®

Aug/Sep 2021
$6.99

A Look at Broadheads

Heritage • Lifestyle • Community

 Traditional Bowhunter ®
VOLUME 32 * ISSUE 4 * Aug/Sep 2021

6 Co-Editor’s Note by E. Donnall Thomas Jr.

10
8 Letters
10 Kodiak Penance by David Hoff
16 Tree Hugger by Bob Windauer
21 A Room with a View by Mark Nelson
26 Kodiak Alpine by Paul Forward
16 31 Seeing the Moment by Alan Altizer
34 Backcountry: The Whereabouts of Wild Water by A. Preston Taylor
37 A Second Shot for a First Elk by Rick Spicer
43 Traditional Shooting: Uphill/Downhill Shooting by Jason R. Wesbrock
45 Texas Scrub Brush Javelina by T.J. Conrads

50 Bowyer’s Corner: Fixing Wooden Arrows in a Snap by Stephen Graf

26
53 Evolution of the Shrew by Raymond Lyon
57 To Skin a Cat: Broadheads by Various Authors
62 Wild Cuisine: I’ve Made Some Offal Things! by Margie Nelson
64 The Trailhead: Kids, Bows, and Arrows by E. Donnall Thomas Jr.
68 Traditional Wisdom: by Krista Holbrook
45 71 Traditional Archives: Howard Hill by T.J. Conrads
75 Book Reviews: by David Tetzlaff
77 Classifieds
78 Traditional Harvests
80 Tips From the Old Timer by Dennis Kamstra

68 82 Campfire Philosopher: Alone by Mark Nelson

ON THE COVER: — Taking a break while bowhunting Sitka blacktail deer on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Photo by T.J. Conrads

4 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
 Co-Editor’s Note

Tribal Elders

Editor/Publisher/Founder ver the course of 40 years as a student and then a practicing physician, I
T.J. Conrads • tjc@tradbow.com

Advertisement Manager
Kerri Doyle • advertising@tradbow.com

Co-Editor
O drove in and out of a lot of hospital parking lots. Most of them had at least
one segment reserved for “Doctors Only,” usually located in an area that
provided ready access to the building. The part of me that has always shunned any
E. Donnall Thomas, Jr. • editors@tradbow.com suggestion of elitism always bridled at that designation, since a lot of sick people
Campfire Philosophers needed the convenience more than I did. On the other hand, I often had to drive
Jason R. Wesbrock, Mark Nelson
between my office and the hospital multiple times every day, and on some of those
Contributors occasions I needed to get inside and into action without a minute to spare. I com-
Nathan L. Andersohn • G. Fred Asbell
Billy Berger •Beka Garris • Jerry Gowins, Jr. promised simply by using my own best judgement.
Kirby Kohler • Dennis Kamstra • Margie Nelson
Duncan Pledger • Darryl Quidort Lori and I finished our medical careers by spending five years working on the
Mark Nelson • David Tetzlaff • Jeff Stonehouse Fort Belknap Reservation in northern Montana. There were no “Doctors Only”
Lori Thomas • Wayne van Zwoll
signs in that hospital parking lot, but there were signs that read “Reserved for
Subscription Information • Amanda Nydegger
subscriptions@tradbow.com Elders.” That exercise in good judgement always impressed me.
P.O. Box 15060, Boise, Idaho 83715
Toll Free: 888-828-4882 • Phone: 208-383-9019
In traditional Plains Indian culture, being designated an Elder is an honorific.
Fax: 208-383-9010 I have encountered the same phenomenon among other Indian tribes throughout
Editorial Information the West and in Alaska Native communities up north, as well as in traditional soci-
P.O. Box 15060, Boise, ID 83715 • 208-383-0982
eties in Africa and Asia. This only makes sense. In hunter-gatherer culture, surviv-
Advertising and Classified Information ing long enough to become an Elder requires the kind of experience that eventually
Kerri Doyle • advertising@tradbow.com
P.O. Box 15060 Boise, Idaho 83715 translates into wisdom. Before the arrival of the printing press—not to mention
Phone: 208-853-0555 • Fax: 208-383-9010
www.tradbow.com/advertising the digital computer—Elders were the only reliable repository of knowledge.
According them respect enhanced the well-being of all.
Advertising Sales Representatives
•Mark Viehweg • mark@tradbow.com In our own contemporary society, we seem to be moving in the opposite direc-
Phone: 847-828-4413
•David Balowski • david@tradbow.com tion. Youth now rules, defining our tastes and priorities, especially in the online
Phone: 517-317-4101
• Jon Doyle • jon@tradbow.com
world where Facebook “likes” seem to trump hard-earned knowledge. Advertisers
Phone: 208-577-7789 crave the 18-30 demographic, and why not? Elders already have all the crap they
• Luke Johnson • luke@tradbow.com
ever wanted and are unlikely to get talked into thinking they need more.
Webmaster/Online Advertising
Robin Conrads • webmaster@tradbow.com At times, these developments make me feel like the dinosaur that woke up one
208-939-0383 morning, saw an asteroid hurtling through the sky toward earth, and realized that
TRADITIONAL BOWHUNTER® (ISSN # 1076- he and all his contemporaries were about to become extinct (an analogy that no
6537) is published bimonthly by TBM, INC., P.O.
Box 15060 Boise, Idaho 83715. Bulk Rate U.S. doubt gives dinosaurs credit for more intelligence than they deserve). I really don’t
postage paid at Boise, Idaho. SUBSCRIPTIONS: want to sound like a whiner, and I recognize youth as an important source of the
$25.00 a year in the U.S.; $35.00 in Canada.
$45.00 Foreign. Please allow 6 to 8 weeks. energy, idealism, and new ideas of which we will never have too much. In fact, rec-
All material sent in for publication will not be
returned unless accompanied with a stamped, self- ognizing the need for new voices was one of the main reasons I decided to step
addressed return envelope, and the Publisher down from my editorial position at the magazine, as T.J. announced in the last
assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material.
The views expressed within this publication are issue.
those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent
the opinion of TBM, Inc. or its employees. However, I also think that the traditional bowhunting community, of all places,
Publication is not an endorsement of content, and should still be open to the received wisdom of its Elders while they’re still around.
TBM, Inc. assumes no responsibility for editorial
content. Some images may have been computer
enhanced for quality reasons.
Don Thomas
© Copyright 2021 by TBM, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the U.S.A.

6 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Letters
Dear TBM,
I am a subscriber to the print edition of TBM, and I
always look forward to going to the mailbox and finding the
latest edition.
I was sitting here this morning watching the snowstorm
begin here in Ohio, put some wood in the wood stove, and
went to my bookcase and discovered I had not opened the
last three issues of Traditional Bowhunter®! I spent all
morning—five hours—catching up and the stories of good
endings particularly the heart-warming “I Married a Serial
Killer!” and I am glad that it has worked out for Mr. and
Mrs. Thomas.
The interviews T.J. Conrads did with the boys of Black
Widow Bow Company and Gregg Coffey of Java Man con-
processor blade (see above). Several years ago there was a
tained great insight into the manufacturing mindset from
recall on these blades because the rivets were coming loose,
two great companies. His articles in the “Traditional
so we ordered new ones, and then I converted an old one to
Archives” columns on Ishi, Pope, and Compton are educa-
a skinning knife. The serrated blade is very sharp.
tional and, for me, motivational.
Simon Kortep
The rest—the “Tips from the Old Timer,” the “Campfire
Via E-mail
Philosopher,” and the stories of actual hunter’s success and
failure (that are actually successes in the end)—are what
P.S. I have every issue of Traditional Bowhunter®!
keep me as a subscriber to this fine publication.
Thanks for making this Sunday morning a worthwhile
Dear TBM,
time, as the snow has picked up. Keep up the good work!
I very much enjoyed the Apr/May 2021 “To Skin a Cat”
column, although it will most likely lead to at least a single
Tim Reuber
knife purchase. It seems I should have adopted the four
Christiansburg, OH
knife limit that a physician wrote about in an earlier TBM.
G. Fred Asbell has been a favorite of mine since the
Dear T.J.,
1970s. He was great at Denver events and I will always
It was great to see you reference Mike Okamura in the
regret that finances in the late 1970s did not allow me to
Apr/May 2021 issue, “To Skin a Cat.” I knew Mike in the
order a Bighorn bow when I made a couple of visits to his
early 1970s when he was in San Jose, California. I was just
Longmont, Colorado shop.
getting into archery and we enjoyed many practice sessions
It was also my custom to carry a Buck 118 personal
at the local junior college range with a mutual friend. I was
fixed blade knife and sheath on my belt when outdoors. It
surprised when he made a custom knife for me and have not
was a late 1960s gift from my wife that went with me to
found its equal since.
Vietnam in 1969 where I and six or seven others in my outfit
I heard he had moved to the Boise area for his day job.
used the knife for everything. How it survived is a testament
I’m glad he continued to make his beautiful and functional
to Buck. I resumed wearing it on my belt upon discharge
knives.
from the Army for hunting and camping. It remained on my
Dan Warner
belt when we moved to Loveland, Colorado in 1977.
Via E-mail
That knife is still carried in my daypack with a
sheathed folding knife on my belt after a bowhunter (late
Dear T.J.,
1970s) fell from his tree stand west of Fort Collins, Colorado
I enjoyed the article about your hunting knives. I have a
and came extremely close to bleeding out due to his fixed
knife collection spanning 50 years and have made some
blade piercing a major leg artery.
knives. This might be a surprise to you, but here is the knife
Since then I have heard of similar injuries in falls from
I used to dress my deer this year. It is a Cuisinart food
horseback and slipping on mountain shale, etc.

8 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
 I simply wanted to point this out as I was not the only and equipment will not appeal to each other.
one in the Fort Collins/Loveland area putting their fixed I wrote this letter the week that the Feb/Mar 2021
blade knives in packs, etc. after the accident made the local issue came in the mail. My wife had back surgery and could-
newspapers. n’t type for me. Then the Apr/May 2021 issue came and
Thanks much for the great publication! It certainly has there was a Matt Schuster hunting story with a photo show-
to be unique in the high number of expert contributors. ing Keith Brunner of all people! Thought it was a sign to
complete my letter.
Tom Lightfoot One final comment. It makes me sad to see almost every
Las Cruces, NM kill in the traditional harvest section, and in most all hunt-
ing stories, that carbon shafts are used. I’ve shot all materi-
Dear TBM, als and if wood shafts are properly matched, by weight and
While reading the Feb/Mar 2021 edition of spine, they will go exactly where aluminum and carbon
Traditional Bowhunter® Magazine and enjoying it shafts go.
immensely as always, I hit page 36 and there was a face Keep up with an awesome, magazine.
from the past: Matt Schuster! We only saw each other once.
It was about 15-17 years ago. Jerry Collins
Keith Brunner and I had been hog hunting the Metter, GA
Altamaha for a few months with very limited success. (This
is a side note on Keith.) His dad is only a couple of years Dear TBM,
older than me and we actually went to high school together Well, a big thank you and best wishes are in order for
which makes mine and Keith’s relationship a little odd. But Don Thomas, who’s given us so many great articles and edit-
I met Keith and learned that he was interested in tradition- ed articles over the years. The same to the new Co-Editor
al bow hunting. After encouraging him some, we ended up David Tetzlaff for filling Don’s vacancy. Perhaps the biggest
hunting together. He evolved into a great shooter with both round of gratitude should go to T.J. Conrads for bringing all
recurve and longbow. of us the best and finest traditional bowhunting periodical in
Back to the story. Keith called me one day to see if I the industry for decades. Every TBM issue is better than
would like to hog hunt on Horsecreek W.M.A. with him and the last one.
a person named Matt Schuster whom he had met at Thank You!
Traditional Bowhunters of Georgia events. Both were active Paul Schnell
in that organization. He told me that Matt owned multiple Somewhere USA
New Balance stores in Atlanta. Of course I said yes to the
invitation, but wondered if this man might be a little differ-
ent than old South Georgia boys I was used to. Could not
have been more wrong! Great personality, good sense of
humor, just one of the guys. As I remember, we didn’t kill a
hog but had a good time walking and stump shooting.
But the real reason I’m writing this is to thank Matt
and PBS for attempting to be totally traditional. When I got
into archery 32 years ago at age 43, I started with a com-
pound because no one shot anything else around here. At
least it was a wood core limbed Golden Eagle that resembled
a bow, not the upright crossbow looking contraptions shot
today. After about four years a new friend changed me to tra-
ditional equipment. Not just the bow, but my mind and heart
as well. There are only two other people in my entire county
that shoot traditional so I have many friends who use com-
pounds, but I don’t shoot or hunt with those people. I’m not
superior, just different and as Matt indicated, our cultures

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 9

Kodiak Penance
By David Hoff
n the months ahead of the cold
I November morning that found me
and two close friends, Scott and
Nick White, camped under a fresh blan-
ket of snow along the shore of a small
interior lake on Kodiak Island, I consid-
ered many aspects of our planned trip,
including thoughts about the unpre-
dictable weather, big bears, and the
long nights spent in a small tent far
from all civilization. Then I reflected
upon the allure of the adventure that
taunts the mountain bowhunter, a diffi-
cult notion to explain to those living
with such simple creature comforts as a
secure roof, running water, and clean
underwear. The desire for adventure
10
and its accompanying hurdles is not
explainable until you have felt a burn
deep within you to push outside of your
previously defined limits. The desire for
these adventures defines a kind of per-
sonality that does not easily fall in line
with the patterns of everyday life.
As bowhunters driven to hunt in the
mountains with traditional tackle, I
believe we are a small subset of such
adventurers. While there may be more
efficient ways to collect meat or trophy,
none provides the experience of carry-
ing the carefully carved artistry of a
handcrafted single string bow. This is
the experience I could only hope we
would fulfill by flying deep into
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Kodiak’s southern finger valleys and
majestic mountains.
While outlining the logistics of the trip
the previous spring, I was stuck on one
critical question. Who would be the part-
ners willing to take roughly two weeks
away from family, work, and everyday
obligation? Brothers Nick and Scott
White are seasoned bowhunters not only
in their backyards of central Kansas.
They have also experienced the challenge
the mountains can provide to the yearn-
ing bowhunter. Each has refined his craft
Roland of Seahawk Air taxis out
after dropping the group off for a
two-week hunt on Kodiak Island.
in the whitetail woods to a science only
few others I am aware of can rival. This
kind of dedication combined with adven-
turous personalities defines the deter-
mined mountain hunter. They under-
stand the meaning of hunting hard and
yearn for the fulfillment of a laden pack.
Our conversation in early March was
short and to the point, summarized with
the words, “We’re in.”
Fast forward six months and we
were watching in wonder out of the con-
vex windows of a Beaver float plane as
we gained altitude, rising above the
center crest of Kodiak’s mountains. I’m
still not sure any language would be
appropriate in describing the craggy
ridges cutting straight from the rocky
beach line below. I appreciate Ansel
Adams’ desire that photography could
do justice to vistas such as these.
Impassable cliffs gave way to sloping,
grassy benches, only to jut upward
again in relentless progress toward the
sky. The peaks were capped with glacial
flows as smooth as a freshly Zambonied
ice rink. The intense nature of this ter-
rain contrasted with my home state of
Colorado, where the mountains’ vast-
ness has given way to crowded trail-
heads and over-used wilderness.
Accessible only by sea and air, this
country gave a fresh meaning to
“remote,” although admittedly we are
only seeing a small section of the expan-
sive 49th state.
Our final destination lay along the
southern tip of the range where the
hills crest just over a couple of thousand
feet before cascading downward into
secluded streams and marshes along
the braided valleys. Our flight conclud-
ed after an hour’s journey across the
island to the small alpine lake we would
call home for the next eight days.
Stepping off the floats onto the soft
tundra, my boots sunk through the soft
ground structure. We scanned the
shoreline, seeking a flat section of
ground with an adequate terrain break
from the inevitable wind and rain that
would be essential to the Alaska experi-
ence. On the south side of a small alder
grove, we began to sink the stakes out-
lining our charged perimeter fence.
With the drone of the plane’s engine
drifting on the wind as he rolled over
the horizon’s saddle, the understanding
of the remoteness of our camp began to
materialize.
We had spent the last hour airborne,
flying 80 miles from the town of Kodiak.
There was no drainage to follow down-
hill ultimately intersecting a trail lead-
ing the way to the truck. Our means of
extraction were dependent upon the
weather allowing safe landing in any-
where between eight to ten days. I do
not mean to paint a picture of three
tough guys doing something that has
never been done before. This is the nor-
mal for those accustomed to the coun-
try. As Roland, our pilot, stated when
discussing the questionable flight con-
ditions, “This is life on Kodiak. It’s all a
matter of respectful risk taking.” That
is the appeal of adventure, pushing
yourself slightly further than perceived
possible, yet understanding and manag-
ing the risks within a tolerable level.
Within minutes of landing, I ques-
tioned those limits as my gaze drifted
up the hillside and put my eyes on the
first bear-shaped Volkswagen Beetle. I
had been vocalizing my confidence, or
lack thereof, in the small fence we
pulled around our tents minutes prior
to appreciating the size of the bruin as
he feasted on a small patch of berries
and foraged through the moss high
above the little lake. With my only prior
bear experience coming from a small
black bear, you might imagine my sur-
prise when looking at the 1000-pound
animal with a monstrous head. While
attempting to occupy ourselves erecting
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 11

Camp set up after first installing
the electric bear fencing.
the tents, readying our bows, and pack-
ing for a short evening on the hill to
glass for the first sign of deer, my eyes
would inherently drift back to confirm
that our friendly yet hungry neighbor
had not left.
With tents set, the D-battery pow-
ered hot wire blinking, and packs on our
backs, we climbed up to the nearest
high point above the brush line and
kicked in a glassing seat from the soggy
hillside. Scanning the foreign landscape
for the first time, I felt awed by the con-
trasting colors. The deep blue of the
lake faded into dark brown marsh grass
studded with bronze-red brush between
alder lines. Where the hills steepened in
grade, patches of vibrant green moss
interlaced the surrounding dead grass,
with the tips of the peaks holding a
light dusting of white. A passing pair of
bald eagles working the last of the
afternoon thermals distracted our view.
This was the Alaska I had in my mind’s
eye, miles and miles from anywhere.
The early hours of the following
morning felt welcome after an inordi-
nately cold night on the ground. The
two-and-a-half-gallon frozen block of ice,
12
peculiarly similar in shape and size to
what was once our water jug, suggested
the temperature had dipped well below
freezing during the night. The stillness
of the morning was interrupted by the
slow simmer of water as it warmed
under the presence of the compact MSR
Windburner stove. With the sun in a
state of laziness that late in the year,
there was plenty of morning darkness
left in which to enjoy the simple pleas-
ure of hot coffee and oatmeal under the
cover of the Hilleberg’s vestibule while
trading words across the gap separating
our tents. We made a plan to venture
down the valley for the morning in an
attempt to locate what would still be the
first deer of the trip.
Anyone who has pursued unfamiliar
game in unfamiliar country will under-
stand the challenge we faced as we
tried to spot movement under the shade
of the mountains as the sun worked its
way around the ridge. When I look for
game, I am focused not on finding the
animal, but rather the distinct differ-
ence it creates upon the blank hillside. I
look for what shouldn’t be there. Not
having seen one of the blocky blacktails
we were after or the new background
they inhabit, the entire hillside seemed
foreign. It would take a careful eye to
pick up the first sign of game high on
the hillside above our glassing position.
Three quarters of the way to the
crest of the peak we spotted a group of
deer that included two chocolate horned
bucks curling their lips at the passing
does, attempting to taste the sensual
aroma of the early November air. We
watched as the biological hierarchy
determined the direction of the deer.
One of the mature bucks was the obvi-
ous holder of the ring. He took his two
does over the adjacent ridge, while the
other moved to nose another doe. The
hunting instinct kicked in, and Scott,
the closest to the deer, picked up his
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
bow and headed in pursuit, hoping to
stay below and intersect the lone travel-
ing buck. All seemed perfect as he
worked into position, flashing the decoy
figure of a doe to get the deer’s atten-
tion. Almost immediately, the deer
changed course and moved purposefully
down the cut toward his fate.
Beginners’ luck? Well, beginners we are
not, but the wind swirled leaving the
love-sick buck surprised as his nostrils
filled with a mixture of the camp
kitchen and fumes from yesterday’s air-
plane ride. Appearing confused, he con-
tinued to look over his shoulder as he
slowly worked to gain elevation back to
his place of security.
These deer seemed unfamiliar with
the presence of man. They live in a part
of the world where danger is associated
with four-legged predators. In conse-
quence, it was our experience that they
would not immediately run from us. A
flash of a decoy or even the use of an
oversized foam hat resembling a deer’s
head would provide enough distraction
to allow movement across small open-
ings in the terrain, provided the wind
stayed in our face. As with most ungu-
lates, their sense of smell proved supe-
rior. Scott was a living reminder of this
fact as he moseyed his way back toward
our position.
Throughout the previous hour, I
worked to steady my binoculars
between wind gusts, watching Scott’s
approach while scanning the ridge
where the second buck had seemingly
vanished. It took me several hours to
understand the folds in the side of the
mountain. What had appeared as an
unvaried slope was in fact broken by a
draw hidden in the shadow of the peak.
This fold only became evident as I spot-
ted movement working away toward
the horizon. The skyline provided the
perfect silhouette of a small figure, a
doe. Being November, it was a fair
The author with his first day Sitka
blacktail buck.

assumption she was not going to bed

alone that morning.
My scrutiny intensified as I watched
a set of chocolate forks appear in tow.
The buck pulled his head upward while
stepping straight legged toward the
doe. We patiently watched, hoping he
would bed down back in the cut from
which he had appeared or continue onto
a small bench cut into the hillside. After
he hadn’t moved more than ten feet
from his original position within the
last 30 minutes, I made the decision to
move into a position allowing me to
strike once I felt confident of his loca- es. I dipped, bowed, crawled, and the buck had made his bed nearby, con-
tion. Starting roughly a half a mile from weaved through the spiderwebbed cealed under tall grass, during the short
the deer, I dipped low out of sight in the mess, breaking out a short distance period I had been out of sight.
alders to approach from a parallel cut, later only to look upon the empty ridge Hoping for some confirmation, I
struggling to remain quiet as I moved where the deer had previously been. As looked back to Nick and Scott, who were
through the tangled, dead alder branch- it was late in the morning, I concluded both pointing their thumbs skyward.

