indoctrination with her took bite a little too much...but she gets it, and to sum up the 'how and why' in one simple sentence; I made the switch to Traditional Archery to be a part of the solution and to leave my mark in trying to preserve, and keep bowhunting, hunting with a BOW for future generations.