My wife has been hounding me for a long long loooong time to get into archery. I have several very good friends who used to love hunting with firearms and suddenly became stricken with archery fever and now they are obsessed with bow hunting and don't even hunt with guns anymore. Because of this, I've been trying to stall and put this off but I finally gave in. I pretty much become obsessed with things I enjoy and rarely do anything part way. I have given in, bought a Mathews Triax and bought her a Bowtech and I'm hoping now I can get her in a blind with a bow! I am already obsessed with this bow thing but I don't think it will ever replace handgun hunting....at least for a couple years lol:)

If you can find a club in your area that has field archery, or even 3D, that is a lot of fun. Archery if a lot of fun and a big challenge, but does take a lot of time for practice. You'll have to stick with it and one day you notice you are doing pretty good. Then next season you pick up the bow and can't hit anything so back to some serious practice.

Archery also offers a lot of different disciplines- compound, recurve, long bow, no sights, simple sights, optical sights, fingers, release aids. You can really get into the technical side of the gear, or not.