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 13

The author packing his buck back
to the landing strip.
Conservatively favoring the far down-
wind side of the ridge, I worked hands
over feet climbing the dry creek bed. The
precipitous terrain provided essential
breaks that aided a parallel approach
from the valley floor. With the bench’s
lower lip within sight, I stopped to gath-
er my thoughts and assess the final
approach, still slightly unsure of the
deer’s exact position. As I downed sever-
14
Nick and his snowy stalked buck.
al gulps of water, faint movement
caught my eye—the twitch of an ear 70
yards from my seat. As any seasoned
bowhunter is aware, the slightest
sounds and movement become critical at
that distance, requiring what was once
described to me as imperceptible move-
ment. I pulled my way up the last sever-
al feet to the edge of the bench in the
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
manner, locating the dark tips of the
buck’s antlers contrasted against the
red brush in which he had found his
bed.
Still 50 yards away, I worked on the
downwind side with only his horns visi-
ble, stretching the last of my cover and
watching his lower jaw move side to
side as he chewed. I had reached a dis-
tance from which I felt comfortable
shooting in case he stood and exposed
his vitals above the line of red brush.
With an arrow nocked, I shifted my
weight ever so slightly as the buck
stood and studied the artificial doe’s
face affixed to the front of my riser. As
he paused, I drew and released the
arrow. In dismay, I felt the string catch
the bunched sleeve of my jacket and
watched as the arrow landed at his feet.
He bounded briefly and stopped again,
only five yards farther away as I nocked
a second arrow and reached my anchor
again. This time no string hit my sleeve,
yet the arrow again landed between his
legs. With conscious elevation adjust-
ment, I nocked a third arrow and sent it
down range.
 had spent more time traveling to the carrying a bow through mountains. But
destination than in the act of hunting. I had I endured the necessary sacrifice to
felt a need to endure the wind and rain, carry the meat and trophy home?
the aching feet after repeated days of The days and stories preceding our
frozen toes, the excitement of a passing final flight back to the lower-48 hold the
bear tending her cubs in the beaver truth. I came to Alaska not with the sole
pond below. I did not want to be cheated purpose of locking a yellow tag around
out of the adventure just because I had that deer’s antlers, and I am leaving
capitalized on the bedded deer. Little with more than a pack of meat. My sat-
did I understand the days that lay isfaction came from placating my desire
ahead. I enjoy the act of shooting as for exploration and adventure.
much as anyone, but that was not the
sole purpose of traveling to the remote David is a traditional bowhunter liv-
south end of Kodiak. I was intrigued by ing in the mountains of Colorado with
the fabled stories of the Kodiak brown his wife, daughter, and four hounds. An
bear. I yearned for the solitude of being engineer by trade, David is a passionate
confined to a small ten-foot square tent hunter and outdoorsman who enjoys
and vestibule while gale force winds writing to share his adventures.
Scott with his one-horned buck.
ripped at the exterior, accompanied by
curtains of rain. I hoped to repay the
Although this one flew higher, the dis- duty of carrying a heavy pack as Nick
tance had still been farther than my and Scott took deer of their own. I antic-
compensation allowed for, and the head ipated days of hiking the steep moun- Equipment Notes
shaved the hair from his armpit. I pulled tains surrounding our lake to peer over
the final broadhead from my quiver, the alpine saddles, exploring the land On this hunt, David shot a 62#
adjusting further for my improper dis- beyond our nearby reach. Had I lost out Wengerd Ibex recurve and Day Six
tance judgement while the buck stood in on that experience with an anxious flur- arrows tipped with Cutthroat three-
a bewildered state. He appeared to be ry of arrows on the first morning of the blade broadheads.
wondering why this doe staring him trip? In the end, that is the goal when
down was sending sharpened projectiles
under his chest. Anthropomorphism
aside, the decoy attached to the riser of
my bow coupled with the silence of the
shots had kept his curiosity heightened
long enough for me to accurately adjust
for the distance of the next shot. The
final arrow’s precise arc followed my
gaze to the tuft of hair I’d focused on sev-
eral inches behind his shoulder. At its
impact and pass-through, he kicked and
careened downward, nearly catching me
off my feet. Within seconds he was over
the rise of the bench and out of sight, but
not before laying down a trail of blood in
his wake.
I felt conflicted emotions following
the shot. This was a trip for which I had
planned over the past six months and I

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 15


Tree Hugger
By Bob Windauer
owhunters are usually wel-
B come anywhere in the west.
Radical greenies and tree hug-
gers, like wolves and noxious weeds, are
generally unwelcome. But when facing
the worst, a bowhunter might have to
abandon regional prejudice and hug a
tree. This worst-case-scenario occurred
during a September 2020 traditional
bowhunt for moose in Montana.
My son, Dave Windauer, and his
brother-in-law, Beau Snyder, had been
applying for bull moose permits for a
long time: Dave for 36 years, and Beau
16
for 27. During the 2020 big-game draw-
ings, each had applied for the same
moose district in southwestern
Montana. With nearly 300 to 1 odds
against each of them, both were drawn.
They hunted with Schafer Silvertip
recurves and in memory of their men-
tor, the late Paul Schafer, their lead-off
arrows were tipped with Zwickey
Eskimo four-blade broadheads that
Paul had personally used long ago.
Previously, Beau had killed a bighorn
ram with his Schafer broadhead, and
Dave had killed a six-point bull elk with
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Photo by Jason Cox
his. Something from Paul is usually
with them on their hunts.
I asked to join them to tend camp or
cut firewood just to be near the action.
And, because there are enough grizzlies
in western Montana to make fresh meat
an exciting event, I volunteered to be
backup shotgunner and pepper-sprayer.
In a weak moment they recruited me.
Then I notified my wife—who was over-
joyed to be rid of Old Grumpy for a while.
Ursus horribilis encounters and
maulings can result in life altering
injuries or death and are common
enough to be a serious concern for those
using Montana’s backcountry. This
hunting district was a grizzly hotspot
last year, and there are more grizzlies
there now. Bears were the major safety
concern during this hunt, although an
Oregon bowhunter had just been lethal-
ly gored by a wounded bull elk, and
moose, with aggressive, bone-crushing
power, are occasionally known to turn
humans into dirty red muck. Several of
us would be hunting for moose or elk in
this grizzly paradise until we had fin-
ished our business there, so we went
well-armed—just in case.
Beau’s moose hunt ended successful-
ly on opening day. That’s another story,
but he hung with Dave whenever he
could until the end of Dave’s hunt. This
is Dave’s story, as told in his words:
“On Thursday morning I met an out-
of-state-elk-bowhunter along the trail.
We visited a bit, and then he asked:
‘What are you hunting for?’
“ ‘Moose,’ I said.
“He looked at my recurve bow and
said, ‘You’re gonna hunt moose with
that thing….?’ Then he laughed at me. I
abruptly turned away, left him in mid
‘ha-ha’ with his oversized mouth hang-
ing half-open, and headed up the trail.
“In four days of scouting and two
days of hunting, I saw several moose
but none that I wanted. With hot
September weather and smoky condi-
tions from regional forest fires, the
moose were holed-up in wet willow bot-
toms and thick timber. On the dry south
faces, the willows blended upslope into
scattered juniper and fir with patches of
alder, serviceberry, and dense grassy
cover. The north faces were similar but
more heavily timbered. Hidden in the
tall, still leafy vegetation, the bulls
were rarely visible from ground level, so
I walked ridges and glassed downward
into the creek bottom cover.
A shepherd’s tent that was pitched near Dave’s camp. He had a
thousand sheep in the high country behind us and herded them
right through their camp.
“While glassing a high basin I spot-
ted white paddles down at the creek,
and then noticed a cow moose 150 yards
upstream from the bull. He was 400
yards from me and the morning ther-
mals were drifting downhill, so I circled
for wind advantage and closed to about
100 yards. Then I shed my shoes and
pack and stalked in my socks.
“I didn’t want to reveal my presence,
so I did no calling and moved only when
the bull was moving or had his head
down to feed. If his head came up, I
froze and waited. He was feeding
through willows toward a shooting
opportunity 20 yards from me, so I
screened myself behind a bushy juniper.
Then, while shifting my weight in the
icy mud, one of my feet caused a suck-
ing sound. His head swung my way and
then he stood motionless, looking and
listening. Fifteen minutes later, with
my feet numb and him still suspicious,
he turned and walked straight away. I
allowed him some distance and then
resumed my stalk. He eventually fig-
ured me out and ran off through open
aspens, then into a thick fir stand.
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
“My older brother, Mike, with two of
our friends, arrived late that evening to
hunt with me on Saturday and all of
them hopefully to pack meat if I got
lucky.
“I rested that bull on Friday to help
him forget me and hunted country that
had looked good a couple of days before,
but I failed to find a moose to my liking.
My son, Ben, drove from his college res-
idence to our camp and joined us that
evening.
“On Saturday, the last day of this
hunt, Mike, Ben, and I awakened at
4:45 a.m., had a quick breakfast of cof-
fee and oatmeal, and stuffed lunches
into our packs in case we stayed out all
day. The pre-dawn air was thick with
smoke and humidity, and there were no
visible stars as we headed north in my
truck, hoping to find the bull that I had
spooked on Thursday.
“A gentle rainstorm arrived at the
trailhead while we were getting the
backpacks and bows from the truck,
first with a few drops, then with a
steady, soaking drizzle. We climbed to a
saddle on a nearby ridge. Then, wet to
17
the skin, we sheltered under a large
tree. The rain continued all morning,
but after 15 hypothermic minutes
under the tree, the sky lightened. We
separated and glassed the drainage on
the back side of the ridge, Mike heading
up to a hanging basin we could not
inspect from below and Ben with me
hunting down the ridge in search of
Thursday’s bull. After a thorough glass-
ing, we saw nothing and then moved up
toward Mike. Shortly, we saw him wav-
ing his arms so we hustled to him. His
scope revealed a big bull moose bedded
on the slope below us, and Mike had
seen a young bull down there, too. The
bedded one looked like Thursday’s bull,
but it didn’t matter. This was a shooter.
“I dropped my pack, took one more
look, and mentally noted reference
trees so I could locate the bull when I
was down in the thick stuff. Mike and
Ben decided to stay where they were to
keep track of events below.
“With the rain muffling my move-
ment, I crossed down almost silently
through the trees. Then I did a double-
check. The Glock was in my belt holster,
and my bow was ready. I couldn’t know it
18
at the time, but there were four other
moose on the bench with me and the big
bull—the young bull that Mike had seen
from above, and three cows. I figured I
was close to the big bull, so I studied my
surroundings. Something dark moved 20
yards away and slightly uphill to my
right—the young bull that Mike had
spotted near the big one. I circled to the
left, below him, and then heard a grunt
farther left and ahead of me.
“I side-hilled toward the grunt and
spotted the big bull’s wide antlers mov-
ing regularly. He was now up and feed-
ing. I nocked the arrow with the Schafer
broadhead as a cow called pleadingly
several times from my right and slight-
ly uphill. To my left, the old bull lifted
his head and began moving toward her
and an opening straight uphill from me.
If all went well, he would pass at less
than 15 yards.
“He approached from left to right. A
large juniper stood beside me, so I
screened myself, carefully skirted it,
and found a clear shooting lane, shak-
ing as I realized what was happening.
“When his nose entered the opening,
I drew halfway back and then froze
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
while his eyes passed, then his neck and
shoulder. I waited for the near foreleg to
clear his vitals. With the uphill angle, I
chose a spot center body tight behind
the shoulder joint, hit full draw, and
released.
“The arrow hit a bit low, and the
fletching disappeared tight behind his
shoulder—a pass-through that looked
like a heart hit. Not knowing what had
happened, he ran a few steps and then
walked along the timbered hillside above
me. I found another opening and released
a longer shot that passed low, clipping his
brisket. Still unaware of me, he walked a
bit farther and bedded down. I watched
for a long time, but he remained alert.
Now it seemed that I had missed his
heart but had a low, double lung hit. With
that low hit and those big lungs, death
would come more slowly, so I eased down-
hill and circled for a kill shot.
“He spotted me, lurched to his feet,
ran 40 yards to the end of a small flat
bench and stopped, facing away from
me. As I climbed to his level and moved
to a better shooting angle at 20 yards,
he turned to face me.
“I sensed trouble and instinctively
glanced around. Twelve feet to my left
stood a ten-inch diameter fir with
sparse lower branches, open from eye
level to the ground. Between it and me
was a patch of thick, heavily clubbed
serviceberry brush about waist high.
“I glanced back toward the bull. His
attention was still fixed on me, and he
showed no sign of weakness. I decided
that he needed another arrow. When I
moved one step to the right and for-
ward, he lowered his head, cocked it
slightly, and flat-out charged. I had 12
feet to the tree and the moose had 20
yards to me.
“I jumped, or dived, through the ser-
viceberry brush and scrambled for the
backside of the tree, losing my bow
along the way. The bull had a clear run,

Dave, left, with Ben and Mike, and Dave’s Shiras moose.
and as I moved he adjusted, keeping his
sights on me. At the tree, I started to
stand and reached to get my hands
against the trunk. Before they got
there, he crashed against the opposite
side, breaking branches and scattering
debris all over. The moose and I had
arrived at the same moment, and his
quickness should give us all something
to think about.
“Without palmation, his 16-inch
brow tines straddled both sides of the
trunk and nearly struck me. He was so
close that I could have touched his face.
With his 51-inch spread, the main
palms framed his head and the trunk as
he faced me at eye level. Creating just
enough space to move, he kept trying to
get at me as I stayed 180 degrees
around the tree from him, and we both
circled left around the trunk until we
had reversed locations.
“Then he stopped, and I did, too. I
drew the Glock and chambered a car-
tridge, but all I had to shoot at was the
front of his shoulders, since his chest
was shielded by the tree. I tried to get
the sights on the pipeline where his
neck entered his chest, but he then stood
upright, big as a tall horse and not at a
good angle, so I didn’t shoot. I might not
have been thinking at all, just reacting,
but subliminally I probably didn’t want
to finish this with gunpowder and lead,
so it was stare-down time.
“He opened some space by taking a
step or two backward, relaxing me a lit-
tle. With my pistol at ready in my left
hand, I eased out a couple of steps to
pick up the bow with my right hand.
Then I holstered the pistol and nocked
another arrow, maintaining eye contact
all the while. He continued to back
away, then turned and gave me a tight
quartering-to-me opportunity for a
shot, and I took it. The arrow hit a rib at
a tight angle and cut through, but only
penetrated four or five inches. He
turned away and trotted off a bit, then
walked across the bench and into thick
firs 60 yards from me. After settling
down, I followed him for a short dis-
tance and then decided to leave him
alone and get Ben and Mike.
“Before I climbed up to them, I
stopped to inspect where the bull had
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
stood before it charged. There was still
a pool of blood there, but the rain was
eliminating it, so I hurried. Because of
their location and the thick trees where
the moose had been feeding, Mike and
Ben hadn’t seen anything that hap-
pened. Mike said, “After seeing nothing
for quite a while, we saw the bull trot-
ting from a bench close to where we had
seen it last, then to an open knoll and
turning broadside. It looked toward
Dave as he approached, then it trotted
downhill into the timber. Dave looked
up here a couple times but couldn’t
locate us. Several minutes later we
spotted him, half-running along the
sidehill toward us, obviously excited.”
“We packed our gear and went to
find the bull. On the way, we spotted a
cow sneaking out the bottom of the
drainage and the smaller bull with two
cows leaving over the top. To give my
bull more time, we worked out what
was left of the blood trail. I went to
where I had taken my first shot, and
Mike and Ben went to where the moose
had stood. We found my first arrow
buried deeply into the dirt, much far-
ther back than I had expected, probably
because the moose was tall, and I’m
used to pass-throughs on smaller ani-
mals like deer and bear. Then I found
the brisket arrow and the arrow that
hit the rib. There was also a broken
arrow in my quiver. The moose had
probably stepped on it during our face-
off. The bow had been far enough from
me that I couldn’t have stepped on the
arrow myself. I just don’t clearly
remember everything that happened
during the charge.
“We dropped down, crossed the
creek, and climbed the opposite slope to
look into the area where the bull had
disappeared. Ben spotted him bedded in
shadows beneath a tree. His head was
tipped, resting on the right antler. Ben
is color blind and could somehow dis-
19

Dave and his packing crew at his moose before they began to cut meat.
Packers, left to right, are Beau Snyder, Mike Windauer, Melissa Snyder,
Dave, Josh Snyder, Ben Windauer, Tom and Logan Thurston.
cern with bare eyes what Mike and I
had trouble seeing even with binocu-
lars. I asked him, ‘Is it dead?’
“He borrowed my binoculars, looked
for a while, and then said, ‘Yep.’
“We crossed again and climbed to my
bull, took a few photos, tagged him,
20
field-dressed him, and propped him
open to cool. The first arrow had passed
just behind his heart and cut low
through the lungs, the diaphragm, and
the edge of the rumen before exiting on
the far side. Both lungs had deflated
completely and there had been massive
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
blood loss, but he somehow retained
enough oxygen to become potentially
lethal. Backing away from the tree and
retreating probably reflected an aware-
ness of his weakening state.
“We arrived at camp around noon,
just as the sun broke through the thin-
ning clouds. We then celebrated with
dry clothes and hot soup out in full sun-
light. It was Saturday, the day we had
chosen to finish the hunt. There had
been 14 of us, but our friend, Jay, and
his son, Cameron, had already left with
our five horses. My friend, Eric, and
Beau’s two daughters, Madison and
Ashley, left shortly thereafter.
“Nine of us remained, and we hiked
back to skin, bone-out, and backpack
the moose a cross-country uphill mile
and a half to the trailhead, all in 60-
degree, cloudless sunlight. Four men
packed about 60 pounds each, while
Ben and Beau’s son, Josh, hefted 100-
pound hindquarters, and I shouldered
the cape and head on top of my pack of
meat. Beau’s wife, Melissa, hauled the
leftover odds and ends in her pack, and
Dad followed behind, taking photos.
“We loaded the truck bed with the
meat and head and left the trailhead
just as the rain came again, this time
with eardrum-shattering thunder and
hair-raising bolts of lightning all
around us. The moose remains no doubt
fed Ursus horribilis. and his clean-up
companions for several days.
“And that is how I concluded my
moose hunt by hugging a tree.”
Full disclosure
Dave had been wearing hunter
orange as appropriate during the
entire hunt, but had taken it off along
with his pack for the photos.
All photos by the author
A Room with a View
he smoke from the summer’s fires hung over the
T Wyoming prairie, making the distant hills appear
out of focus. The colors looked muted below a
washed-out sky, as if I were looking at an old photograph
taken by a cheap, disposable camera. Colorado’s Cameron
Peak fire was a good 80 miles distant, but the effects of the
wildfire were evident. The smoke was pervasive, stinging my
eyes and filling my nose and lungs with its acrid smell. But
it was a good day. This was opening morning of the prong-
horn season, and I had my bow in hand with a quiver full of
broadhead-tipped cedar arrows. Prior to the season, I placed
a pop-up blind near a stock tank that I knew would draw
antelope in, especially in such a dry, hot year. I opted not to
sit in the blind on this opening morning. I had to get out in
the country and experience the feeling of putting a stalk on
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
By Mark Nelson
an animal, a feeling that had lain dormant these past
months.
Just past noon, I watched a distant lone buck feed into
some broken hills, offering what looked like a great opportu-
nity to get close. I made my way to him, keeping out of sight
and stopping in whatever sparse shade I could find as the
opaque sky offered no relief from the heat. I had not yet
adjusted to a predatory mindset. Lessons learned from the
past had to be dusted off; tactics that should be second
nature were suppressed. Fog hung on my brain like the
smoke that cloaked the landscape. The wind shifted to my
back, but I took no heed. Head down, I trudged on. I came
out of my trance and looked up to see the buck locked onto
me 70 yards away. With a sharp exhale of breath, sounding
like a blast door to a furnace being opened, he whirled and
21

