I come from a family of hunters and have hunted all my life, I was also pretty wild in my youth, add high performance motorcycles into that and it sometimes doesnt add up into a pretty picture...
in 1988 I was out racing around some old back roads and drifted my bike off a corner at around 55mph and into the trees along side the road, I broke 14 bones and had very extensive(and very bad) internal injuries, that more than qualified me for a crossbow permit... I also raced motocross(and still do once in a while), which had its own fair share of injuries... all in all I've broken well over 20 bones throughout my life and thats not even getting into all the joint seperations, dislocations, tendons/ligaments, and all the other soft tissue damage...
I've often thought about getting my permit over the years but didnt have a crossbow, or much experince with them, and never went through with it, my dad has hunted with a crossbow for a number of years now and I shot his quite a bit and liked it... about two years ago I fell on my right wrist and bent my hand back against my forearm seperating all the bones in my wrist and tearing all the ligaments, it took about $35,000 worth of surgery to repair and cost me almost a year off work, I also ended up with only about 50% of my original mobility back, I got my permit and bought an excalibur phoenix right after that to be able to hunt that years bow season(I couldnt use a verticle bow then) and found I really enjoyed it, I wish I'd gotten one years ago...
I can still shoot my vertical bow just fine, although the poundage I'm comfortable shooting has dropped a bit, and I still bowfish, but I see my archery seasons being done with my crossbow from now on