It's a peek into your ancestral past. This brings me to the seventh and last element - and that is your future. A great bow develops history and every bump and scratch is part of a larger story. A good quality piece of equipment becomes a part of your personal hunting history. If it's good and goes on lots of hunts you find that, like a great hat or particular bow, it is a valued friend, so to speak, and a terrible slight to leave it at home.
Poor equipment goes on very few memorable hunts.
Good equipment will out live you and it's stories and yours will be told around campfires long after you are gone. I doubt if that garage sale plastic arrow carrying device will mean anything to you in your book reading rocking chair years, but that old leather quiver full of arrows and stained with blood, sweat and years will. K-Mart will always have their specials and old men will have stories to tell. I've read the stories of Art Young and Saxton Pope and others and I prefer them.