The author glassing for antelope his first day out.
was gone. Aware that taking a pronghorn via stalking would
be a challenge, I shrugged off my first defeat and reminded
myself that there would likely be many more in the future.
Pronghorns offer the bowhunter all-day opportunities, as
they are nearly always visible. It is just a matter of finding
the right one that may offer a chance for a stalk.
Later in the day, I watched as a group of seven prong-
horn bachelor bucks fed from the open prairie to some bitter-
brush-covered hills. I followed undetected as they nibbled
their way to the top of a ridge. As they fed down the ridge
and out of sight, I left my concealment and quickly made my
way toward them, hoping to get within shooting distance
before they got out of range. After only a few steps, a mule
deer buck sporting medium-sized velvet-covered antlers
bolted upright from his bed. After going 50 yards, he did the
classic stop-and-turn broadside move and stood staring. He
22 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
was only 100 yards from the ridgeline where the antelope
disappeared. I knew he would soon bound away, and I prayed
his route didn’t take him to the antelope. My prayer soon
went unanswered as he bounced right over the top of the
ridge where the pronghorn were feeding. As I summited the
ridgeline, I saw the seven bachelors disappear over a far-off
hill.
The rest of the day’s hunt proved unsuccessful as far as
taking an antelope by stalking, but like any day out
bowhunting, this was a profitable one. The sights and sounds
of the Wyoming countryside had been credited to my
account. I went back to camp tired and happy.
Back at home, an inventory of my freezer revealed that
I was almost out of wild game. Antelope tops my list as the
best table fare, and the thought of running out didn’t sit well
with my wife and me. I decided to endure the projected
record high temperatures and sit in my ground blind the
coming weekend. I froze water in plenty of half gallon con-
tainers and gathered gear that would help while away the
hours: books, magazines, podcasts downloaded on my smart-
phone, writing material, and plenty of snacks.
I hiked to the blind that second weekend and arrived as
the morning light began to overpower the dark. I banged on
the blind with the tip of my bow and hoped I didn’t hear the
telltale sound of a rattlesnake. I zipped the door open and
A thirteen-lined ground squirrel feeding on flowers
and seed pods outside of the author’s blind. The myri-
ad wildlife made his time in the blind pleasurable.

Stock tanks are a magnet for not only big game, but
also for birds, such as this Western meadowlark, the
state bird of six states, including the author’s home
state of Wyoming.
shone my headlight in. Finding no coiled assassin within, I
entered and made myself as comfortable as the tiny space
would allow. I had decided to pack a bigger camera lens than
I usually take with me on a bowhunt. I stowed the 400mm
lens near my camera in a corner, within easy reach if I need-
ed it. As light gathered, I made sure no pronghorn were com-
ing in and I took a couple of practice shots with my Judo
points. Although it was just seven yards to the water tank, I
needed to ensure nothing would hinder a good shot. Both
arrows found their mark, and nothing within the blind
snagged a bow limb or prevented a smooth release.
I sat back in my chair and enjoyed the morning sounds.
A vesper sparrow sent its call of trills and chips across the
grassland; a distant coyote yipped and received an immedi-
A coyote snacking on a ground squirrel.
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
ate answer to whatever question it had raised. As the gentle
breeze increased, the windmill blades behind me began
turning, spilling water from a long pipe into the tank. Like a
Japanese water fountain garden, the music was rhythmic
and soothing. I knew I would be fighting the urge to doze.
Little did I know that the 13-hour day would go by in the
blink of an eye.
The burnt-orange orb of the sun climbed over the near-
by ridge. Plenty of smoke still hung in the air, but my lungs
didn’t mind as badly as they had while chasing after ante-
lope. At 8 a.m., a buck approached from downhill and down-
wind. Getting a nose full of me, he flared his white rump
patch and disappeared. As the morning’s coolness gave way
to heat, a small buck approached the tank from the upwind
side and immediately began drinking. As I snapped pictures
while he satisfied his thirst, his head came up quickly and
his eyes locked onto something downhill. I peered slowly
through a window on my blind and saw a coyote crouch and
then leap on a ground squirrel a few yards away. At the
movement, the small buck jumped back with a start and left
the water for safer ground. I quickly switched lenses for the
400mm and took pictures of the coyote as he choked down
the rodent headfirst. He eventually left, nose to the ground
in search of another meal.
23

Two young mule deer came to slake their thirst.
As the sun passed its zenith, the heat soared inside the
close confines of the blind. Beads of sweat rolled off my neck
and ran down my rib cage. Some ice remained in one of the
jugs I had packed in. I placed the cold bottle against my
carotid and hoped the cooler blood would pump through my
body. I reached for a book to try to take my mind off the heat
but first gave a look outside. Two bucks approached from the
upwind side. I dropped my book and grabbed my bow. As
they approached, I saw one was a yearling and the other was
older but not much bigger. Both animals hung up at 20
yards. The older buck tried to direct the other buck toward
the tank by body blocks and horn jabs, but the youngster
was having none of it. Both bedded 60 yards away until they
tired of the wait and left. No matter, I decided I was going to
pass on them anyway.
The sights outside my blind were ever-changing. Horned
24 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
The author with his antelope for the freezer.
larks and meadowlarks watered and bathed at the tank.
Ferruginous hawks soared overhead. A brave thirteen-lined
ground squirrel fed on flower petals and seed heads and
seemed to shake its fist at the taloned predators flying
above. Instead of dragging on, the sun galloped for the west-
ern horizon.
Toward the end of the day, I noticed movement on the
hill to the south. My binoculars revealed two mule deer
bucks, their velvet-covered antlers orange in the evening
sun, trotting to the tank, closely followed by two doe ante-
lope. The deer came in without a care in the world and drank
their fill. The does were more cautious but eventually joined
the boys for drinks. They wandered off as the sun turned red
in the smoke and dipped out of sight. I left most of my gear
in the blind, knowing I’d be back before first light.
I once again packed some ice jugs with me to the blind
and tucked them into a light jacket I had been wearing, know-
ing it would help delay the melting process. After two hours of
quietly waiting, I saw four pronghorn bucks about a half-mile
away walking down a wide valley that bordered my blind to
the north. They disappeared behind a rise of land, but it
looked like they had water on their minds. They hadn’t been
feeding much or dilly-dallying—they walked with a purpose.
A couple of the bucks looked respectable. I quickly zipped up
all but the shooting windows. They would be approaching
 and began the gutting process after a few quick photos. I
knew the mid-90-degree heat later in the day would quickly
spoil the meat if I didn’t tend to it properly. After the gutting
was complete, I grabbed the ice jugs from the blind and
placed them into the body cavity and hiked to my truck.
With the aid of a game cart, I soon had him in the bed of the
truck where more ice jugs awaited. I knew of a cottonwood
draw a short drive away. In no time I had his hide off and the
quarters in my cooler.
Back at home, I let the quarters age for three days in my
refrigerator before I cut up the roasts and steaks and ground
the hamburger. All but one roast were vacuum-packed and
frozen. I had been flipping through one of the past issues of
Traditional Bowhunter® Magazine and noticed a recipe
by T.J. Conrads “What’s Your Favorite Venison?” in the
Aug/Sep 2019 issue for an elk roast that I thought would
work just fine for my antelope. After marinating the fresh
roast, I placed it in my smoker grill until the meat ther-
mometer read 140 degrees.
I have to say, it was one of the best tasting pronghorn
A game cart made the pack out easy. dishes I’ve ever had. Maybe the flavor from the grill remind-
ed me of the smoke-filled days of hunting because every bite
from downwind and I hoped I could seal my scent within the put me back on that open prairie.
blind. I grabbed my bow and silently nocked an arrow.
Moments later, I could see through a small opening two of the In addition to bowhunting, Mark is an avid fly fisher-
bucks appear at 20 yards. Both hesitated for a moment but man and wildlife photographer. Mark’s photographs can be
made their way to the tank. The last two joined them. One of seen at his website MLeonardphoto.com.
them, a yearling, walked within six feet of the blind as he
went to water. The others were spread out, one on the east
side of the tank, and the remaining two drinking on the west
Equipment Notes
side. As I watched the largest buck drinking, I thought of a
near-empty freezer and what a fine opportunity for a lethal
Mark used a 54# Wes Wallace recurve, Port Orford cedar
shot was before me. In that moment, I decided to take him.
shafts, with 145 grain single-bevel Grizzly broadheads for
He lifted his head for a moment as I began my draw. I
this hunt.
froze and watched him through the shoot-through mesh
screen. When he put his muzzle down to drink again, I drew
and released in one fluid motion, aiming just behind the
shoulder, where the brown and white lines of hide meet. The
pronghorn jumped as the cedar shaft passed through his
vitals, one leg sending a spray of water from the tank as he
jumped over the edge of it. I briefly saw the arrow on the
opposite side of where I hit him, but as he joined the other
bucks the arrow was gone, replaced by a splotch of red. The
four bucks paused on the hillside 70 yards away. As my buck
started to wobble on his feet, the three ran as one, only stop-
ping to look back as the buck rolled down the steep hill.
I quickly made my way to him. I thanked the good Lord
for such a great opportunity to take this beautiful animal

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 25


Kodiak Alpine
A buck and a baby in Alaska backcountry.
By Paul Forward
hen my wife and I started
W thinking about trying to
have a baby, we also talked
a lot about the best time of year for it to
happen. Much of that is obviously well
beyond our control but in an ideal world
we’d have one in the spring, after ski
season but well before hunting season.
Fast forward a few months to
September and my wife called me at
work telling me that she was pregnant
with a due date of May 9. The timing
couldn’t have been better.
After a great remainder of the 2018
hunting season and a wonderful winter
in the mountains, we had a beautiful
baby boy, whom we named Ren, on May
26
12 without complications. During those
precious first weeks I got to spend at
home with him before going back to
work, I started planning how I’d still be
able to spend time bowhunting that fall.
After all, I explained to my wife, I had
an extra mouth to feed!
I had already made plans to do a solo
goat hunt, a remote moose hunt, and a
late deer hunt, but I really wanted to
get out into the hills with my wife and
baby. We did a lot of hiking and some
mellow river rafting with him over the
summer as well as a simple one-night
backpacking trip into the alpine of the
Kenai mountains. The effects of climate
change continued to manifest in Alaska,
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
All photos by the author
and we had our hottest and driest sum-
mer on record which was bad for the
fire hazard and the world in general,
but great for baby-friendly weather in
the mountains.
As August approached, the forecast
looked great for the Kodiak deer opener,
and I started thinking that maybe we
could take the baby on a backpack hunt.
We had previously lived on Kodiak for
years and we looked forward to seeing
some friends and introducing our son,
so it was an easy decision to book
flights. I tossed in some overnight gear
The author ascending a ridge for a
quick trip to the alpine.
and my recurve.
Two days later the weather held and
we found ourselves hiking off the road,
my pack full of our camping gear and
my hunting stuff and my wife with a
daypack and our son strapped to her
chest. From my years spent exploring
the island, I knew of a few trails that
could get us into the alpine without too
much bushwhacking. We had an
uneventful climb into the high country,
aside from some stops to breastfeed and
a little slower pace than usual.
My goal was to make it up into the
rocky bedding areas in time to make a
late evening hunt, and we reached the
ridges with perfect timing. Not wanting
to push the margin of safety, we decided
on hunting just one small alpine bowl
before looking for a good tent site. As we
eased through a series of large boulders
hoping to happen across a sleeping
buck, something caught my eye 200
yards above us. Closer inspection
revealed a nice 3x3 buck bedded in a
small depression with what looked like
a tiny dried-up waterfall leading up to
him that might provide cover. My wife
and son sat down by a large boulder and
off I went.
When I was 75 yards from the buck,
I heard the baby cry and looked back to
see my wife start breastfeeding him. I
didn’t see any sign that the buck had
been disturbed. As I approached the lip
of the dry waterfall, I started doing a
60-second count between steps to delib-
erately slow myself down. I began to
doubt that the buck was still there, but
with some careful scanning, my binocu-
lar showed velvet antler tips at about
30 yards. I only had a few more yards of
cover, but if the buck stayed bedded, I
thought that I might be able to creep in
closer without being seen.
Despite my slow, deliberate motion,
the buck knew something was up and
stood in his bed facing directly at me,
offering no shot. As he stepped to his
right, I drew my bow. Over the summer
I had been experimenting with gap
shooting and had decided that I would
hunt that way. I guessed the buck at
about 27 yards and watched my arrow
fly an inch or two over his back and
crash into the rocks behind him. The
buck walked over the ridge, never to be
seen again. When I later paced out the
distance, it was closer to 20 yards.
My wife had heard the arrow hit the
rock and looked up at me as I came
back, half hoping I’d killed the buck and
half hoping that we were done for the
day and could set up our shelter. She
appeared relieved when I told her what
happened! We traversed around the
ridge and started looking for a flat spot
and a water source. Even on Kodiak,
the hot, dry summer had dried up a lot
of mountain streams and tarns. About
an hour before dark, we found a good
spot, fed the baby, made dinner, and
enjoyed a gorgeous sunset.
On our first camping trip with the
baby earlier that summer, we had
brought a 2-person pyramid style shel-
ter, but we opted for our bigger 4-person
version on this trip to give us more
room to spread out. As we’d done before,
we bundled Ren up in warm clothes,
laid him on his back on a firm Z-rest
foam mattress doubled over, and put
him in his little sleeping sack. He fed
during the night on his usual schedule
and all indications were that he stayed
happy and warm on our little ridge
perch.
I was up before first light and began
moving slowly, hoping to spot some
bucks still out feeding. I located a group
of three right away, but they were feed-
ing away from me in completely open
terrain. Then I spotted another group
with one young buck and two does
working into a creek drainage and hus-
tled to position myself on the edge of it.
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 27

Erin and Ren at camp.
They passed under me at 30 yards, not
offering a shot even if I had wanted one.
As I retreated from that stalk, I
noticed movement on a ridge 400 yards
away and identified a small group of
bucks that included a couple of mature
animals. The recent mild winters had
apparently been kind to the deer popu-
lation there! I didn’t have much cover to
work with and got stuck 100 yards
away. The deer started feeding off in the
other direction, toward some thick alder
and what I assumed would be their
beds for the afternoon, so I tried a des-
perate move to get in front of them but
got spotted trying to get through some
noisy salmonberries.
The sun was getting pretty high at
this point and most of the deer were
starting to retreat to their beds. I found
a shaded edge along a ridge of alders
and salmonberries and was sneaking
back toward the tent when I heard
movement very close in the brush near-
by. Thinking that it was probably a
snowshoe hare, I still hunkered down to
see if anything would emerge. After five
minutes of kneeling in a small depres-
sion, I glimpsed velvet-covered antler
28
tips less than ten yards away. The rest
of the deer was fully obscured by thick
brush. I nocked an arrow and waited.
After about ten minutes a doe
emerged, and I started doubting that I
had seen antlers at all, but a few min-
utes later a spike buck and then an
even smaller spike emerged behind the
doe at ten yards but facing me directly.
The first buck started following the doe
and passed me at less than 20 yards
walking broadside. I put tension on the
string but kept making excuses about
why I didn’t have a good shot. I let them
all pass and watched them meander off
into the sunlit meadow above.
I’m not sure why I didn’t shoot. I love
August venison and I’m not a “trophy
hunter,” although I do like the challenge
of pursuing mature animals. I wonder if
I wasn’t subject to a bit of anthropomor-
phism, watching what I assumed was a
doe with her last year’s fawn while my
own wife and baby waited for me on the
ridge above.
With no more deer in sight, I
sneaked back to camp and found my
wife and baby happily enjoying the
incredible view and warm morning sun.
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
After years of living on Kodiak, you
never take warm sunny days for grant-
ed! There’s really nothing quite like it.
We spent the rest of the day on a nice
hike above where we’d camped. We
made it up to some patches of leftover
snow, found tufts of mountain goat hair,
saw several goats in the distance, and
spotted a doe and a small buck lying out
sideways on the hot sunny rocks below.
I considered trying to climb down a
rocky chute to them but decided to
enjoy the ridge hike with my family.
After a snack for us and breastfeed-
ing for Ren, we started the long walk
down to brush line feasting on ripe
salmonberries the whole way. I felt a lit-
tle remorse that I didn’t have that spike
buck’s tender venison in my pack, but it
was hard to complain about a sunny
day spent hunting with my family in
one of my favorite places.
We made it back to our friends’
house in time for dinner and celebrated
our son’s first hunting trip. Looking at
the forecast before bed that night, I sug-
gested to my wife that an extra day or
two on the island to take advantage of
the ridiculous sunny weather would
make a lot of sense. She loves Kodiak as
much as I do and wholeheartedly
agreed. I started hatching a new plan to
try again to bring home some venison.
I usually hunt alone or occasionally
with my wife, but I was thrilled to get a
message from one of my closest friends,
a hunting guide on Kodiak, stating that
he could break away for a day or two of
hunting with me. We’ve been friends for
a long time but had never actually
hunted together because he was always
guiding when I flew out or hiked in for
my solo trips.
After a relaxed morning with family,
I tossed the bare necessities in my pack
for a quick overnight deer hunt in the
alpine. A few hours later we were
smashing through salmonberries on our

The author and Ren in camp after a failed stalk.
way back into the alpine, hoping to
make it up into deer country in time for
an evening hunt.
Once we got into the high country, it
didn’t take long before I noticed some
velvety looking tendrils poking out from
some brush at the base of a small cliff
band 300 yards away. There turned out
to be two deer bedded about 20 yards
apart. A tall looking fork buck appeared
to be in a spot that could be shot from
above, and a much larger, older buck
bedded in a place that looked impossi-
ble to approach without spooking him.
We memorized some landmarks to
triangulate on once we got there. No
matter how many years I do this kind of
hunting, I still have to be intentional
about remembering landmarks because
the terrain always looks totally differ-
ent when I’m on my knees crawling
through unfamiliar territory that
looked simple from hundreds of yards
away. As always, the approach was a
little trickier than we anticipated but
we were soon sneaking up toward the
edge of the small cliff band.
We had discussed our plan on the
walk over. If we were able to locate the
smaller buck, I would take him at what
we thought would be close range. My
friend anticipated that the bigger buck
would stand up and move away from
the cliff in response to the commotion,
and he felt it would likely pass well
within his comfort range with his com-
pound. I had hoped to watch him shoot
the closer buck in case the other one
didn’t move as planned because he’s so
often the guide and has fewer chances
to hunt for himself. But he insisted, and
I could tell he was excited about the big
buck.
I belly-crawled toward the edge. At
first, I thought the buck had disap-
peared, but with my binoculars I was
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
able to pick out velvet antlers 20 yards
away through the grass. We sneaked
around toward a small prow of rock that
would provide a shot angle, and I did
my best to not make too much noise in
the loose, sharp rock while trying not to
tumble off my perch. I found the buck
bedded down about 15 yards below me,
angled facing away. My friend nocked
an arrow as well in hopes that he’d have
a shot soon after mine.
I can’t remember the last time some-
one was with me when I took a shot at
an animal, so it was an odd feeling with
my good friend watching me shoot from
a few feet away. I picked a spot low on
the rib cage and tried to mentally com-
pensate for the steep downhill angle.
The small pink fletchings looked as if
they disappeared a little far back on the
buck’s body. When the deer jumped up,
the arrow was buried deep into the
ground where he’d been lying. I nocked
a second arrow, but he did not present
another shot.
A moment later the second, bigger
buck appeared just as my buddy hoped
it would. We had a brief moment of con-
fusion as he was asking me for distance,
and I was giving my best guess. I later
learned that compound shooters often
range for each other using range find-
ers, and I felt bad that I hadn’t grabbed
his to help him out. Unfortunately, his
shot didn’t go as planned and the buck
disappeared into the brush, never to be
29

