A Stick and a String

Now that I decided that I was going attempt bowhunting I needed to purchase a bow (duh!), unfortunately it can never be that easy. I had to decide whether I wanted to go the modern route with a compound bow or the traditional route with a longbow or recurve bow. Furthermore, when selecting a bow you need to worry about things such as poundage, draw lengths, and feel…all of which I knew nothing about! It was time to enlist the aid of my bowhunting friends to get me set up correctly.

My best friend had an old compound bow that I was welcome to use if I wanted to but I wanted something that was all of my own. He prefers the more traditional, minimalistic bow and hunts with a custom made recurve bow. A recurve bow in its simplest design is just a stick and a string. The arrow is rests on a “shelf” and not an arrow rest. The hunter (or archer) must canter the bow slightly to ensure the arrow doesn’t fall off the shelf. When the hunter draws the bowstring back, the full weight of the limbs is being held. The only additional items that you will usually find on this type of bow are string silencers which deaden the vibration from releasing the string and make the bow quieter. Unlike a gun, an arrow travels much slower than the speed of sound so bowhunters are anal in their attempt to make their bows as quiet as possible. You wouldn’t think that a deer would be able to move fast enough to avoid a speeding arrow but they can and will!

Selecting a traditional bow would have caused me to go through hours upon hours of practice to get the feel of releasing the arrow properly and “willing” it to the target. Traditional archery tackle is an art form all to itself and the best archers are incredible when it comes to how accurate they are. A very good representation of the mental and physical attributes that a traditional archer goes through is represented by Nicolas Cage in The Weatherman. As someone that was very unsure of whether or not I could actually release an arrow on a live animal or not I decided to go with a compound bow.

A compound bow is the modern day version of the bow and it is worlds apart from a traditional bow. When comparing the two it is like a Ferrari compared to a Model “T”. The biggest difference a non-archer will notice is the addition of cams and pulleys. The addition of these allows for two things, a much faster arrow flight and a weight let off for the archer pulling the string…I better explain. With a traditional bow the archer needs to hold the full weight of the string as they increase the tension from drawing the string back. With a compound bow, the archer initially has the full weight of the string until it gets to a break over point and the tension to the archer is reduced significantly. The bow that I own is set up for a 60 pound draw but there is a 75% let off when I get to the break over point so while I’m at full draw I only have to hold 15 pounds back. It is much easier for a compound shooter to hold the bow at full draw and steady their self before releasing the arrow. Compound bows also usually are equipped with a sight that allows the archer to dial in where to aim for certain ranges. They usually have a specialized arrow rest to hold the arrow as freely as possible as well. Compound bows are constantly being “improved” by manufactures trying to create the fastest arrow flight available and the quietest as well. The funny thing about this is that the arrow is never going to fly as fast as a bullet so there will always be game that is missed due to an animal “jumping the string” (hearing the arrow released and reacting before the arrow hits them).

I chose to go with a compound bow simply because I knew that I could gain confidence quicker with a bow that had a sight than to have to rely on muscle memory. I went shopping with a close friend who is an excellent bowhunter and he helped me find the correct bow for myself. I selected a Reflex Buckskin (see picture above) set up for a 60 pound draw and a 29” draw length (how far you pull the string back). I had all of the bells and whistles attached to the bow and I left the store extremely happy. Now, I do need to interject something here…there are two different types of people in this world, big picture or concept driven people (like myself) and then there are the detail oriented folks. Let me just say that I am very glad I have some very close friends who are the latter because when it comes to setting up your bow, the detail oriented folks are masters at dialing everything in to function perfectly! Me on the other hand, I’d get fed up quickly and throw the bow in the corner! I have a file with every little setting for my bow (thanks Glenn) so it can be reset if anything ever goes wrong.

I brought the bow back and immediately started to practice with it and I quickly became proficient out to 30 yards. Every day that it wasn’t raining I would step outside and shoot at least a dozen arrows to keep my skill up and to make the bow feel as though it was just an extension of my body. I found that I quickly grew bored of taking aim at a static target until I was shown a “game” to help practice aim and judge distance in the field…”stump shooting”. I would go out on a trail with three friends and someone would pick out a target to aim at. Our arrows were tipped with a special type of head called a judo point that had metal prongs to keep the arrow from burying into the soil or wood. We each would take aim at the target and one by one we would shoot at it. If someone hit the target then that person would chose the next target. It was great practice because we would have to estimate the distance in real life scenarios (over hanging limbs, wind, shadows, etc…) and make compensations for it. I LOVED IT!!! It was the best way to expand my focus on putting an arrow exactly where I wanted to and the camaraderie of practicing with friends in the woods was second to none. As the year went on I found myself increasingly ready to attempt bowhunting but I was still unsure of whether or not I could let an arrow loose on an actual animal.

Next week: Drawing Blood

Factoid: Do you know the difference between an archer and a bowhunter? An archer wants to see how far away they can get away from a target and still hit it…a bowhunter wants to see how close he can get to the target and make a clean, ethical kill.