I had no interest in firing bolts at any living thing nor of stalking Dulwich Woods playing

I had no interest in firing bolts at any living thing, nor of stalking Dulwich Woods playing the mighty hunter, nor of dressing up in medieval doublet or Tyrolean sheepskin and blasting away at an apple on my son's head I wouldn't necessarily ever fire it I just wanted to have it, to possess it at last. It was a 40-year itch I finally had to scratch.But I'd almost left it too late Today, the crossbow has never been less popular. You can comb Yellow Pages for archery retail outlets, fruitlessly. You can ring round sporting-goods stores, sounding like J R Hartley, to no avail You can try sporting clubs. But none of the archery clubs in Kent and Sussex (traditionally home to the best archers in Britain) accept crossbow shooting as a part of the sport any more."The crossbow is basically a slow rifle," one of the club members explained to me.

"Just because there's a bow in it, people think it's a branch of archery But it's not. In archery there's a different degree of tension in every shot, and the skill lies in getting it consistently right. With a crossbow, you get the same thrust, the same propulsion every time, mechanically. And you have a barrel to guide the bolt, which you don't get with a bow And you have a front sight and back sight.

There are crossbow-shooting tournaments, mostly in the Midlands, but most clubs won't touch the things."I rang the Hastings Arms Company, where I'd once seen a frightening array of modern tubular-steel crossbows bristling in the corner of the shop, spare bolts clamped into the metal arms like some great spiked fish There was an answering machine I left messages, saying I was anxious for some information Nobody called back. I tried a few more times, until I was sick of the Bee Tee answering service. The shop appeared to have closed.I found a place called The Archery Centre in Hawkhurst, Kent. "I don't sell crossbows any more," said the owner, Tom Foy, a former Master Bowman, a tournament winner, the founder of two archery clubs, a chronicler of the sport in three books and the brains behind the Medieval Siege Society, which holds longbow contests in period clothing at Bodiam Castle. "When we did sell them - well, I don't want to slur any crossbowmen, but we found a lot of the people buying them were gypsies and travelling people Crossbows attract the wrong sort It takes a long time to become a skilful archer. If you bought a bow from my shop, you wouldn't be able to hit anything until you'd put in hours of practice. But with a crossbow, anybody can pick one up and kill a sheep in 10 seconds They're natural for poachers.

Every time a sheep or a deer or a calf or a swan is found with a bolt in its neck, archery gets a bad name - and it's always a crossbow bolt that's responsible."The chorus of disapproval had even affected the central sporting body. I rang the National Field Crossbow Federation (founded in 1984 and affiliated to the International Crossbow Shooting Union, based in Switzerland) and spoke to the "development officer", Chris Aston. No, he said, he wouldn't put me in touch with any crossbow clubs No, he wouldn't given me the names of any enthusiasts No, he wouldn't tell me the names of any suppliers. "No," he said, "we aren't going to help you with anything like that You people ... " For an information source, the NFCF's development office is a little too suspicious of the press. He blames the papers for giving the crossbow a bad reputation, possibly not realising it's had one for nearly a thousand years.It was tantalising beyond endurance At every turn I was thwarted.

Nobody would sell me what I wanted, or talk to me about where to get it. You'd think I was dabbling in some frightful perversion, rather than the noble sport of projectile shooting.Then, by chance, as I was driving around my home patch of south London, I spotted a shop It promised a range of "deactivated firearms and militaria". The windows were full of replica revolvers, hi-tech catapults, swords, a huge longbow. It was a shop from another decade, like the places that used to sell mysterious rubber goods and trusses.Inside was murky and dusty Gas-masks hung from the ceiling like dodgy fruit. A heavy, razor-sharp Rwandan machete in a leather scabbard dangled from a hook A sweaty whiff of testosterone filled the air.