The author and his Kodiak Sitka blacktail.
seen again.
My buck bedded down 100 yards
away in a little rocky chute below us.
Through the spotting scope, it looked as
if my buck was hit a little far back and
he looked alert. It was almost dark, so
we decided to sleep for a few hours until
it got light again and then hopefully
recover him. I was happy to be hunting,
as usual, with our entire camp on our
backs so we could just hunker down
right where we were without any addi-
tional movement.
After a couple of restless hours of
sleep, lamenting my shot and feeling
bad about wounding an animal, we got
up and felt disappointed to see that the
buck had moved from his bed. I started
working toward where the buck was
last seen while my friend stayed on the
ridge with a good vantage point in case
the deer was still alive and I accidental-
ly scared him. The blood trail was scant
but there were a couple of established
trails through the rocks and tundra.
Finally, after about an hour, I spotted a
patch of reddish fur through some
alders and recovered my buck about
30
100 yards from where we’d last seen
him. The shot was behind the rib cage
and I can only blame myself for over-
compensating for the shot angle and
hitting well below where I was aiming.
I gutted the buck and started taking
him apart as quickly as possible. I knew
another unseasonably warm day lay
ahead, and I didn’t want to lose the
meat. My buddy checked in with me
and I encouraged him to keep hunting
through the day. I was happy to pack
this buck out by myself and hoped that
he’d find another one.
I soon had the buck in my pack and
found myself looking up the long, steep
climb to the ridge that I needed to cross
to get to the truck. Low on water and
with no hope of finding more on my way
out, I wanted to move quickly to avoid
the midday sun. Several hours later, I
had the meat on ice in the cooler in the
back of the truck and drank some badly
needed water. After a quick scramble to
pack up meat, baby, and gear, we said
goodbye to our friends and caught our
flight off Kodiak that night.
I spent the next day cutting up the
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Processing the deer meat back at
home, with Ren in the carrier.
meat, often with Ren on my chest in the
baby carrier. I always find meat pro-
cessing a great time to reflect on the
hunt and couldn’t help but feel fortu-
nate to have been on a backpack hunt
like that with my wife and three-
month-old baby. Over the winter, as he
has started enjoying solid foods, I’ve fed
him meat from that buck on multiple
occasions, and not a day goes by that I
don’t think about how amazing it will
be to get back into the wilderness with
him to share our love of wild animals
and wild places.
Paul lives in Girdwood, Alaska. He
works winters based out of Girdwood as
a backcountry ski guide and the rest of
year works as a part-time rural family
doctor at the hospital in Kotzebue,
Alaska.
Equipment Notes
On this hunt Paul used a 58#
Morrison Recurve with a Valkyrie
Reign shaft and Valkyrie Jager
broadhead.
Photo by Don & Lori Thomas
Seeing the Moment
T
he mid-morning temperatures began to drop as the
wind shifted from the southwest to the north. I found
myself beginning to chill as the northerly wind
announced the arrival of an impending freeze. Now
Thursday, the realization that only the remainder of today
and tomorrow remained in bow season only strengthened
my resolve to arrow a buck before the opening of rifle season
on Saturday. Having hunted from “dark to dark” since the
opening of the short five-day bow season, I felt confident an
opportunity would present itself before the heavily pres-
sured rifle season sent our bucks into predominantly noctur-
nal patterns. Although the youth rifle season had closed on
the preceding Sunday, that shorter hunt had less impact on
deer behavior. It generally pushed deer to historical sanctu-
aries which were proven safe havens. In reality, the earlier
hunting pressure was part of my reasoning for taking these
five days off. The area I was hunting had been utilized by
pressured bucks in the past and since it was now early
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
By Alan Altizer
November, I knew the pre-rut would have them on their feet.
In my eyes, the odds were in my favor. Friends begged to
differ, thinking I was wasting my time following the hunting
pressure and the record kill reports of the youth hunters in
the area. In my opinion, they were not looking at the circum-
stances from the right perspective as they were not viewing
the moment for what it was. What they viewed as a negative,
I looked at as an advantage. Their viewpoints were from
those who spend only a few days in the woods prior to the
opening of early bow season as they scouted the green forest
of late summer. Mine, from the best of my abilities, were
from the perspective of the pre-rut bucks of the past several
seasons, especially those mature bucks that I had been
blessed to have pursued for most my adult life. Although our
interactions had not always produced shot opportunities, I
had noted specific behaviors under specific conditions. My
choice of time and location was based on just such observa-
tions. I was confident a buck would once again take advan-
31
tage of this secluded pocket.
Slipping on a quilted shirt to help break the increasing
wind, I watched as leaves were being blown across the
ridgetop. Attempting to focus on the motionless void, I was
pleasantly surprised when the movement of a doe turning
her head back in my direction brought resolution to what
seemed out of place. Looking once again over her shoulder,
she then turned back in my direction. Nervously following
the ridgeline, she passed downwind of my stand at a dis-
tance of five yards. Luckily the combination of stand height
and wind velocity seemed to carry my scent over her back.
Occasionally monitoring her back trail, she anxiously con-
tinued her course out the ridgeline.
With my bow in hand, my focus was also on her back-
trail. Her posture did not reflect the reaction to a threat, but
one of an unreceptive doe avoiding the unwarranted atten-
tion of a pre-rut suitor.
The movement of white antlers framed against a blue-
green cedar background caught my eye as a beautiful moun-
tain buck emerged from a cedar thicket located on the north-
side of the ridge. As the buck bird-dogged along the top of the
ridge, he finally located her scent trail in the blowing leaves.
Following the ridgeline for a short distance he angled to the
south, the downwind side of the ridgetop, paralleling her
path by scent.
Passing by my set up, at a distance of 25 yards, I chose
not to release an arrow. My best chance of arrowing the buck
was not taking a shot under marginal conditions. Knowing
the buck was bedding in the cedars, my best opportunity
would come the next morning. I knew why he was there, and
now I needed to know where and how he was living. He
would only utilize the area for a brief period of time. I now
32 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
had to see this moment through his eyes.
Once the buck was out of sight, I waited another fifteen
minutes to ensure he was also out of hearing range. A thou-
sand thoughts raced through my head as I sat in my perch.
I replayed where the buck had stepped from the cedars. With
the doe downwind of the thicket, he could not have winded
her, so I knew he must have been bedded within eyesight of
the ridgetop. The three-acre cedar thicket lay on the north
side of the ridge and bordered a cut cornfield at the bottom.
Although the cornfield was only a few acres, older farm
equipment had missed a lot of corn during harvest. A subdi-
vision bordered the western side, and an interstate ran on
the north side. No hunting was allowed due to proximity to
the housing. The cedar thicket had a five-year-old cut inside
it near the top edge. My gut feeling was this had been where
the buck was bedded. With this knowledge, I had a good idea
of where I needed to scout.
My original stand placement was chosen to intercept
roving bone-heads without conceding my presence.
Precautions were taken to assure these few unmolested
acres received no pressure, allowing nearby whitetails to feel
safe as more animals frequented the area. The more does,
the higher the odds were that bucks would follow. My stand
was set to intercept roving bucks without any compromise to
the cedar thicket. With the sighting of the buck apparently
living in the thicket, my focus changed from hunting roving
deer to focusing on a specific deer, in a specific area, at a spe-
cific time. Knowing a couple of his habits, I needed to maxi-
mize the opportunity by identifying his exact usage patterns
and exploiting them the next day.
Shortly after the buck moved out of sight, I grabbed my
gear and exited the stand. Dropping down the ridge to
another stand, I left my bow and pack. Pulling the other
stand, I proceeded to the edge of the cedar thicket. Needing
more information on his travel patterns, I carefully entered
the thicket in a manner least likely to compromise the area.
Knowing the terrain well, I immediately proceeded
toward the internal cut line nestled twenty yards inside the
cedars. I felt that the buck had been bedded in the strip of
cedars, between it and the ridgetop, as the doe walked by.
She had apparently winded him, explaining her nervous pos-
ture. Fortunately, a light rain began to fall which would
eliminate any residual scent and lessen the noise of setting
up a stand.
Reaching the upper edge of the cut, which was approxi-
mately 20 yards across and 50 yards long, I could see waist
high grasses with small cedars scattered throughout its
entirety. Several cedars were freshly rubbed, and scrapes
ran along the lower side. Pushed decaying timber bordered
the upper side, with scattered piles creating openings.
Staying toward the corner where the buck exited would pro-
vide the least intrusive approach route. A large, crooked
hackberry was in a perfect location for my ambush point.
This would be a difficult set up due to the twisted nature of
the tree, but it was where it needed to be. Choose the tree
because of the spot, not the spot because of the tree.
As the cold rain increased, I set the stand and exited the
area. Forecasts predicted a cold front to blow in, and there
would be no wind until sunrise. Knowing downward thermals
would be falling, I realized the buck would walk the lower edge
of the cut, scent checking the thicket edge and the ridgetop. I
was excited about the morning’s prospect, but I knew I would
have to shoot him before he paralleled my location.
The following morning my steps crackled through icy
leaves. Slowly working my way up the south side of the
ridge, I was relieved to find the pathway I had cleared for the
last 50 yards to the stand. Finally settling into my stand, the
difficulty of fitting my 6-foot, 4-inch frame into the cramped
space became apparent. Looking up, I spotted two branches
paralleling each other as they protruded from the tree.
Climbing up to them, I settled in for the wait.
Daylight slowly began to creep through the cedars as
the sound of squirrels foraging brought life to the still woods.
As the early dawn light illuminated the blue-green tones of
the cedars, the shadowed areas between and below them
appeared nearly devoid of light. The snap of a branch
brought the realization that the foraging “squirrels” were in
reality deer. Peering into the shadows I finally saw the out-
line of the white horned buck from the day before, now
accompanied by a second buck.
Slowly the bucks worked their way toward the cut.
Attempting to reposition myself, I realized my sweater had
frozen to the tree. Unable to break free for fear of being
heard, I chose to wait until he stepped directly in front of me.
The two bucks briefly locked antlers, then turned and
walked along the lower edge of the cut. Drawing as he
stepped behind a cedar, I shifted to allow my elbow to clear
the hackberry’s trunk. As the buck stepped forward, I
remember the blue-gray cast of the cedars reflecting off his
frost-covered back. Focusing on the top of the shoulder’s
crease, I released, embedding the arrow in the upper center
of the chest.
My arrow’s nock protruded from his chest as the broad-
head buried in a stump on his opposite side. Taking three
bounds, he stopped, turned on the other buck, and toppled.
The second buck immediately approached him,
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
Seeing the moment for what it was, Alan’s past expe-
riences allowed him to choose the right tree to arrow
this beautiful buck.
locked”antlers, and then proceeded out the ridge.
As I approached the downed monarch I stopped and sat
down just to look at him and reflect on the hunt. He was a
beautiful mountain buck. In my opinion mature mountain
whitetails are the smartest deer I have ever hunted. I was
lucky to have been given the opportunity just to see him.
Having the foresight to act on the sighting came from years
of trial and error. I learned many years ago that these types
of opportunities are rare, and that to be successful, you must
take advantage of them. You must see the moment and the
deer’s behavior for what it is, not what you think it should
be.
Two weeks later, during rifle season, I arrowed a second
buck as I hunted the original stand hoping for a roving buck.
With the heavy hunting pressure of rifle season and the peak
of the rut, I felt a roving buck might scent check the cedar
thicket during a northerly wind. And he did, “One last time!”
Alan lives in eastern Tennessee with his wife Kristy and
son Gabe. His daughter Becky and her husband Wes live
near them with their son Charlie. Today Alan and Gabe
spend every moment possible in the mountains bowhunting
and fly fishing. Alan also spends much of his time in support
of the Professional Bowhunters Society and bowhunting.
Equipment Notes
Alan was hunting with a 56# Morrison Shawnee, Douglas
fir shafts, and Snuffer broadheads.
33
 Backcountry
The Whereabouts of Wild Water
By A. Preston Taylor
suspected that something was wrong on the flight from
I Utah to Boston. The early warning signs of an upset
stomach were churning deep in my bowels. I knew I was
in trouble while waiting in line to board a plane from Boston
to Spain; it was difficult to stand, and even while sitting my
body was forced into a hunched position. I did what most 16-
year-olds do: ignored the problem and pretended I’d be
alright. The situation became irreversibly worse on the tar-
mac.
I was lucky to have been in this situation prior to 9/11,
after which, as federal air marshals protected airplanes, I
may have been tazed before I reached the lavatory. The air-
plane was gathering speed to take off. My stomach tightened
34 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
in knots. I sprinted for the bathroom amidst shouts from the
stewardess to take my seat. I only barely made the toilet and
didn’t get the door closed when I started vomiting and imme-
diately turned around for a spout of diarrhea. The stew-
ardess backed off while the plane became airborne.
I had contracted dysentery, or giardia. I’m not sure
which. I spent the next ten days slowly dying from dehydra-
To follow a stream to its source, you must find where
a tributary branches off, such as the fork of a creek
as seen in the picture above. Continue following the
smaller branches of a creek until you come to its
spring.

It is easy to spot a spring in this burned landscape of
the West. The bright green foliage of water loving
plants easily catches your eye. Notice the fold in
the terrain the water follows.
tion until we could find a doctor who spoke English to pre-
scribe me some antibiotics, which began to immediately ease
my symptoms. I recovered in enough time to enjoy the
Mediterranean and some home-cooked paella.
I picked up the microscopic parasite while spending two
months in the deserts and mountains of southeastern Utah.
This was my inaugural immersion in wilderness, and while
hiking and camping across the spectacular sagebrush
canyons and aspen meadows we drank out of any source of
water we could find. And we treated everything we drank by
either boiling it for five minutes or soaking iodine tablets in
our water bottles. We navigated by topographic maps, pick-
ing springs to camp near as they were marked on the map.
Since it was an arid environment, we often had to drink out
of whatever water was available including stock ponds, pud-
dles in old tire ruts, small creeks, and once from a horse
trough with two inches of water squirming with insect lar-
vae, a dead bird, a dead mouse, and a dead woodrat (we fil-
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
tered this water through a bandanna, boiled it, and treated
it with iodine; yet it still tasted of death). I’m not sure which
source of water was responsible for my illness, but I’ll never
forget the experience. I’ve never had giardia since, and I
have neither filtered nor treated wild water in over a decade.
For those wishing to taste wild water unfiltered, start at
the beginning—a spring. The origins of a creek, tucked deep
in the headwaters of a ravine and hidden amongst a dense
growth of willows or alders, offers the safest source of drink-
ing water. To find a spring, without a map, follow a river
upstream until a tributary creek branches off. If you contin-
ue in this manner, turning off at each successive branch in
the creek, you will eventually find yourself following a trick-
le of a creek that terminates in a seep or spring. It is here
you will find safe drinking water (so long as an animal is not
wallowing, urinating, or defecating in it). However, I current-
ly drink from creeks with wild hog or elk wallows at their
sources without complaint from my stomach. In the begin-
ning, start with a tablespoon of unfiltered, untreated, wild
water per day, and work your way up slowly to consuming
only wild water. Most of us have been conditioned to drink-
ing purified water either from the municipal water district
or out of a plastic bottle bought from a store. Your body has
to get used to wild water, so start slowly.
From a distance, springs can be located by the lush
growth of green vegetation growing in the hydrated soil. In
open environments, these water sources can be seen across
ravines and miles in the distance. However, in forested
woods you may have to play more of a detective role to locate
fresh water. If you don’t start from below and follow the
water upstream, you can also investigate the beginnings of a
spring from above. Walking a ridgeline, you will notice slight
35
folds in the terrain. If you follow one of these downhill, it
may form into a ravine that could hold a spring or creek. But
starting from the top is harder and more of a gamble.
Another method for locating water is to learn which
trees prefer moister environments and those that prefer to
be drier. In my neck of the woods, alder is a great tree to
learn, since it only grows where its roots can get wet. Other
water loving trees include cottonwoods, willows, and red-
osier dogwood. Chain fern and Juncus (rushes) often encircle
a spring out West. Learn to identify plants that grow in wet
environments.
My biggest concern when consuming wild water is
human activity. When I know I’ll be relying on unfiltered
water I make sure to be certain there are no human houses,
campsites, illegal marijuana grow sites, or other human
activity above and upstream of my water source. (As a side
note, please be considerate of other people and do your busi-
ness well away from streams. In the end you drink that
water too, even if it is treated.) This effort takes some boot

The author fills his water bottle directly from a

spring. This untreated and unfiltered water tastes so
good! Photograph by Heather Taylor.

leather to confirm. When I go hunting or exploring in new

locations, I fill my water bottles at springs so I can be sure
that there is no human contamination. However, I love hunt-
ing in the wilderness where I know the lay of land and can
drink out of any creek unconcerned. This close relationship
with a specific mountain and the waters coursing down its
creeks brings me joy.
Consider your journey with wild water one more step
down the path of woodsmanship. The knowledge it takes to
locate clean drinking water and your reliance on the bounty
of nature’s rainfall will enhance the depth of the hunting
experience. I guarantee it.

Frequent contributor Preston Taylor works as a

groundsman for a tree-climbing arborist and lives in North-
Coastal California.
A seep emerges from the ground at the origins of a
watercourse. Notice the thicket of red-osier dogwood
growing in the background. This shrub announces
the presence of water.

