Editor's note: This feature first appeared in yesterday's Outdoor Wire. Crosman Corp., maker of the Pioneer Airbow®, has subsequently released an official response to the Archery Trade Association's position statement. It appears in its entirety elsewhere in this edition of The Archery Wire.

http://www.theoutdoorwire.com/image_archive/2285907.jpg> The Benjamin Pioneer Airbow from Crosman: the ATA agrees it is a "new category of hunting weapon" - but that sub category doesn't fall in archery. Pioneer screen capture image from Crosman website.

The Archery Trade Association has issued a statement that should have an impact on one of the most questioned new items introduced in the past year: airbows. They're the precharged pneumatic "bow" that uses 3000 psi compressed air to launch a carbon fiber arrow up to eight times on a single charge- at velocities of 450 feet per second.

When they launched the Pioneer Airbow, Crosman called it "a completely new category of hunting weapon," combining the "power of a rifle, the stealth of a PCP gun and the flexibility of a crossbow."

Now, the ATA has taken the position that, call it what you like, the Pioneer isn't a bow.

In their statement, released midmorning last Friday, the ATA said they'd been asked by its members as well as representatives of state wildlife agencies for its opinion on whether airbows constituted archery equipment.

Citing a lack of "basic components of standard archery equipment" - including a string system and limbs- the decision was that it was not a piece of archery equipment.

Further, the ATA statement continued, "the airbow (unlike archery equipment) is not subject to federal excise tax, the basic funding mechanism for state wildlife agencies, which means no portion of the proceeds from airbow purchases contribute to the state wildlife conservation activities supported by Pittman Robertson funds - at least not to ATA's knowledge."

"As a consequence," ATA writes, "airbows do not appear to be treated as archery equipment by the Internal Revenue Service or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."

In that statement, however, the ATA didn't preclude the inclusion of the new devices in hunting seasons, nor suggest in which season they'd belong, choosing to leave hunting seasons and regulations governing the use of hunting equipment to each state's wildlife agency and its hunters.

So where does that leave the Crosman Pioneer- and the celebrity hunters who have used and endorsed it?

That, like the myriad of state hunting regulations, depends on whom you ask and where you're located. Crosman, despite calling the device a "bow" seems to have always considered it an air rifle -although it fires arrows, not pellets.

Their website reminds hunters that, like any other piece of hunting equipment, the bow is subject to myriad state provisions. Those, as the web correctly points out, are the responsibility of the hunter, not the company.

On their site is a map which they say was current of May 10, 2016, which lists the states in which there are big game airgun seasons. With subcategories for everything from whitetail to javelina and alligator, you can check that out yourself at:http://www.crosman.com/airbow.

Since Crosman's always classified their Pioneer as "an all-new category of big game weapon" featuring "full-length arrows and full weight broadheads" it would seem there's really no reason the company would disagree with the characterization of the ATA.

The matter of state agencies recognizing air-powered weapons as suitable for hunting -and then placing them inside the appropriate hunting seasons- is really the larger question that is, at least for the time being, either subject to interpretation- or unanswered.

As always, we'll keep you posted.

—Jim Shepherd