I first got into archery shooting and hunting at a young age thanks to one of my best friends, Garrie, and his dad. This was during the mid 90’s and wheel heads were still looked at as radicals by most of the outdoor people I came in contact with. I started shooting on a hand-me-down recurve bow that had rubber finger grips built onto the string. This made finding the same knocking point for my arrow very ease and replicating the same draw, anchor point and release much easier for a beginner and I was able to focus on where to aim and the fun of shooting archery.
His dad shot, an old bow that once belong to his dad, I remember him camouflaging it by fitting snake skin to the front with the diamond pattern running the length of the bow. He made constructed his own arrows, buying the wooden shafts but cutting and glueing fletchings on, also known as feathers, and when he would change from field tips to broad heads he would get out the blow torch, heat them up, pull them off with pliers. To get the new heads on he would again heat the tip of the arrow, heat up the glue to the point of melting and start working it on the arrow where the point would attach. To make sure the new head was fully attached and on the shaft deep enough he would push the arrow into the front of his work bench, tip first, and wipe off any excess glue that would squeeze its way out.
Garrie started off shooting a recurve but shortly after I started shooting with them, from what I remember, he wanted to move up to a compound bow. Being new to archery at the time, there were undoubtedly unwritten rules and ideologies that I was unaware of but I remember there was a push back against these type of bows by traditional hunters and even those who hunted by firearm. These bows shot faster, had multi-pin sights, mechanical releases and the shooters often used range finders to get the exact range of their target. Now this sounds silly in todays hunting and shooting world, especially when you bring in hunting ethics and taking high percentage, ethical shots. Why wouldn’t you want everyone to know the exact distance of the target to make as perfect of a shot that one can take. But it bucked the trend of woodsmanship at the time, taking the time to practice all the different angles, shot lengths, and countless other variables that a hunter might face. Building up that hunters instinct that goes with putting time into your craft.
On one of the first trips to the 3D target course, an archers version of a golf course, after Garrie started shooting his new compound bow, he was hitting the target at amazing distances. His dad would shoot his traditional bow from a distance between 20-30 yards, I would shoot between 15-20 sometimes throwing in a 25 yard shot, but Garrie’s shooting stakes were at 25-35 yards sometimes another 5 yards further back. In my infancy to shooting archery it was mind blowing to me that someone could take a shot that far away and put a lethal shot on an animal, but there I was, watching shot after shot.
We would regularly practice shooting at the range, in their back yard at his dad’s well weathered target and occasionally, when my parents weren’t paying attention, I would go to our backyard and fling arrow across the yard aiming at the peony blooms, feeling proud when I accomplished to hit one or cut the stem and it feel to the ground. As Garrie and I got older we shot together less and less, going to different high schools and by our sophomore year had stopped shooting together at all. By the time I graduated high school I had stopped shooting, my parents weren’t hunters and my mom didn’t like having such weapons in the house. Through college though I still had the itch in the back of my mind that I wanted to go out and buy a recurve and start shooting again, but I had to sooth that itch with spending copious amounts of time at my distant brother’s farm and fishing.
Post college I finally pulled the trigger on a used Martin recurve and started practicing whenever I had a free moment. After several months of practice I felt confident enough to take my skills to the woods and go after deer. I had a buddy who owned property in western Indiana and he was able to set me up with a neighbor who let me hunt on the back of his property. I had a few deer walk by, out of range, that fall and I was smitten just to be back in the woods, with the bow in my hands, actually hunting for the first time in almost 11 years. Half way through that deer season I hadn’t been able to harvest a deer yet and my time in the woods was quickly running out, as my coaching season was only a couple weeks away.
Fortunately a fellow hunter at work, and now good friend, Jermey let me borrow his shotgun since he wasn’t going to be able to hunt that weekend. After freezing my butt off for 2 days, I had a buck looking for some loving from a doe come walking by at 10 yards just after sunrise. I was so nervous that I missed with my first shot but was able to hit it with my second as it took off and I watched him kick. He ran another 30 yards then started walking, I got nervous that I had missed or even worse only wounded him. I watched him walk off deeper into the woods and after 15 minutes got down to look for blood. I found nothing, nothing at either shot locations, or the path that he ran along. I climbed back in my stand to think about what had just happened. After 2 hours I decided to climb down and head back for lunch, but first I would go see if I could find blood one more time. I went 15 yards further this time and found a river of blood where the deer had started walking it and had poured out. After tracking him for 300 yards I found him, I had hit just behind his ribs so the hole had been plugged that why the blood trail wasn’t heavy.
After that day I was forever hooked and I wouldn’t walk away from hunting again. Although I didn’t take that buck with a bow, it was archery that helped me get back into hunting and being outdoors, the place that speaks to my soul. Since then I have taken just as many deer with my bow as I have a firearm, and I have to say, both take hunters to a special place that you have to be on a hunt to understand but something about bow hunting makes you feel even closer with the animal and the ancestors past that took on the same challenges to harvest game for their family. This past year I was able to reconnect with Garrie and his dad and we talked archery, I got to show off my 2018 Indiana archery buck and started making plans to hunt together again some day.
I have to say, I’ve got that hunting feeling..