36 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Photo by Don & Lori Thomas
A Second Shot for a First Elk
he lead cow walked by so close I could clearly hear
T her exhale in the cold morning air. I really hadn’t
expected another elk to make its way down the
steep trail a second day in a row, but I wasn’t looking at one
elk. There were thirteen of them. The cow paused to decide
if it was safe to proceed. I had the wind, and after a moment
she continued down the slope and the others followed. The
big bull was, of course, the last in the herd and as he came
even with me, I picked a spot, came to anchor, released...and
missed? What had happened?
A haze of wildfire smoke filtered through the autumn
sun as we unloaded the truck in the Sawtooth National
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
By Rick Spicer
Forest. Idaho is a long way from Nebraska and even longer
from Arkansas. My buddy Robert Tung and I had left
Fayetteville a few days before and driven to southern
Nebraska to pick up our friend and self-bow maker, Correy
Hawk. This trip had been months in the making for the
three of us, but in many ways, I would come to learn I had
been preparing for it my whole life. I grew up hunting white-
tails in the Ozarks, always dreaming of hunting big game in
big mountains with a traditional bow. I had travelled West
often during my youth for backpacking and mountaineering
trips, but had not yet had an opportunity to hunt in the
West. I decided it was time to change that.
In late spring 2020, I was able to pull an any-elk tag, but
37

The author overlooking Idaho elk country.
they went quickly and there were none left by the time
Correy had applied. Fortunately, he was able to snag a mule
deer tag. Correy is skilled at producing high quality Osage
orange and hackberry self-bows. He and I would both be
hunting with bows and wooden arrows of his own making.
Robert was new to archery, but not to adventure. He’s an
experienced backpacker, so when he asked to join our hunt,
we welcomed his company and the extra set of legs to haul
meat down the mountain, should we be fortunate enough to
need help.
I had visited Idaho twice before for climbing and fishing
but had never set foot in the zone we had chosen to hunt. We
knew that we’d have our work cut out for us, but you’ve got
to start somewhere and we’re always game for some do-it-
yourself fun.
For the length of our muggy Arkansas summer I poured
over topographical maps, constantly reviewed the Idaho
38 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Fish and Game website, carefully selected our minimal gear,
and shot my bow. Early September arrived, and my final
preparation was to make traditional pemmican for our back-
country journey. I always appreciate its high fat content for
hard days in the mountains. Our two-and-a-half-day road
trip led us to a remote trailhead in the Sawtooth Mountains.
With moderate packs and three night’s worth of food, we had
decided to scout a remote canyon south of the trailhead. We
hiked less than a mile on the trail before we left it for more
secluded country. Using the creek as a handrail and taking
cues from the landscape to keep our bearings, it wasn’t long
before we began to see both elk and deer sign. We spotted
mule deer moving up the mountain that evening and made
camp along the creek in some downed timber, being careful
to check for widow-makers before bedding down.
We were greeted with an overcast sky on the second day
of the hunt, and after packing up camp we began to make
our way farther up the steepening valley. The higher we
climbed the more sign we encountered: elk and mule deer
scat, rubs, tracks, and eventually wallows as we neared the
back of the basin. After spending some time glassing the
upper canyon, we decided to move about a half mile back
down to make our camp. That location would give us good
access to water, provide a windbreak and position us a short
distance from good vantage points. That evening it began to
drizzle, and the mercury began to drop. We spent the hour
before dusk glassing over one of the lower open areas near
camp. We didn’t spot any animals, but we were thrilled to be
there all the same.
When I crawled out of my sleeping bag to stretch my
back the next morning, I discovered it had rained most of the
night. I hadn’t made it far from my tarp, when a scream
came from far up the canyon, freezing me in my steps. I was-
n’t sure if I had really heard it or not, but before I had time
to give it much thought a second bugle echoed from the
mountain walls. I quickly grabbed my bow, quiver, and binoc-
ulars, and took off up the valley to a place where I could see
better, without even saying anything to Robert and Correy.
As I crouched on the edge of the clearing where I had sat the
night before, Correy slipped up just behind me. The elk con-
tinued to bugle, but I was having a tough time finding him.
Suddenly, I realized I had been looking too low. He was com-
ing down from a high pass at about 10,500 ft.
I am new to calling elk but managed to get him talking
to me with some cow calling. He was alone but seemed to be
on a mission. I realized I’d never be able to get to his side of
the valley in time, and that our only option was to guess his
route and cut him off on our side. We moved at speed up our

Robert and Correy crossing a creek in the elk zone.
side of the ridge while he moved up the other, anxiously
waiting for him to bugle again. After climbing hundreds of
feet through steep timber, we were nearly out of breath
when he screamed one more time. I nearly came out of my
boots! He couldn’t have been more than 30 yards away. A
rocky outcrop stood just yards above me. I wanted to reach it
before setting up for the shot but never had the chance
before he busted us. Disappointed but exhilarated, we head-
ed back down to camp.
That afternoon, we decided to split up. Correy headed
back down the canyon to look for more sign while Robert and
I took the high ground, exploring a ridge above us that
would allow us great views of our valley as well as the next
valley to the east. The terrain got very steep as we neared
the top of the ridge, but the view was stunning. It had begun
to sleet on us as we climbed, and thunder and high winds
greeted us as we topped out on the narrow ridge. We glassed
down both canyons for a half hour but could see storm clouds
approaching in the distance and decided it might be best to
move lower.
Just before we headed down, I looked across our valley
and just happened to spot two cows in an open area north of
our camp. They weren’t moving and after a few minutes I
looked at Robert and said, “Let’s go get ‘em.” It took nearly
two hours to cover the ground to their location but we man-
aged to get within 30 yards of them before getting busted.
They were well hidden in heavy downed timber by the time
we closed in, and they saw us before we saw them. No mat-
ter, on our third day of hunting I had already had two very
close encounters and was grateful for the experience. That
evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about the trail that morn-
ing’s bull had travelled down from the high pass. I wasn’t
sure how often elk used it, but I knew if they did, I’d know
just where to find them. And if the wind was right, I might
just have a shot.
As I took my first drink of water early on the fourth
morning, I could hear slivers of ice rattling in my bottle. It
was well before dawn as I climbed out of my sleeping bag
and grabbed my bow to make the hike across the valley and
up to the top of the tree line on the scree slope near the elk
trail. I scrambled up the loose rock, and after checking the
wind I found a small area to set up an ambush in some
stunted spruce trees just 20 yards or so from the trail. I
thought it unlikely that any elk would travel down from that
steep pass two days in a row. It was, however, a magnificent
place to watch the world wake up. As I sat, I thought of my
family and prayed I’d be lucky enough to bring my kids back
there one day.
I’m not sure if it was movement in my peripheral vision
or the sounds of stones bouncing down the rocky slope, but I
looked up and saw a cow elk headed my way from the pass.
I began to get into shooting position, thrilled at the opportu-
The author with his Idaho bull elk.

nity to shoot a cow. Then I noticed more elk, then more, and
finally 13 in all with a large bull in the back. I could barely
believe what I was seeing. The lead cow made her way to my
elevation and stopped, looking hard below and testing the
wind. My wind indicator confirmed I still had the breeze
with me for the moment. Once she was satisfied, the lead
cow continued, and the rest of the herd followed suit. The
bull paused, adjacent to me on the steep slope. Trying to
focus and ignore the cold, I found my anchor only to watch a
second later as my arrow hit the rocks directly under the
bull. He jumped, and a few moments later all the elk ran
down the mountain. I wasn’t quite sure what had happed,
but I did know one thing: I had blown it. It occurred to me I
was not used to seeing elk up so close and that I must have
misjudged his distance from me. At home, the whitetail I’m
used to hunting are on average 150-200 pounds, and this elk
was easily four times that size. The poor shot was hard to
swallow but it confirmed what I already knew. This trip was
going to be challenging with plenty of lessons to learn.
I sat back down to gather my thoughts and consider
what my next move might be when I heard another sound
and looked back up to the pass. To my astonishment, another
cow elk was heading down the trail. I quickly grabbed anoth-

40 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
The author, Correy, and Robert with Rick’s elk ready
to pack out of the Idaho backcountry.
er arrow from my quiver and made myself as small as possi-
ble. As she approached, I saw another cow and calf behind
her and another large bull. Somehow, I knew that this would
be my time. I told myself to simply focus on my shot
sequence. This was everything I had worked for all summer.
The bull made his way just upwind of me and stopped at 20
yards. I came to anchor, repeating inside my head, “back ten-
sion.” He caught my movement in his periphery, and as he
turned his head our eyes met for a moment. I refocused on a
tuft of hair behind his shoulder and the arrow slipped away.
As I watched it hit the mark, he spun and disappeared into
a shallow ravine. I saw the arrow break. Soon he came up
the other side of the ravine, crashing through the timber. I
made a mental note of a large dead spruce at the last place
I saw him.
I felt good about the shot, but I gave him half an hour,
which seemed like the appropriate and respectful thing to
do. Soon after, I picked up the trail and found both of my
arrows. The trail was easy to follow, and when I found him,
I realized he had likely expired as soon as he hit the ground.
My arrow had passed into both of his lungs. I knelt beside
him and quietly thanked him for the gift of his flesh to feed
my family. At that point I could no longer contain myself
after all the work we had put into the trip and let out a
scream of my own. The guys knew what that meant as soon
as they heard it. They had been watching the whole scene
through binoculars back at camp and were anxious to see
what had happened. When they arrived, I hastily told them
the story, and we took in the moment. Then the real work
began.
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
The author packing out his elk rack.
In three hours, we removed nearly 250 pounds of meat,
including the heart, liver, back sinew, and skull and moved
everything back to camp. We hung what we couldn’t carry
and after packing up our camp we headed down the moun-
tain. My pack was nearly 90 pounds for the 4.5-mile journey
down over 2,000 feet of elevation through steep slopes and
fallen timber. The trip was painful. We fell many times, but
we also laughed, and I relished every second of it. Somehow,
Correy shot a dusky grouse on the way down with his own
handmade bow and a 75-pound pack on, a testament to his
own skill as a hunter. We finished the hike in the dark and
the next morning made our second trip to harvest the last
four game bags of meat. Correy shot a second grouse, and we
had a bluebird day in which to take in the experience.
Idaho had been good to us. We had come prepared for
nearly two weeks, and had the good fortune to harvest a 6x6
bull on the fourth day. Adventure can take many forms, but
increasingly I find that few are as rich as those that begin
with a bow and lead to a blank spot on a topo map. Our pub-
lic lands allow for this type of adventure. We just have to be
willing to put in the work, and learn the lessons that the
wild places can teach us.
Rick Spicer lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas with his wife
and two children. He is part owner of a specialty outdoor
equipment store where he also teaches wilderness living
skills. He is a board member of Arkansas Backcountry
Hunters and Anglers and an avid photographer.
41
 phill and downhill shots can

U present certain challenges to

bowhunters. The first problem
presents itself in the form of physics
and math. The second set of problems
has to do with shooting form. The first
issue is rather straight forward, while
the second is a bit more complex. In
honor of my late high school math
teacher, who swore I’d use geometry
and algebra in real life, we’ll start off
there.
Looking at the diagram here, “c” rep-
resents the distance between the
bowhunter and the animal. The letter
“a” represents the difference in eleva-
tion between the two, and “b” is the hor-
izontal distance between the hunter
Traditional Shooting
and the animal if they were at the same
elevation. As bowhunters, we see dis-
Uphill/Downhill Shooting
tance “c” and make our shots according-
ly. The problem is that gravity only
By Jason R. Wesbrock
affects the arrow along distance “b.”
Seeing as how “b” is less than “c,” if we uphill/downhill situations, shooting for mountainous terrain, the actual trajec-
make the shot for a longer distance the distance between you and the ani- tory of the arrow is often much less
than the actual trajectory of the arrow mal can have disastrous results. But than the distance of the shot. But what
caused by gravity, the shot will go high. what about those of us who don’t hunt about folks who hunt from tree stands
(I say “will” for the sake of discussion. in the mountains? For example, tree in relatively flat terrain? Contrary to
As we’ll see in a bit, this may or may not stand hunters in relatively flat terrain. popular belief, the difference in trajecto-
be the case.) Let’s look at an average example and ry really doesn’t matter.
Let’s look at an extreme example. see how much difference the math real- So why do some tree stand hunters
The hunter in question is out west chas- ly makes. have a tendency to shoot very high? If
ing mountain goats and takes a steep Pretend our hunter is now perched the problem isn’t the difference
downhill shot. The distance between 20 feet up a tree (distance “a”) and tak- between the distance to the animal and
our hunter and the animal (“c”) is 25 ing aim at a deer 15 yards away (dis- how gravity affects the arrow, what’s
yards, and the downhill angle is 45 tance “c”). We can apply the same math the issue? To answer that question, we
degrees. Applying the Pythagorean as before and determine the distance have to examine shooting form, and
Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) and some basic gravity will affect the trajectory of the here’s where things get a lot more com-
geometry, we know distances “a” and “b” arrow (distance “b”) is 13.44 yards. plicated.
are both just shy of 18 yards. So, the That’s only about a yard and a half. The When we look at an archer standing
bowhunter’s 25-yard shot will have the arrow’s impact difference may be an on level ground, holding at full draw, we
trajectory of an 18-yard shot. If the inch at most. Basically, it’s a moot point. should see what’s called T form—the
bowhunter does not compensate accord- If the deer is 20 yards away, the differ- upper body, bow arm, and string arm
ingly, the result will likely be a miss ence between “c” and “b” is now only form the letter T. On uphill or downhill
over the animal’s back, or worse, a high 1.14 yards—even less relevant. shots, the archer should bend at the
wound. What can we determine by these waist, maintaining the letter T with
As you can see, when shooting in examples? When dealing with extreme their upper body, the arms still in line
mountainous terrain or other extreme uphill or downhill shooting, such as in with the arrow, pointing at the target.

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 43

Unfortunately, the tendency is often to
not bend at the waist, but to move the
bow arm down and raise the string arm
up for downhill shots; opposite for
uphill.
For a downhill shot this means the
archer will often keep their head
straight up and down, thereby having
their dominant eye higher above their
arrow than normal resulting in a high
shot. To see the effect of this, point your
finger at a distant object, raise your
head and notice what happens to the
relationship between your finger and
the spot you’re pointing at. As you raise
your eye higher above the arrow, your
bow hand appears to drop lower rela-
tive to the target. If you shoot with the
same gap for conscious aimers or feel
for instinctive shooters, your shot will
go high. This is likely the number one
cause of high shots on downhill angles,
especially out of tree stands in relative-
ly flat terrain where the math says
there should be no tangible trajectory
difference.
If we all shot with perfectly consis-
tent T form, no matter the angle of the
shot, knowing how to deal with uphill or
downhill shots would be nothing more
than a math problem. We could plug
some numbers into a formula and spit
out our answer. Or more practically, just
remember to cut a bit of distance from
our line of sight to the animal—more as
the angle increases—and take the shot.
Unfortunately, when it comes to shoot-
ing traditional bows without draw
checks, it’s not that simple.
Compound bows have draw stops
and peep sights to insure identical draw
length and head position from shot to
shot. With that type of equipment, the
archer always knows that they will
have to cut x-number of yards for their
shot depending on the distance and
angle. How to shoot a particular shot
can be determined with a simple angle-
44
compensating range finder that does
the math for you. But absent draw stops
and peep sights to guarantee such con-
sistency, how to compensate for uphill
or downhill shots becomes individual. I
learned this lesson very clearly several
years ago while shooting the NFAA
Outdoor Nationals in Darrington,
Washington.
Having lived in northeast Illinois my
entire life, shooting in steep terrain
wasn’t something to which I was accus-
tomed. So, when I arrived in the
Cascade Mountains of northwest
Washington for practice day at the field
archery tournament, the first thing I
did was find the targets with the hard-
est angles and shoot them repeatedly.
The host club gave every archer what’s
called a cut chart for targets—tables
that listed every target, the distance to
the targets (distance “c” from our dia-
gram), the angle of the shot, and what
distance the target should be shot for
(distance “b”).
What I discovered was that, for me, I
didn’t have to cut any yardage for the
shots that weekend. Even hard uphill
and downhill 55-yard targets where I
should have had to shoot for several
yards less, I still shot for the full dis-
tance and grouped in the center of the
targets. Over the next several days
those of us in the Traditional and
Longbow classes had many discussions
on how we personally dealt with the
challenging terrain. Some people cut a
lot of yardage, some people none at all.
One of the more accomplished longbow
shooters there commented that he actu-
ally had to cut yardage for downhill
shots and add for uphill.
As we discussed earlier, raising one’s
head position relative to the arrow will
cause a person to unintentionally aim
higher. But failing to maintain proper T
form (read: fully bend at the waist) will
actually result in a shorter draw length
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
because the line between the bow hand,
front shoulder, rear shoulder, and string
arm elbow is no longer straight. It’s
crooked, shortening the distance
between the bow hand and string hand.
And even if the archer does properly
bend at the waist, doing so can cause
one to become weaker in their upper
body, making them think they’re fully
expanded when they’re not. Both form
issues result in drawing the bow less
and shooting the arrow slower, with
more arch, causing it to impact lower
than normal.
These three form deviations—head
position, crooked T form, and reduced
expansion—will all have varying effects
on how individual bowhunters must
compensate, if at all, for uphill and
downhill shooting. In a perfect world we
could simply employ the algebra and
geometry we swore in school we’d never
use again and know exactly how to deal
with such shots. But we’re not robots,
and our equipment lacks the built-in
mechanical systems to eliminate much
of that human element. So in the end, if
you want to know how to shoot in vary-
ing terrain, the only sure way to find
out is to get off the couch, go outside
and shoot. And with that in mind, I
have a tree stand and a target to go
shoot. Best of luck this upcoming sea-
son.
Regular TBM contributor Jason
Wesbrock makes his home in Illinois
where he lives with his wife Christine
and daughter Rachel. He has used his
skills with a traditional bow to take sev-
eral dozen big game animals across
North America as well as win numerous
state, national and world archery cham-
pionships.

Texas Scrub Brush Javelina
was getting sleepy as my truck
I purred down Highway 90 in south-
ern Texas on a pleasant Saturday
afternoon. Just a mile and a half out of
Valentine, I passed an iconic piece of art
set off the highway: Prada Marfa, a
showcase in the middle of nowhere with
all left-foot shoes and half-purses on
display. I welcomed the stop to look it
over and pour a cup of coffee to wake me
up. In another hour, I would be at camp
where several PBS members—dubbed
the Marfa Marauders by one of the
group’s Louisiana members—would set-
tle in, get gear ready, and spend the
evening rekindling old friendships…a
huge part of why I love this trip each
year.
Sunday morning I went out to scout
my normal hunting area, which encom-
passes several hundred acres of Texas
scrub brush within two long, deep
draws. Sitting up on the ridge allows
me to glass both draws with many game
trails and pig rootings. On past trips to
the area, I had been fortunate to take
several javelina in one draw and had
seen some very large wild boar.
However, this year there was less sign
on the trails than in past years.
The ranch has a wide variety of flora,
including mesquite, prickly pear, cholla,
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
Photo by Don & Lori Thomas
By T.J. Conrads
live oak, and several species of grass
and shrubs. In addition to javelina and
hogs, mule deer and scaled quail—also
known as blue quail or cottontops—are
abundant in the Texas brush country.
Strange as it sounds, I have seen some
huge elk on the ranch, as well as
aoudad and other exotics that have
migrated from other ranches. But
javelina and hogs are the reason we
come here, not to mention the cama-
raderie and fine dining that we share.
The ranch encompasses tens of thou-
sands of acres and was once a working
cattle ranch. After that, Corriente cat-
tle, originally imported from Spain in
45

Bo Slaughter and Ronnie Bauer with their first day javelina.
1493 and famous for rodeo events such
as team roping and bulldogging, were
bred here and sold all over the West.
The terrain is rugged in many places
with hills and deep draws with dry
creek beds filled with scrub brush that
tears at your clothing. The old saying
that everything in Texas has horns or
thorns seems accurate.
Monday morning found me perched
on a rock where I could glass about a
quarter-mile up and down one of the
draws. By 10 a.m. I had not seen any-
thing, so I hiked down into the draw to
take a look. There were a few hog tracks
and rootings, but no sign of javelina, so
I headed back to camp for lunch to find
that Bo Slaughter and Ronnie Bauer
had both taken javelina. A few of the
others had seen game, and admitted a
few misses, but no one had seen hogs.
After lunch I went back out for the
evening hunt, but again saw no game.
After two days of not seeing any game
other than a few scattered quail and
lots of songbirds, I decided to pull out
my map and seek new country several
miles south of camp.
46
The sunrise the following morning
was a riot of red, orange, yellow, and
azure as it beamed across the West
Texas landscape. Birds sang and a few
quail called out from the brush behind
the ranch house as I loaded up my truck
and headed out into new territory to see
what lay farther south. A few miles
from the ranch, motoring up and down
rocky hills and washouts, I spotted a
small band of javelina as they darted
across the road and into the thick
brush. When I stopped and got out
where they crossed, I found a water
tank and windmill down in a dry creek
bottom by a corral that had plenty of
hog and javelina tracks all around it.
After hiking around the area, I felt this
was a good place to sit for the evening
hunt.
There are dozens of Aermotor wind-
mills all over the ranch, all of which still
operate and fill holding tanks and
watering troughs that overflow, creating
easy access for wildlife. This precious
water is a magnet to all wildlife—birds,
hogs, deer, javelina, coyotes, quail, dove,
and many other animals—so that after-
noon I decided to hunt one of them that
had an old cement and rock corral that
Kevin Bahr with a javelina he
stalked and shot in the snow.
Wednesday we woke up to two inches
of snow, and more coming down. I opted
to stay in and get some writing done and
plan dinner (my personal recipe for clam
chowder with garlic sourdough), as it
was my night to cook for the boys.
Midday, Kevin rolled in with a javelina
he shot while stalking in the snow. After
helping him with the skinning and quar- The author stalked and shot his
tering, we retired to the ranch house for first javelina on the hill behind
a late lunch and adult beverages. this leaking windmill.
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
would suffice for a blind.
As the afternoon slowly eased into
the western sky, several dozen scaled
quail suddenly emerged from the brush
and warily eyed the seeping water.
After several minutes, they came in and
drank, pecked at the soil, then ran off
the same way they came in. No sooner
had they left when a single javelina
appeared on the hill in front of me, root-
ing around and munching on a prickly
pear cactus. Surely it was coming into
the water, I thought, but within a few
minutes it turned up the hill and
worked away from me. I had no other
option than to grab my bow and try and
put a stalk on it. The result of a short stalk and well-placed arrow by the author.
The wind was mild and the ground
noisy to walk on, but I had closed the The shot was angling away, and the It had died on its feet.
distance to around 15 yards. The javeli- hit looked good. With a grunt, the javeli- I walked up and removed my arrow,
na was in the middle of a patch of green na darted up the hill, growling and pop- which had taken it quartering away
sotol—a low growing species of plant ping its jaw before it stopped, turned and was buried up to the fletching. The
resembling yucca or agave—eating the back toward me, and appeared to lie familiar skunk-like smell from the
leaves and stomping around in it. Since down. It was getting dark, and legal gland on its back wafted over me as I
it was fairly open between me and the shooting light would end in a half hour, admired the critter. Then out of the blue
animal, I nocked an arrow and waited. so after five minutes with no movement I heard a snort and low growl. Looking
It didn’t take long before the javelina from the javelina, I nocked another up, not ten feet away, was another
walked out of the patch, turned its arrow and slowly made my way up to javelina staring me down. Texas has a
head, and started licking its side. where it lay. Coming up behind it, I two javelina limit per hunter per year,
tossed a rock that hit its back…nothing. so I picked up my bow, and nocked an

The patch of sotol the author

found the javelina eating and
wallowing around in.

