My late-medieval bow has a draw weight of 125 pounds at an overall draw of 11 1/2 inches -- the sum of a brace height of 3 1/2 inches and an actual draw distance of 8 inches -- which by my calculations comes out to roughly 41.6 foot-pounds. Therefore, a bow whose steel prod requires a draw force of around 83 percent of the average compound crossbow develops kinetic energy only slightly less than half of the modern version. High-tech rules as usual!

What implications for killing power does all this have? Metrics are hard to come by. My 125-pound bow exceeds the minimum power threshold for deer hunting set by some wildlife agencies by 5 pounds -- but those ratings come with no guidance as to the effective kill range of so low-powered a bow.

And, yes -- my bow is, I've concluded, worryingly low-powered. Had I investigated the issue more thoroughly before acquiring my bow, I would have specified a 150-pound draw weight. Others are even more conservative in their assessments of the power requisite for getting the job done. In an e-mail replying to a number of queries I posed him, revivalist armorer and bowyer Kurt Suleski allowed as how he'd only be comfortable from an ethical standpoint with a 200-pound steel-prod medieval bow. For a considerable number of bowhunters (me among them) such a weapon would involve toting into the field either a "goat's foot" lever or a cranequin (basically a windlass) to cock it.

I did some informal experimentation with inserts for full-body 3-D targets designed to mimic at least serviceably the density of a deer's vital region (the GlenDel vitals replacement insert and the McKenzie Carbon Buck replacement midsection, specifically). Firing a bolt tipped with a chunky medieval-style broadhead -- 1 7/8 inches at its widest point and at a full ounce, three times heavier than the weightiest of modern broadheads -- satisfied me that a crossbow like mine will deliver a kill shot at a maximum range of 20 yards. That's a very close shot, certainly, but arguably one that, as in muzzleloader hunting and conventional bowhunting, will pay off handsomely for the hunter whose goal is as intimate an encounter with the quarry as is possible.

Pictorial evidence appears to corroborate my research. Many illustrations in late-medieval manuscripts portray the light crossbow as functioning, when it came to deer, as a very short-range weapon for drive hunts. In these, beaters or dogs (usually both, as it was an aristocratic enterprise) would stampede the animals directly onto the shooters' positions. So the up-close-and-personal shot being taken by the crossbowman in the accompanying detail from the Comte de Foix's circa 1400 hunting treatise is in all likelihood not an example of artistic license.

Be advised: The learning curve that leads to hitting that mortal zone consistently can prove a steep one. The medieval crossbow is just as cranky in the matter of sighting-in as it is in practically every other department. At 20 yards, its design causes it to shoot roughly 2 feet high from the aiming point, although, according to Kurt Suleski, the trajectory flattens out at 40 yards such that it's almost "point-and-click." With practice, my groups at that range tightened up -- but the thing takes some getting used to.

HUNTING METHODS, 1400: SERIOUSLY OLD-SCHOOL
Outside of the South, hunters in the U.S. today have little or no experience of dog hunting for deer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this increasingly rare form of the chase was the norm in the Middle Ages.

Noble hunting was a highly ritualized communal activity. Everything from assembling the party at the hunt breakfast to dressing out the deer and rewarding the dogs had a prescribed form. The aristocrats and their gentle-born underlings employed a little army of professional hunters, rangers, parkers, trappers, dog men charged with the deployment of dedicated types of canine, and lots of hands in general service. Even the deer hunting done -- legally or illegally -- by men of humble origins was invariably a group affair, albeit a comparatively muted, often surreptitious one.

While solo scouting (mostly on behalf of a party that would enter the area later) was certainly widely engaged in, still-hunting as we modern individualists understand it was not practiced at all when the medieval's quarry was deer.

In 1400, the lone hunter was apt to be a scofflaw to some degree or another, if not a poacher outright, and almost always out just for meat and hides. Even nobles valued antlers little, and then only as markers in an arcane hierarchy of signs distinguishing a beast suitable to be slain by a peer of the realm.