Animating the weapon

I realized after I created my first crossbow that the model had way too many polygons. I then removed as many edge loops as possible. I managed to greatly reduce the total polygon count. The first crossbow was several thousand polygons while the new one was a little over 400 polygons. The animation proved to be challenging since I had never animated a bow before. I watched several video tutorials and I managed to get a decent animation.

The textured crossbow, rigged for animation.