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 47


The author’s usual hunting spot is
a long draw off to the right. This
year, however, very little sign of
javelina or hogs were found.
arrow. The critter started stomping and
growling and raised its hair as if it was-
n’t sure what exactly I was. We were in
a standoff for several minutes…well,
maybe only a dozen or more seconds,
48
but it seemed longer. It turned, almost
allowing a shot, but remained covered
by brush. It then moved up the hill, still
growling, so I followed it up to the top,
where I lost it. It was getting too dark to
see well enough to shoot, so I made my
way back, grabbed the javelina I’d shot,
and headed back to the ranch house to
skin and put it on ice. Tomorrow would
be another day.
It was well after dark when I arrived
back in camp to find several of the others
had luck that day. The boys had already
eaten dinner, so I skinned, quartered,
bagged, and placed the meat in the freez-
One of the few hog rootings found.
er before heading up to the ranch house
to take a shower and see what, if any-
thing, was left over for dinner. camp, I headed back out to my blind,
The following morning, I drove to a climbed in, and waited. As the sun sank
new area where I set up a blind to take behind the hill in back of me, quail
photos of scaled quail as they came to appeared and I snapped several images,
water oozing out of a leaking windmill none of which turned out the way I
pump line I had found in a dry creek wanted in the low light, but I kept cap-
bed. I sat there most of the morning turing their antics for half an hour or
with no action, so at noon I headed back so…until a low growl from behind the
to camp for lunch and a nap before blind piqued my interest.
heading back out for the afternoon hunt. Lifting one of the window blinds, I
After shooting several arrows in saw a single javelina 15 yards behind me
Our PBS gang, dubbed the Marfa Marauders by Melvin Gregoire, get
together every year for our Texas bowhunt, and every other year bowfish-
ing in Louisiana. Front row left to right: Kevin Bahr, T.J. Conrads, Bruce
Jedry, Bill Terry, Ronnie Bauer, and Russell Lantier. Back row: Emile
LeBlanc, Steve Young, Bo Slaughter, Mark Wang, and Melvin Gregoire.
www.traditionalbowhunter.com

The author with his second javelina.
giving the blind the stink eye, when all of
a sudden it turned and slowly walked up
the hill, growling all the way. Once it
topped the hill, I grabbed my bow, got the
wind in my face, and hiked up behind
where I last saw it. It was a long shot,
but I had to at least give it a go.
As I reached the top of the hill, I saw
the javelina grooming itself not ten
yards away. When it turned broadside, I
sent an arrow tight behind its shoulder.
Cholla in bloom in the south
Texas country.
In a blur of growling and popping of
jaws, it spun around and bit off the rear
of my arrow and then went on a mad
dash back down the hill, collapsing not
15 yards from my blind. I sat down on a
rock and stared down at the fallen ani-
mal, taking the scene, and the stalk, in
reverent and thankful thoughts.
I sat there for a long time, reminisc-
ing about all the years I have been
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
blessed to hunt here and wondering
how long I can enjoy this place. The
friendships and camaraderie we share,
great meals, the beauty of the land and
wildlife, and of the successes we have
etched into my memories. This was
another hunt full of new and cherished
memories, of which in the end is all we
ever have. The experiences in life are
what make the journey so important,
and I yearned for many, many more as I
slowly walked down the scree-covered
hill to the fallen javelina.
T.J. Conrads lives on the high desert
of Idaho with his wife Robin. He was
unable to attend this year’s Texas javeli-
na bowhunt due to having major shoul-
der surgery at the same time. He looks
forward, though, to next year’s hunt.
Equipment Notes
T.J. used a 56# Black Widow longbow,
homemade tapered cedar arrows, and
Cliff Zwickey broadheads.
49
 Bowyer’s Corner
Fixing Wooden Arrows in a Snap
By Stephen Graf

Left—The two most common footing styles 4-dart(top),

2-dart(middle), and the 1-dart(bottom) footing
produced by using the jig.

W
ooden arrows provide many advantages to the
archers who choose to use them. Wood is the low-
est cost, most environmentally friendly material
Side view of the jig with the wedge resting in
from which to make an arrow. The cost can be made even
the back.
lower with every step of the construction process that
archers take upon themselves to do. In fact, wooden arrows
give the archer turned fletcher the widest opportunity for
exploring the hobby. He can dabble with adding a crest to the
arrow or go to the store and buy a board suitable for the
manufacture of arrow shafts. If he goes so far as to make his
own arrows from a board of pine, fir, or poplar, he will soon
find they can be made for less than 50 cents each.
Wooden arrows are steeped in the history of archery and
bowhunting. All of the fancy and famous shooting of old was
done with wooden arrows. From the long-gone days of Robin
Hood to the not so long-gone days of Howard Hill, wooden
arrows were the only choice.
A broken arrow (left), and a new footing ready to be
As for accuracy, I guess that can be debated. Many
glued in place.
archers have made many amazing shots with wooden
arrows. Have you seen the movie short Meet the Champs ment some manner of splice (or footing) to repair the arrow.
that shows Ken Wilhelm shooting a cuff link off his brother’s While I like working on arrows, I don’t want to spend any
head with a wooden arrow? more time or money than I have to fixing them. I think oth-
About the only fault I can find with wooden arrows is ers might also feel this way. That’s why most broken arrows
that they will, from time to time, snap after a hard impact. I get shot up into the sky for one last glorious flight.
must admit that they do break more often than carbon Now we arrive at the point of this article, which is to
arrows. If wooden arrows have an Achilles’ heel, breaking describe an easily made low-cost jig that can be used to
would be it. splice a broken arrow shaft to a new section and thus restore
While there are solutions to the problem of broken it to use. I hope that after you study the simple jig offered in
arrows, most involve expensive jigs and lots of time to imple- this article, you will stick those broken arrows back into

50 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
your quiver so that you can bring them
home to fix.
Over the years I have tinkered with
several jigs designed to repair an arrow,
trying to reduce the time and effort it
takes to restore that shaft to a useful
condition. None of those jigs produced a
repaired arrow reliably. While it might
appear that each failure was its own
waste of time, I have found the iterative
process of discovery and invention to be
highly reliable (in the end) at producing
good results. I iterated a bunch to come
to this handy jig, and because of all my
previous failures, I knew I was onto
something good when I tested it.
Aside from offering a quick and
sturdy way to repair your arrows, this
jig offers several other advantages to
Above—Splicing jig parts.
the owner of broken arrows.
Below—The splicing jig.
First, the jig is easy to make. The
only tools required for its fabrication
are a saw and a hammer. That said, a
table saw and a drill would reduce the
effort even further.
Secondly, the jig can be cheaply
made from some scrap 2 x 4 lumber. In
fact, that’s what I made mine from. But
I did have a table saw to rip the
required thin strips. If you don’t have a
table saw, then some thin strips can be
purchased from the local lumber store.
Third, the splice that the jig helps
create is durable. I have been shooting a
half-dozen spliced arrows (daily) all
summer and have not had any failures.
These arrows serve as target arrows
and roving blunts. I used Titebond III
glue to bond the splice together.
Finally, and most importantly, the many 2-dart splices and found that get- arrows that never really spun true. By
splice it creates is self-aligning. Those ting good alignment (so that when the contrast, the simply constructed 1-dart
that make spliced arrows (otherwise arrow is finished it will be round and splice is trued up while gluing it togeth-
known as footed arrows) differentiate spin true) with multi-dart splicing can er. I have found that if it feels right, it is
between the two most popular methods be challenging. right. As of the writing of this article, I
of splicing arrows by describing them as Only after going through the entire have made about two-dozen 1-dart
“2-dart” and “4-dart” splices. The splice repair process can you know if your splices and have yet to make a spliced
that this jig produces is a 1-dart splice. arrow will spin true. I spent a lot of arrow that didn’t spin true.
I have made a few 4-dart splices and time making 2- and 4-dart footed The 1-dart splice is different from

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 51


The broken arrow and footing are glued together and
clamped with clothes pins. Excess glue has been
wiped off.
the 2- and 4-dart splices in that it is made by joining two like
round shafts that have identical tapers. Thus, instead of need-
ing a square piece of wood that has a kerf cut into it to mate
to a taper cut onto the arrow shaft (that in turn must be
shaved down to round after the glue joint is dry), the 1-dart
repair needs another round shaft to mate to the arrow (that
does not need to be shaved down after the glue joint dries).
If this splice has a drawback, I think it would be in the
looks department. I have to admit that it isn’t as sexy as the
2- and 4-dart footings. Instead of highlighting the splice by
using contrasting woods, the maker of a 1-dart splice might
want to play down its appearance. Using woods of the same
species will make the splice disappear in the eye of a casual
observer. In my case, I dip my arrows in white lacquer, so the
splice (no matter the style) is invisible.
The astute reader will now realize that the 1-dart splice
offers a use for all those over-spined shafts gathering dust in
the corner of the shop. I have found I can get four or five good
52 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
The jig is secured in a vice. The arrow or footing
stock has been tapered down in the jig.
splices out of an old arrow shaft.
The jig is simple enough in design that build-along
instructions are not necessary to get the gist and make the
jig. That said, I will note that there is nothing magical about
the dimensions given in the drawing. And I will further note
that it doesn’t matter if the jig is built exactly to the plans
because the same jig is used to create the “dart” on both the
arrow and the foot. Therefore, both darts will end up being
exactly the same, which is the important part.
I would finally note that the jig as described in the plans
will produce a glue surface about 4-inches long. This yields
plenty of surface area to create a joint that is stronger than
the surrounding wood. If your jig ends up making a glue sur-
face too much shorter than this, it may result in higher joint
stress and potential failures.
I like to have a no-strings-attached relationship with
my arrows. That means I don’t want to have so much time
and money tied up in my arrows that I hesitate to shoot
them for fear of loss or breakage. What fun is it to be worried
about the fate of your arrows? How can you expect to shoot
well if you are afraid your arrow will break or be lost?
This jig gives me even more reason to shoot my wooden
arrows happily, for I know that if they do break, it will take
but a few minutes to return them to my quiver, good as new.
As a former NASA engineer, Stephen Graf is our only
contributor who can honestly call himself a rocket scientist.
More about his tinkering with bows and arrows can be read
in his book: The American Longbow: How to make one, and
its place in a good life. Stephen lives with his family on their
50-acre subsistence farm in rural North Carolina.
Evolution of the Shrew
ongtime TBM readers may recall a story I penned
L for the Oct/Nov 2012 issue of this magazine titled
“Properly Aged.” The backdrop for this story was
Shrewhaven Lodge, the log cabin and backwoods property
owned in part by Ron LaClair. Ron was also the developer of
the Super Shrew longbow and recurve. The property is locat-
ed in the western end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula along
Armstrong Creek, which feeds into the Brule River. The
Brule divides Michigan and Wisconsin along this stretch of
wilderness and is known for whitetail deer and upland bird
hunting.
It has been 30 years since Ron first set foot on the prop-
erty to chase whitetail deer, and we just celebrated that
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
By Raymond Lyon
anniversary during the 2020 annual fall hunt. Our core
group is a little longer in the tooth now, but we still make the
annual trek as schedules and individual health allow. One of
the side benefits of Shrewhaven hunts since the mid 1990s
has been field testing new Super Shrew bow designs and
models. In addition to Ron’s familiar name, many readers
will recognize fellow campmate Tim Cosgrove as the long-
time owner of Kustom King Traditional Archery. New camp
member Henry Bodnik of Bearpaw Archery and Bodnik
Bows is another familiar name to traditional archers. With
this backdrop, it is a privilege to share the news that there
has been an ownership transition of Super Shrew bows and
Kustom King Traditional Archery. There’s a related article
53

A selection of Super Shrew bows at Shrewhaven.
forthcoming on the Kustom King Traditional Archery tran-
sition, however I hope to provide a little insight into the
Super Shrew bow ownership change and how it was planned
and formulated through the friendships forged at
Shrewhaven Lodge.
This story really begins back in 1981 when Tim pur-
chased what was then Kustom King Arrows from Pat
Graham. Shortly after, Tim set up a booth at the World
Longbow Championships next to Ron LaClair’s Traditional
Archery Shoppe booth and Fred Asbell’s Bighorn Bow
Company booth. This was during the fledgling rebirth of tra-
ditional archery and Tim and Ron struck up a business rela-
tionship soon after, with Tim supplying Ron his custom
tapered cedar arrows. As Tim’s business expanded beyond
arrows, he also wholesaled other traditional supplies to
Ron’s Traditional Archery Shoppe. As traditional archery
continued to grow and Ron and Tim got together at more and
more shoots and shows, their business relationship turned
into a friendship.
54 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
This was a time when traditional archery was taking off
with personal touches at the various summer events and
many vendors would gather at nighttime campfires to dis-
cuss business, hunting trips, and of course their passion for
the sport. In 1989, Ron invited Tim to hunt black bears in
Canada with him and this became the start of their tradition
of sharing hunting camp. When Ron decided to put together
a traditional camp on his new Shrewhaven property, Tim
was among the first to be included in the invitations. The
camp continued to evolve with our current crew throughout
the 1990s, which was also the time Ron was developing and
marketing his Shrew (1994) and Super Shrew (1996) bow
line.
In those early years, we were all shooting various bows
from different bowyers, but as Ron brought extra or new
bows to camp each fall, we started becoming Super Shrew
shooters ourselves. In 1999, just before the start of camp, I
made the three-hour drive from my home to Ron’s shop in
southern Michigan to pick up my first Super Shrew, a
Samurai model built by John McCullough. Although camp
was less than a week away, I wanted to get the bow home,
match some arrows, and get broadheads flying well from it
before arriving at camp. That year, I shot two whitetail does
fifteen minutes apart with my new Super Shrew.
John was the first of Ron’s bowyers to make what is now
the Super Shrew lineup of bows, starting in 1996. Gregg
Coffey, who T.J. Conrads interviewed for the Dec/Jan 2021
issue, was a bowyer of Ron’s starting in 2009. Shortly after
Gregg came on board, John McCullough started slowing
down, and eventually he wanted to go into business for him-
self. After 2015, Greg also wanted to venture out on his own.
Ron had several other bowyers temporarily producing a lim-
A mixture of oak and aspen create excellent habitat.
 Members’s bows ready to ship out.
An Autumn Gold model Super Shrew.
ited number of bows for him, but the demand for Super
Shrew bows was always greater than the supply. of bows to meet the demand from customers. Henry’s
During this transition of bowyers and growing the Super bowyers quickly put together forms to produce the full Super
Shrew line of bows, Tim’s Kustom King Traditional Archery Shrew line with a few changes approved by Ron, and for the
business had grown and expanded as well. Tim met Henry first time in many years, customers could get Super Shrew
Bodnik at a show in 2010, when Tim was already selling bows in all models and lengths, either from the stock bow
some Bearpaw archery products in his catalogue. Tim and lineup or within a few months of a custom order.
Henry became friends over the next few years. Henry extend- The lineup currently includes the most popular model,
ed his stays at Tim’s home when he traveled from Germany the Classic Hunter II longbow, in 52-, 54- and 56-inch
for shows in the United States, and Tim traveled to Germany lengths. This model has a compact forward handle riser and
to stay with Henry and see his company’s operations. Tim highly reflexed limbs that allow for comfortable shooting in
had been selling Henry’s Bodnik bow line in his catalogue for a compact bow design by archers with longer draw lengths.
several years, and as Ron continued to talk about his strug- The Super Shrew Little Favorite recurve is offered in 54-
gles getting bows produced, Tim began to formulate a plan to and 56-inch lengths. This bow was developed as a prototype
have Ron and Henry get to know each other.
Tim asked Ron if Henry could come to the 2018
Shrewhaven Camp. Tim provided Henry with a few of his
personal Super Shrew bows to work with studying and play-
ing with prototypes, and Henry brought samples to that first
camp. Ron and Henry meshed well and agreed to have
Henry produce a finished product for Ron to critique based
on the initial prototypes. Henry’s bowyers were quick to
duplicate the Super Shrew to Ron’s discerning standards,
and within a few months Ron was finally able to get a supply

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 55


Henry Bodnik of Bear Paw Archery and Ron LaClair
discussing change at Shrewhaven.
by John McCullough and brought to camp with Ron at one
of our annual hunts. Several camp members harvested deer
while taking turns hunting with the compact little recurve
and it was truly a camp favorite that year. The name Lil
Favorite was coined shortly, due to its popularity in camp.
The Super Shrew II, originally developed by Ron and John
McCullough, is still offered in 58- and 60-inch longbow con-
figurations with an updated limb design and slightly differ-
ent handle.
Ron will be the first to admit that at 84 years young, he’s
slowing down physically. He could see that his legacy was in
good hands with Henry and Tim, so it was time to formalize
transitioning the Super Shrew bow business. As of February
2020, Tim Cosgrove and Henry Bodnik are the new owners
of Super Shrew bows. Ron continues to be a consulting
resource to Tim and Henry and to answer direct questions
on various traditional website forums about Super Shrew
bows. Tim also realized he wanted to focus on the Super
Shrew bow business as well as his grandchildren and felt it
was time to transition Kustom King Traditional Archery to
a new owner after 40 years in business. As of October 2020,
Kustom King Archery is now under new ownership but, as
with Super Shrew Bows, Tim continues to consult with the
new owner, Ned Miller, ensuring that these two long stand-
ing traditional archery companies will continue to service
traditional archers throughout the world.
As for Shrewhaven Lodge? Camp was a little smaller
56 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Roger Norris with a doe he took at Shrewhaven.
this year. Henry was restricted from entering the country
due to the pandemic. Ron had to miss camp due to foot sur-
gery and related healing. They both plan on being back next
fall. On the bright side, we ate too much, laughed too much,
hunted hard, and shot Super Shrew bows. Henry and Tim
put together a special bow model for camp members com-
memorating 30 years of camp and the traditions built upon
our friendship. Camp members got to pick the model, length
and bow weight. Each bow was made with Osage for the ris-
ers and limb veneers. Unfortunately, the bows could not
travel with Henry on his flight as originally planned, and
the subsequent shipment didn’t make it through customs in
time to arrive at camp. Nonetheless, we all have been carry-
ing our new Autumn Gold Super Shrew bows into the
remaining archery seasons in our home hunting grounds.
With a little luck and good health, we’ll have a camp update
for TBM readers in another ten years.
The author is semi-retired from his
management/accounting career and spends most of his time
chasing whitetails, waterfowl, upland birds, and his wife in
northern Michigan
Equipment Notes
Camp members use Super Shrew bows in both longbow
and recurve configurations. Many camp members prefer
no bow quivers on the shorter length Super Shrews to
maintain their compact and handy attributes in hunting
situations. The 2021 camp will feature lots of Autumn
Gold member bows.

Broadheads: A Matter of Personal
Preference
A
s with most other topics dis-
cussed among bowhunters, ask
what is the best broadhead,
and why, and you will get as many
answers as the number of those who
you ask. Just as there is no singular
“best” broadhead for everyone—and
every situation. There are, though,
many outstanding broadheads on the
market. And the few broadheads I pre-
fer for my own personal bowhunting
most likely will not even be close to
yours. So be it; that is why archery—
and bowhunting in particular—is such
a personal endeavor.
To Skin a Cat
Broadheads
Several decades ago, the top selling
broadheads had replaceable razor
blades: Rocky Mountain Razors, Savora,
Wasp, Satellite…the list was endless. I
remember all too well the terrible day I
was hunting with aluminum shafting
with a 3-blade Satellite head on the
business end. I had called in a 5x5 bull
elk and placed an arrow into his chest,
broadside. He bolted, and as he turned
away from me, I saw my arrow wob-
bling, up and down and around in a cir-
cle, and then it flipped out.
Believing I made what appeared to
be a good shot, I went to the spot of the
hit to look for blood but found only three
broken blades where the bull stood;
they failed to penetrate and broke off at
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
the aluminum ferrule. On examining
the arrow a dozen yards farther away,
there was only a lick of blood on the tip
of the ferrule, and that was all. Did I hit
a rib? Most likely, but a high-quality,
cut-on-contact broadhead may have
kept me from spending two days in
vain, trying to find that bull. In fact, I
never found another drop of blood.
That experience changed my mind,
and I never looked at another replace-
able blade broadhead again.
My preference is a 2-blade, double
bevel, cut-on-contact broadhead. Many
years ago that was the old Bear
Razorhead, which were discontinued in
favor of the screw-in, stainless steel
Bear Razorheads, which are discontin-
57
ued as well now. I liked the old glue-on
Bear Razorheads but moved to Zwickey
heads back in the mid-1980s as my go-
to hunting heads.
For many years, I shot both the
Zwickey Black Diamond Eskimo and
Delta heads, both 2- and 4-blade
designs. They are strong, easy to sharp-
en, and fly perfectly for me. Today,
though, I prefer the 2-blade Zwickey No
Mercy, as well as the remake of the
1939 Zwickey Black Diamond barbed
head, now called the Cliff Zwickey.
Although many state game depart-
ments have restricted barbed heads for
taking big game (including mechani-
cal/expandable heads), they are legal in
several states and many other coun-
tries. I have taken caribou, Canada
moose, deer (both mule deer and Coues
deer in Montana and Mexico, respec-
tively), hogs, javelina, one cougar, and
dozens of grouse and small game with
this head and love its design, strength,
58
T.J.’s prefered broadheads: Zwickey Delta, Eclipse, Cliff Zwickey, and the
Zwickey No Mercy. He is waiting to try Tuffheads this fall.
and historical relevance. To me, this is
what a real broadhead should look like.
I also have shot and like the Eclipse
broadhead put out by Traditional
Pursuit here in Idaho. It is an extremely
strong broadhead, sharpens easily, and
has resulted in dozens of deer, elk, bear,
hogs, caribou, moose, and African game
on the ground from my own travels.
Although I have never been a fan of
single bevel broadheads, or knives, I
picked up a half dozen Tuffheads, which
have the desirable 3:1 (or nearly) ratio
similar to the old Howard Hill heads
(another excellent broadhead). I had
planned on testing them out on hogs
and javelina this spring in Texas, but
shoulder surgery cancelled any shoot-
ing for most of this year, so they will get
their field testing done later this fall or
next spring.
Many years ago while hunting cari-
bou in the Northwest Territories I
watched as a friend drew and shot at a
bull as it walked by our stand in a field
of large boulders. The arrow hit the
shoulder of the bull and bounced back
out. On inspection, the broadhead—an
extremely popular 2-blade at the time,
which will remain unnamed—had
curled from the tip almost back in a loop
nearly touching the ferrule halfway
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
down. I sent the broadhead back to the
manufacturer and was told that it was
not the 50 Rockwell hardness as adver-
tised, but was less than 45 Rockwell
hardness: it had not been properly heat
treated. Needless to say, that broadhead
is no longer being produced.
Like most matters in archery and
bowhunting, broadhead selection is a
very personal choice. There are, literal-
ly, dozens of high-quality broadheads on
the market today. It is up to each
bowhunter to evaluate what head he or
she is the most confident with, as faith
in our equipment is one of the most
important considerations we can make
before we head out to hunt game.
T.J. Conrads
Broadheads: The Heart of
Tradition
The business end of a hunting arrow
was likely one of man’s earliest “inven-
tions.” At first, they were literally
“points”: a sharp piece of bone, or simply
the fire-hardened end of whatever stick
made the shaft—anything to increase
penetration and tissue damage to the
quarry. Then our ancestors began to
knap true “heads” from a variety of min-
erals. By the advent of the Bronze Age,
metal replaced these materials for pur-
poses of hunting and warfare in many
societies, eventually advancing to the
level of lethality that changed the course
of history at Crecy and Agincourt.
As bowhunting began its modern
revival in late-19th century North
America, our predecessors toyed with a
number of designs, most of which con-
sisted of variations on the two-blade
head design used in medieval warfare.
Many looked clumsy compared to the
heads on the market today, but they
were heavy, took a good edge with work,
and killed things. Then came the age of
radical experimentation, which I think of
as bowhunting’s first descent into “it
looked good on paper” technology.
Fortunately, most of those mid-1900s
experiments in spirals, barbs, and other
ridiculous (and ineffective) prototypes
wound up in collections rather than
wounded deer, only to be replaced by var-
ious hot-looking but flimsy expandable
and replaceable blade models as T.J.
described and dismissed earlier.
Most readers of this magazine have
already seen through that hype and
graduated right back to where we start-
ed—sturdy, cut-on-contact broad-
heads—so I won’t revisit that argument
(other than to encourage concerned
bowhunters to keep lobbying their state
Game Departments to ban the use of
such ineffective broadheads). There are
still a few questions to address, and I’ll
begin simply by emphasizing T.J.’s point
that these choices are largely a matter
of personal preference given this com-
mon starting point.
Two-blade, three, or more? How
about “bleeder blades?” I am a firm
believer in 2-blade heads, and objective
evidence—a rare commodity in these
discussions—supports this view. (See
any good review of the Ashby data for
details.) I see this as a matter of simple
physics. The greater the sum of the
head’s length and surface area, the
greater the drag. All other factors being
equal, this leads to lesser penetration,
and you can’t cut what you don’t pene-
trate. I’ve never figured out a way to get
most bleeder blades sharp, further com-
pounding that problem.
I have translated this principle into
many specific choices over the years. I
initially did most of my big game hunt-
ing with 2-blade Zwickey Deltas and
loved their performance. I then shot
Magnus heads for some years with sim-
ilar results. When a friend who was giv-
ing up bowhunting gave me a big boxful
of vintage Bear Razorheads, I went
retro on smaller game like turkeys and
antelope. I found these old classics
exceptionally easy to sharpen and they
performed well in this setting. Gearing
up for Asiatic buffalo, I decided that I
liked the sturdy Eclipse look and want-
ed to move up a bit in broadhead
weight. I found them a bit harder to
sharpen, but my 160-gr. Eclipse heads
shot through two buffalo and emerged
in shape good enough to hunt with
again. Look in my quiver today and
you’ll likely find a mixture of these
heads, with a renewed preponderance of
2-blade Zwickeys.
No discussion of this topic would be
complete without discussing the afore-
mentioned Ashby studies. As a scientist
I welcome them and have no reason to
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
refute any of their conclusions.
However, by the time they emerged I’d
had personal experience with so many
encounters between big game and
broadheads (my own and my hunting
partners’) that I had a clear idea of
what worked for me. The Ashby studies
largely taught me what I already knew,
but despite my regard for the evidence I
saw no personal need to delve into sin-
gle bevels or extreme FOC.
A traditional bowhunter who picks
any 125- to 160-gr. head from the above
list will do just fine. While I’ll keep my
mind open about single-bevels and the
like, it’s hard to teach an old dog new
tricks.
Don Thomas
Broadheads: A Cut Above
“We ran scientific tests on all four
edged broadheads [and] fired over a
million [shots to prove ours] was perfect
on all tests…with maximum speed,
maximum penetration, maximum dura-
bility [and] knock down shock power.
The Ram MX makes a hole through
bone and flesh over twice the size of a
59
mushroomed thirty caliber rifle bullet.
It destroys all tissue, bone, flesh and
nerve cells just as well as a thirty cal-
iber bullet…. One deer struck in the
head was knocked completely off from
its feet…. All deer hit in the lung and
heart areas died just as quickly as if hit
with a rifle bullet or quicker. A deer will
usually run further with a rifle bullet
through its heart than with a Ram MX
60
broadhead through it.”
I can’t recall which sowed seeds of
doubt in my young brain: the number of
test shots, the free-wheeling grammar
or the anemic thrust of that .30-bore
bullet. Surely this gave me pause: “The
feel of a human being struck with the
Ram MX was indistinguishable from
being hit with a .38 caliber revolver bul-
let.” The company’s bullet-proof vest
would have been small comfort to any
volunteer familiar with Saxton Pope’s
penetration test of a bodkin from a 65-
pound English longbow. Borrowing
armor from a university museum, he
draped it over a burlap-filled wooden
box. From seven yards the arrow drove
through steel plate back armor, then
wood and burlap, to bulge chain-mail on
the dummy’s front!
The hyperbole in that 1967 Herter’s
catalog entertained me for hours. But
the products, duck calls to dip nets,
were also great bargains. The all-steel
Ram MX broadhead cost $3.78. Per
dozen! Still, living in Michigan and hav-
ing visited Fred Bear’s Grayling shop, I
had to use Bear Razorheads.
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
A few of Wayne van Zwoll’s pref-
ered broadheads, top to bottom:
Howard Hill, Zwickey Eskimo,
GrizzlyStik Silver Flame.
Sharp, all are deadly.
My first deer seasons, the broad-
heads on my shafts mattered not, as I
never drove one through a deer. The
autumn before we graduated high
school my pal Dennis arrowed a doe. I
was delighted for him, and envious.
After a move west my Razorheads
found flesh. They downed mule deer
with dispatch. One drove through the
forward spine of a big buck. Some of my
friends who used them on elk filed the
tips round, “to better splinter or slip
around bone.” But Zwickey Deltas and
Black Diamonds had a following in the
Wallowa Valley, where my bride and I
made our home. Four-blade Zwickeys
killed several elk for me. Harder than
Razorheads, they took more time to
hone. But they held their edge well and
didn’t bend as easily in tough going.
They flew straight from my 67-pound
Howatt Hunter. Twice they downed
bulls quartering steeply away, their
tracks rail-straight through the vitals. I
found no reason to switch.
Replaceable-blade heads were soon

Tried and true, these vintage Fred Bear Razorheads have been a favorite
of thousands of bowhunters over many decades. Unfortunately, Bear
stopped production a long time ago. This is a dozen heads in the original
Bear packaging from T.J. Conrads’ traditional broadhead collection.
popping up like dandelions. Some I shot
were lighter than my 125-grain
Zwickeys, their blades more fragile.
They seemed to me better suited to deer
than elk.
A Howard Hill longbow set me on
another path. Crafted by John Schulz of
laminated bamboo, backed and faced
with fiberglass, it was faithful to Hill’s
design. My broadheads, I decided,
should be, too. “The first requirement,”
Hill declared, “is that the head must fly
straight. Second, it must penetrate suf-
ficiently that it will go through any ani-
mal in America. Third, it should cut
bone without bending or dulling.” To
“carry” it should be lightweight: “a max-
imum of 150 grains.” He favored a two-
blade head three times as long as wide,
with slightly concave cutting edges.
Such a profile, he wrote, resists wind-
planing and drives deeper than other
popular designs.
The Hill broadheads on my cedar
shafts would kill better if I shot them
into something alive. That remains one
of many good intentions upstaged by
more pedestrian imperatives.
Accomplished bowhunter Dennis
Dunn uses broadheads of similar shape
on tough game. “For the last half-dozen
seasons I’ve hunted with the single-
bevel, two-blade Tuffhead,” he told me.
Its ceramic-coated 420 stainless steel
blades are hardened to 52C Rockwell. A
heavy-duty double-bevel tip cuts four
ways. Tuffheads are heavy and costly
but built to excel in bone that would
turn or stop other heads.
The views of hunters like Dunn and
Ed Ashby, who have arrowed many ani-
mals and used a variety of broadheads,
influence me, but so does history.
Knapped stone downed tough game
centuries before we had ceramic-coated
screw-in heads with single bevels. A
keen edge in the vitals kills.
Sharp edges come in many forms,
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
many now replaceable. Lancaster
Archery’s catalog lists over 90 broad-
heads, not including “mechanicals.”
Length and width and number of blades
no longer suffice to distinguish them.
Hunters beg details. A review of the
Musacchia NBS100 lists specifics on
blade steel (420 stainless), ferrule (7075
T6, turned from bar stock), blade attack
angle (31.5 degrees), even Rockwell
hardness of tip (42C) and blades (51C).
But that sophistication has bumped
broadhead cost. The NBS100 is
declared “a deal” at $135.84 a dozen.
As I prefer clean bow limbs to those
with axles and cables, so my picks in
broadheads have little to do with recent
innovation. Those with a storied past
are more fun to have on the string and
in the quiver when the animals are win-
ning – and, in my view, no less effective
when they aren’t. Heads by Bear and
Hill, and those used by other bowhunt-
ing pioneers, add something of value to
a kill, and to a day without one. If utili-
ty were top priority, all our tackle might
take different form.
Wayne van Zwoll
61
 Wild Cuisine
I’ve Made Some Offal Things!
By Margie Nelson

O
n the topic of meat processing, there are several
post-hunt options. Some hunters love the chase,
but not the meat, and will gladly donate their ani-
mal to a local food bank. Others enjoy eating wild game but
prefer their butcher does the cutting and wrapping. And
finally, there are the hunters who find satisfaction in person-
ally breaking down their animal into roasts, burger, filets,
and sausage. Yet many home butchers overlook the offal
when field dressing an animal. As a result, a lot of potential-
ly good eating gets discarded.
Offal is considered the waste or by-products of an ani-
mal when we field dress and process it for consumption. It is
the trimmings of the belly, head, tail, and hide. It is the vis-
cera of the animal, the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines,
liver, kidneys, and caul fat. It is the brain, sweet breads, and
testicles. It is the parts that some cultures would never use
because it is taboo. It is the parts of the animals that other
cultures learned how to use in fascinating ways such as
brain-tanned hides and sausage casings from the intestines.
All kinds of unique things can come from the use of the offal, field dress your animal, take notice of the caul fat. You may
and some very tasty things as well. never have actually noticed it all these years. And if you
Hunters that include offal in their resumé of good food enjoy making trophy meals out of your animal, take the caul
often consider the heart as one of the most desirable parts to fat and place it in a little plastic bag or in an empty cup from
bring home. Those of us who love the heart understand. If you your truck and wash it gently when you get home. Then roll
haven’t tried some battered and fried heart, you really should. it up and freeze it. You can take it out and peel off a layer
The liver is another part that some hunters enjoy. For and then save the rest for later. The “ah-ha” factor of caul fat
years I turned my nose up to it, because apparently I had is large!
never properly prepared liver. However, I finally decided to Do we want to talk about the testicles? Or should we
give liver a renewed effort and made it in a way that sound- just leave that alone? Gotta do it. Rocky Mountain oysters
ed appetizing to me. I was not disappointed. The liver will are Rocky Mountain oysters, no matter what they come
never be left in the field again. from. Take home a pair, clean them up, slice thin, batter
The caul fat is one of my favorite offal offerings. The caul thick, and make a really good “oyster” sandwich. Let your
fat is the greater omentum of all mammals. It is a lacy fat conscience or curiosity be your guide.
that wraps around the guts of an animal keeping it in place When it comes to birds, the neck, gizzard, liver, and
and separating the internal organs from the inside body cav- heart are all delicious. The hunters that just breast their
ity. It is called the lace fat, or crépine, and since it doesn’t birds and leave the legs, carcass, and offal behind are miss-
render well it can be used to encase sausages, roulades, meat ing out. There are so many wonderful things you can do with
loaves, and other specialty meat offerings. The next time you what is typically considered waste.

62 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
 So, give offal a try. Have a hide tanned for decoration or
a rug, or try brain tanning it yourself. Make some heart bites
or heart fajitas Make an “oyster” sandwich. Wrap a ham-
burger in caul fat before you fry it, or wrap your meatloaf in
it. It really makes a nice presentation. And if you like liver
and onions, the following recipe is a winner. Even if you don’t
think you like liver, you might like this!
When the onions have softened and turned a light
brown, add the flour, and stir until well combined and con-
tinue to cook for two additional minutes.
Add the beer, beef broth, Dijon and Worcestershire. Stir
until well mixed and the gravy starts to thicken. Continue to
heat on medium until the gravy has thickened. If it is too
thick, add a bit of water. Salt and pepper to taste.

Fried Liver and Onion Gravy Margie Nelson was born and raised in Livingston,
Montana, a place that lends itself to growing up with a rich
• 1-2 pounds venison liver, sliced very thin and divergent education in hunting and fishing. Her many
• 2 cups buttermilk careers have included lifeguarding and marine biology in
• 2 tsp. corn starch Hawaii, climbing the corporate ladder with Pepsi in Seattle,
• Salt and pepper bartending at local and back country watering holes in
• 2 tbsp. cooking oil Montana, and cooking for an outfitter in Alaska. Margie now
• 1 tbsp. butter teaches wild game processing and wild game cooking
through her business Wyld Gourmet (Wyldgourmet.com).
If the liver is fresh, place it in the freezer for one hour
before slicing. This just makes it easier to make nice, clean,
thin slices ¼ to ½ inch in thickness.
Place all the liver in a Ziploc bag with the two cups of
buttermilk. This improves the texture and removes any
smell of urine, if there is any.
Remove from the bag in two hours, or overnight, and pat
dry. Sprinkle the corn starch lightly over each side of the liver
slices. The corn starch will help create a nice, crusty
caramelization to the sliced liver. Season with salt and pepper.
Fry in cooking oil and a couple pats of butter until crispy
and done. You will know it is done when the liquids from the
inside of the liver slice quit rising to the top. Serve with
Onion Gravy.

Onion Gravy

• 2 thinly sliced sweet onions

• 3 tbsp. butter
• 2 tsp. brown sugar
• 3 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1 cup of Guinness stout beer
• 3 cups beef broth or 3 cups water with 1 heaping tbsp. beef
bouillon (Better than Bouillon)
• 1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

Heat up the butter and sugar in a large skillet and sauté

the onions over medium heat until they start to brown. Stir
occasionally for 30 minutes.

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 63

 The Trailhead
Kids, Bows, and Arrows
Getting them started right is up to us.

By E. Donnall Thomas Jr.

was the beneficiary of a wonderful childhood. In addi- tributed immensely to my own development as a bowhunter.

I tion to his scientific accomplishments (his pioneering

work in the field of bone marrow transplantation
earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990), my father
was a highly skilled outdoorsman. My mother also loved the
outdoors. Best of all, they always made every effort to
include me in their hunting and fishing activities, and the
threat of being left behind because of bad behavior on my
part was the only form of discipline they ever needed.
Dad grew up hunting in rural Texas during the
Depression for the most elementary reason of all—to put
food on the table. That’s likely the reason he never showed
much interest in the bow and arrow other than being the
first to congratulate me when I killed something with mine.
However, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of wildlife and
outdoor skills, and the lessons I learned from him con-
My brother was just two years younger than me and
enjoyed the same introduction to the outdoors that I did, but
we went in two very different directions. I’d do anything in
order to go on the next hunting trip—wash the truck, clean
the shotguns, feed the dogs, get up at four in the morning to
cook breakfast and get the coffee started. My brother just
wasn’t into it, no matter how much encouragement he
received from my parents. Having seen similar situations in
other families, I’m convinced that there is a genetic basis
that leads some kids to become hunters while others from
the same environment do not.
This theory has implications for all of us who are inter-
ested in helping youngsters develop an interest in the out-
Don coaching his grandson Leo on shooting.

64 www.traditionalbowhunter.com

Threading on a No-Glov finger guard. Kids
inevitably will lose tabs and gloves.
doors in general and bowhunting in particular. All you can
do is offer encouragement and opportunity. Some will pick
up that ball and run with it. Others would rather join the
soccer team or play the guitar. There’s nothing wrong with
kids who make different choices, and there’s nothing wrong
with you if they don’t become fanatic bowhunters. It’s impor-
tant to bear that in mind at all times. As Robert Ruark once
wrote, “The sound of the hunter’s horn comes sooner for
some…and later for others.”
When Lori and I got married 25 years ago, we each
brought a son and daughter to the household. Initially, the
thought of having four teenagers under one roof at the same
time terrified me, but the kids all got along great and remain
best friends to this day. My son Nick was already off to a
good start and had killed several big game animals with his
bow by the time he headed off to college. Daughter Gen loved
to fly-fish and go with me when I went hunting although she
never shot much herself. Interestingly, she is now of the gen-
eration that sees hunting as a means to great food. She cooks
game enthusiastically and came out last fall with the
express purpose of killing a deer and butchering it herself.
Since she lacked confidence in her archery, she hunted with
her grandmother’s deer rifle, but we couldn’t get her in front
of a whitetail. Now she’s practicing hard with one of my old
recurves and is determined to take a deer with it this fall.
Lori’s son Scott, like my younger brother, just didn’t
have the gene. His father tried hard (we remain friends with
Lori’s ex and hunt together frequently), but it just wasn’t
happening. Her daughter, Nicole, is an all-around athlete
who loves the outdoors, especially fly-fishing. When she was
in high school, she decided she wanted to bowhunt, but she
insisted upon making her own bow first. With Dick
Robertson mentoring her, she produced a recurve either of
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
us could hunt with today. Now she has provided us with
something the other three haven’t: grandchildren.
Well, technically unofficial step-grandchildren. Nicole is
now involved in a stable long-term relationship with a fine
young man originally from South Dakota. Like many people
of his age who now live in Bozeman, one of Montana’s college
towns, he is an outdoor enthusiast but not a hunter, although
he certainly has no problem with hunting. He also has two
great kids, boys now aged seven and nine, both of whom are
fascinated with wildlife and the outdoors. As soon as I met
them, I wondered how I was going to get bows in their hands
without disrupting some complex family dynamics.
I shouldn’t have been so busy trying to out-think myself.
When they arrived for their initial visit to our rural home,
the first thing the boys noticed was the 3-D bear target in
the front yard. “What’s that?” asked Owen, the older of the
two.
“It’s a black bear,” I replied.
“But it’s not a real bear,” Leo observed.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “But it’s a real archery tar-
get.”
“You mean you shoot arrows at it?” Owen asked. “Can
we shoot arrows at it?”
“As long as it’s okay with your dad, that would be just
fine.”
Encouraged as I was by the direction the conversation
had taken, I slowly realized that I had a problem. Over the
years I had acquired countless youth bows, for my own kids
and others’. The problem was that I always assumed that
the purpose of those little bows was to get kids shooting.
Whenever I ran into an enthusiastic young archer, I let the
bow walk away with him (or her) and made no attempt to
keep track of it after that. A frantic search of my garage pro-
65
duced nothing light enough for kids. By this time the boys
were making it very clear that there would be no peace in
the house until they were shooting arrows at the black bear
target. Fortunately, I still had an ace up my sleeve.
I placed a quick call to my young friend Mark
Schwomeyer, who has a son, appropriately named Archer,
who is Leo’s age. I’d been watching Archer shoot bows prac-
tically since the day he was born, and I knew he had a couple
of age-appropriate longbows lying around the house. When I
explained my predicament, Mark volunteered to drive over
with two youth bows, and I started scrounging through my
mountain of arrows for something that might fly from them.
Safety is the only subject I’m strict about when intro-
ducing kids to archery. Even a target tip from a #15 bow can
put out an eye. Although the boys were champing at the bit
as soon as they saw the bows, I made them settle down while
I reviewed some safety principles. I had Leo go around the
house and confirm that all my bird dogs were locked safely
in the kennel while Owen informed the adults that we would
be shooting on the lawn. We checked the area behind the tar-
get to make sure it was clear. Then we paced off an imagi-
nary shooting line as I explained that no one ever shot if
someone was between the line and the target. That can be a
hard concept to get across to excited youngsters. I was care-
ful to explain it in a firm but nonthreatening manner, using
the “I mean business” tone of voice my dad used to convey
important messages. It worked for me back then, and it
worked for Owen and Leo.
Then the fun began. I’d “drawn” the shooting line ridicu-
lously close to the target. Kids want to hit what they’re
shooting at, and they don’t much care how far away they are
when they do it. The boys still went through the inevitable
66 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
Owen’s bow looks like too much here, but he quickly
grew into it.
amount of fumbling as they tried to keep arrows on their
rests, and I provided just enough instruction to keep them
shooting without leaving them confused. Then—miracle of
miracles—one of Leo’s arrow smacked the bear target and
stuck in place for all the adult audience to see. That drew a
momentary pout from his big brother, but then Owen fol-
lowed up with a hit of his own, “Right in the heart!” as he
was quick to point out, even though his understanding of
ursine anatomy was obviously not yet fully developed.
From that point on the kids were on automatic pilot.
They kept shooting while we grilled burgers on the deck.
They were still shooting when the sun finally set, and I
needed to call a halt. They were obviously exhausted after a
long day, but Leo’s last words were: “Can we come back next
weekend and shoot our bows again?” I thought about point-
ing out that they were Archer’s bows and not theirs, but the
timing didn’t feel right for that discussion.
Because most of my friends’ kids are now grown and
gone just like mine, a long time had passed since I’d enjoyed
an opportunity to introduce youngsters to archery. I felt
exhilarated. The kids’ enthusiasm reminded me of the fasci-
nation I felt the first time I released an arrow from a bow
and watched the shaft sail away. There’s just something
about it, and none of us should ever lose track of that feel-
ing.
My experience with Owen and Leo reminded me of a lot
of teaching moments I’ve enjoyed with other kids over the
years. I learned important lessons during that process, and
I’ll share a few here.
Safety first. Kids need to learn from the start that
bows, like firearms, are weapons, not toys. You need to con-
 courses! There’s something about animal targets that paper
bull’s-eyes just can’t provide. Invite the kids to the range and
make an adventure out of it. Even if they’re ambivalent
about archery, they should have a great time.
Draw weight. This factor poses a dilemma for which I
have no perfect solution. In general, starting with too much
bow is a real pitfall for novices that leads to lots of problems
with form. But if you give a six-year-old a bow that’s just
right for him, he will have outgrown it in a few months due
to growth and muscle development. Since form isn’t crucial
at this stage, I don’t mind making kids work a bit at first. If
I’d kept all those kids bows I would have been able to offer
more options, but a lot of kids would have done a lot less
shooting.
By the time the kids headed back down the drive toward
Bozeman, I knew what I had to do. I began with a call to my
friend and master bowyer, Dick Robertson. Although Dick

Owen, Leo, and Preston after a busy afternoon of had made Nick his first bow, he admitted that he hadn’t

archery on Don and Lori’s lawn. made a youth bow in years and didn’t even know if he still
had the forms. But Dick is a resourceful guy, and when he
vince them that this is serious business even when they’re and his wife, Vikki, stopped by for dinner two weeks later, he
having fun. brought along bows with the names of the kids’ totem ani-
Make sure they get to hit something. We may mals inscribed: Jaguar (#21 at 24”) for Owen and Arctic Fox
understand the importance of form and accuracy, but that (#20 at 24”) for Leo. Their jubilation reminded me of
can come later. Kids want reinforcement, and an arrow in a Christmas mornings when I was a kid.
target will provide all they need at first. They really love 3- From that point on, all I had to do was stand back and
D targets. Inflated balloons pinned to a backstop of some get out of the way.
kind make an even more exciting alternative. Start out close,
at “can’t miss” range. It’s really helpful if the target is soft Don Thomas, his bowhunting wife Lori, and their bird
enough to make an arrow stick so they can see what they’ve dogs make their home in central Montana. After years spent
accomplished (and show if off to everyone else). trying to escape high plains winters in places like Arizona,
Avoid competition. If two kids are shooting competi- they now snowbird to a quiet corner of Hawaii. Don’s books
tively at the same target, every winner creates a loser. No on a variety of outdoor topics are available from donthomas-
one should “lose” when they are learning to shoot a bow. books.com and most on-line book outlets.
Keep the equipment simple. Kids are going to lose
every little item they can possibly lose. One solution is to
keep track of everything yourself, but kids want to have
“their” stuff (even if you paid for it). Gloves and tabs disap-
pear regularly and are hard for kids to figure out at first.
The little rubber finger protectors that slide on the string
(No-Glov, String Fingers, and others) solve both of these
problems. You may have progressed to the point of not need-
ing an arm guard, but kids should use one. A good “whack”
on an unprotected bow arm can discourage further shooting.
Find one that fits and make sure the beginner wears it.
Offer opportunity, encourage participation. Some
kids just aren’t going to be self-starters. The worst thing you
can do in this situation is try too hard. Kids love 3-D target

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 67

 Traditional Wisdom
The Inherent Risks of Bush Flight Hunts.
By Krista Holbrook
don’t believe many hunters coming to Alaska or Canada
I for a fly-out hunt realize the danger involved. Alaska
has a much higher rate of aircraft accidents than the
lower 48 states, and most are light bush planes. Two weeks
ago, during the first week of sheep season, three different
wrecked Super Cubs were sling-loaded back to Fairbanks by
helicopter after crashes on takeoff or landing at remote
areas. Though the pilots were banged up and the planes
trashed, none were seriously injured. Many are not so fortu-
nate. Last month a friend of our Co-editor, Don Thomas, was
killed in a mid-air collision between a Super Cub and a de
Havilland Beaver with a pilot and family of four headed out
on a wilderness adventure. No survivors.
This week my husband, Sterling, and I were at the air-
port loading our airplane for an upcoming hunt when he
looked up and pointed to a black column of smoke rising to
the west and said, “Plane crash.” Two bush planes had a
mid-air collision at a nearby small satellite airport. One pilot
was headed out alone to his hunt camp. The other was a
transporter returning two hunters from their Alaska dream
68 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
hunt. One hunter and his pilot died either on impact or in
the post crash fire, and the other pilot and one hunter were
in critical condition. All four pilots involved in these mid-air
collisions were highly experienced, well-regarded, long-time
Alaska pilots.
I still remember my first fly-in hunt. While living in
Florida, we planned my first trip to Alaska. This was back
when you could still charter a plane by the hour and choose
your hunt location accordingly. Sterling, an experienced
Alaska helicopter pilot, had studied topographical maps and
available data on caribou migrations and had a plan for our
two-week hunt. When we met our pilot, he guided us to a
large scale to weigh our gear. We weighed in at the 75
pounds of gear allocated by the flight service. The pilot was
amazed and commented, “Man, I wish everyone packed like
that!” Sterling knew how critical weight was to the pilot.
I remember being grumpy while thinking of the many
items I had left behind. I watched others weigh in, noting all
Weather can change quickly in the north.

Most landing spots are nothing more than small
clearings in the forests.
were overweight, some much more so than others. One fel-
low was so overweight his pilot insisted he stow some items
to retrieve upon his return. The guy was angry and com-
plained bitterly.
Weight is a huge factor in takeoff from small remote
gravel bars and benches. I was camped on the Moose John
River once at the same time as a young doctor who did not
comprehend this. He was on a schedule and was desperate to
get out. After several communications on the satellite phone,
the pilot found a brief weather window and dashed in to pick
up the two hunters. The landing strip is a short, one direc-
tion, strip demanding a high pilot skill level. Safe takeoffs
require a head wind, conditions were extremely marginal,
and the pilot was anxious to get airborne with a passenger
load first, and then return for their gear once conditions
improved. He was attempting to convey this necessity to the
passengers, when one staggered up burdened with a heavy
load including a gun, axe, and backpack. The pilot simply
turned, ran for his plane, and left them camped on the bench
for several additional days. An extremely dependable pilot,
I’m sure he would have gotten them out safely and returned
for their gear when conditions permitted. I thought they
were unduly disgruntled considering he possibly saved their
lives. We certainly wouldn’t have flown. So, lesson here: pack
light, weight matters. Listen to the pilot!
I’ve learned an awful lot about flying into hunt camp
since my first flight and now recognize how many consider-
ations factor into a safe flight. As I have repeatedly stressed,
weight greatly affects distance required for takeoff. On my
first trip, we flew farther than planned before seeing cari-
bou. Sterling spotted a beautiful little lake near a small
mountain and asked the pilot if he could safely land there.
He said he could and had no problem putting the plane down
on floats, but upon return, with the added weight of caribou
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
meat, he had to relay passengers and gear to a larger lake
where we could all board for a safe takeoff. All that ferrying
gear cost extra flight time and money, but there was no argu-
ment from us.
I remember reading once in a TBM article an author
was endorsing a pilot by saying, “He will fly in any weather.”
Believe me, that attitude is nothing to admire in a pilot.
While one would hope their pilot was highly experienced and
able to evaluate weather conditions, you just don’t want
someone on a do-or-die mission. During the fall hunt season
in Alaska, weather conditions may prohibit safe flight for
days on end. Pilots are booked daily, taking out one group
and bringing in another. One down day puts them way
behind and adds pressure. They make the bulk of their
annual salary in a short month and a half and feel pressure
from that, too. Don’t add to that pressure. If they say the
weather is bad, believe me, it is.
On several occasions, I have seen hunters get stuck
afield and make ridiculous efforts for a flight out. This “I
have to be back to work on Monday” attitude can endanger
your life as well as the lives of others. Most small aircraft
commercial pilots agree the most distressing part of their job
is pressure to fly in unsafe weather. There are numerous
crashes in Alaska each year resulting from adverse weather
conditions. You are on Mother Nature’s clock, not your
office’s or school’s. Plan for several days extra or anticipate
having to change your flight home.
Sterling said he learned long ago that you may only
have seconds to exit a crash and will only have available
what you carry on your person. What survival gear is in a
pack somewhere in the back won’t help you. Carry the basics
on you such fire starter, knife, extra clothes, and personal
locator device if available, and try to have extra gear in your
small pack close by you.
69

Gravel bars are popular fly in spots for raft hunts.
Even more important than gear is what clothes you
wear. As I stated earlier, the end result of the recent mid-air
collision was both planes crashing to the ground and one
bursting into flames. A good friend who was on the scene
described the event. Hearing a loud crash noise and the
repetitive sound of a propeller striking the ground, he and
others rushed outside toward the burning wreckage. The
surviving hunter, dressed in burning camouflage clothing,
was attempting to extract himself from the rear of the plane.
Fearing imminent explosion from the puddled gasoline, the
bystanders yelled at him to hurry and jump. My friend
dragged him away from the burning wreckage, where they
attempted with little success to smother the flaming plastic
goo of his synthetic clothing. Unable to extinguish the syn-
thetic material on his boots, they eventually resorted to a
water-soaked towel before succeeding. Water makes steam
and can exacerbate burns. His clothing had melted to him.
For infrequent or new fliers, there was a lot to be
learned from this incident, and for experienced passengers it
might serve as a good refresher. In a fire, what you are wear-
ing can be the difference between life and death. I recall a
story written by noted bowhunter Paul Bruner in TBM
years ago. He was on a group hunt when the remote cabin
where they were staying went up in flames, trapping the
hunters inside. He was dressed in wool, which contributed
significantly to his survival. The other hunter was not, and
did not survive. Organics, such as silk, cotton, wool, and
70 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
leather are what we wear flying. It’s best to dress according-
ly for travel. Wool is the best material for Alaska in general
anyway. Just be sure it is mostly wool. Some blends pretend
to be wool but contain a much higher percent of synthetic. A
camo pattern won’t help you in a fire.
At the onset of travel, we are understandably excited
with many things on our mind. Adding to the excitement is
the possibility that it might be your first flight in a small air-
craft. When the pilot gives a briefing, stop, take a deep
breath, and listen up. Some briefings are more thorough
than others. At a minimum they will alert you to stay clear
of the steering controls up front. A pilot friend flipped his
plane due to a passenger interfering with the operation of
the foot petals. Pay attention and be certain to remain clear
of all controls, especially during takeoff and landing. Learn
how the door latch works. Think about how you will get out
if you’re underwater or the door is smashed into the ground.
Upon arrival and departure, maintain a sterile cockpit.
This most critical part of travel deserves both your and your
pilot’s undivided attention. You can assist by avoiding any
distraction like unnecessary conversation and also by watch-
ing out for hazards. Hazards might include an animal on or
near the runway, or other planes. Four eyes are better than
two, so pay attention. If you see another plane, point it out.
You can do this without talking by just pointing. The pilot
will get it, or ask.
Many emergency medical technicians carry a clip-on
knife with a serrated blade, handy for cutting lines, seat
belts, or other constraints. We keep one close as well and
wear our sheath knifes. Having listened during the preflight
briefing, you should have secured your seat belt properly,
double-checking that it was fitted correctly and functioning.
You would also have taken note of the location of the fire
extinguisher in the unlikely, unfortunate, event you might
need it. The pilot should point out the plane’s EPIRB, or
emergency locator device, as well as survival gear.
In Alaska, most hunting trips require flying in a bush
plane. Don’t take it lightly. This is generally a safe mode of
travel and you can make it even more so by being a safe,
well-prepared passenger.
Krista lives in Alaska with her husband, Sterling. They
own a 180-hp. Cessna 170. He is an experienced pilot with 54
years of flying. They fly year around and make several
bowhunting trips each year by bush plane from their home in
Fairbanks, Alaska.
 Traditional Archives
Howard Hill—The World’s Greatest Archer
By T.J. Conrads

“As in any other sport, one must be willing to put into it

much more than he expects to get out of it. Hunting with the
bow and arrow is truly “hunting the hard way.”

Howard Hill
Hunting the Hard Way, 1953

oward Hill was born in Shelby County, Alabama,

H November 13, 1899, on a large cotton plantation. It

was here that the young Hill grew up, shooting the
bow and arrow for the first time when he was four years old.
His first bow was made by his father from a piece of white
oak. He killed his first animal with that bow the following
year, when he was five. While walking down a row of cotton
with his beagles, he jumped a rabbit. Without much thought,
Howard gauged the shot and hit the rabbit as it bounded
between two rows, skewering the animal. He was so excited
that he ran home—without his bow—to show his father.
Howard continued to shoot the bow and spent consider-
able time in the field hunting. He shot so much his father
often remarked, “If it weren’t for that bow of Howard’s, I
might get some work out of him!” Archery would prove to be
a life-long interest for Howard.
At the age of 19, Howard attended Alabama Polytechnic
Institute in Auburn where he excelled at sports. He played up a copy of Maurice Thompson’s book, The Witchery of
baseball, basketball, and football there, and won varsity let- Archery. By the time he finished reading the book he had
ters in all three sports. Then in 1922 he decided to play semi- decided that golf wasn’t in his future, but archery was.
pro baseball, a sport he participated in for seven years. It Howard’s list of archery accomplishments is long. In
was in the same year, 1922, that he married his former high 1925, the year he decided to pursue a career in archery, he
school teacher, Elizabeth Hodges of Ashville, Alabama. won his first National Flight Tournament. Then he won the
Libby, as she was known, was a strong supporter of Howard’s next seven in a row, including setting the world record dis-
interest in archery and encouraged him throughout their tance of 391 yards, one foot, 11 inches on February 26, 1928,
entire life together. using a 172-pound Osage orange bow. He went on to win
In 1925, Howard and Libby moved to Miami, Florida, more than 100 different archery field tournaments in a row,
where Howard went to work for the Hughes Tool Company more than any other archer in history.
as a machinist and design engineer. On the weekends he While in Florida, Howard began to show an interest in
worked as a golf pro at the Opa Locka Golf Course. In fact, bowhunting and spent time with a Seminole Indian who
he considered turning pro, but felt he didn’t have the neces- soon became his mentor. The Indian taught Howard the
sary touch to putt well enough. During this time, he picked secrets of stalking and tracking animals, as well as shooting

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 71

 Howard Hill was a master of the longbow, taking hundreds of big and small game all around the world. Here
he is shooting a wild boar, the arrow just inches from penetrating the side of the animal.

at game. In 1925, he killed his first deer and moose while
hunting in Canada, as well as showing some of his remark-
able shooting expertise.
Howard and his hunting partner, Fred Woodley, were
unsuccessfully trying to convince their guide that their bows
were capable of dispatching a moose when two mallards
landed on a pond approximately 160 yards away. The guide,
seeing a chance to make his point, asked the two hunters if
they were so good, then why didn’t they just shoot those
birds? They looked at the ducks, and then at each other,
nocked arrows and shot. Howard hit one of the mallards and
a second or two later Fred’s arrow hit the other! The guide
turned to them and said, “I’ll hunt any darn thing with you
guys and them bows!”
In 1926 Howard started making his own bows out of
lemonwood, then snakewood and yew. In 1932, the Hills
moved to Barstow, California, where Howard met and
became friends with Ed Hill and the well-known trick shoot-
ers Walt and Ken Wilhelm. Their escapades in The Whoopie,
an old Ford Model A transformed into a sort of dune buggy,
are recorded in Craig Ekin’s book, Howard Hill, The Man
and the Legend. There was also a short film produced that I
saw several years back showing the Whoopie as well as some
phenomenal trick shooting by the Wilhelm brothers, but that
film now exists in a private library. It would be good to see it
released to the public.
In 1933, Howard teamed up with Ned Frost, the famed
naturalist and bear hunter, to shoot the film The Last
Wilderness. It was during this filming that Howard received
a permit to shoot a wild buffalo from a horse, while riding
bareback, with his bow. The only condition to issuing the per-
mit was that the Wyoming Fish and Game demanded he be
backed up with a rifleman to kill the animal after it had
been shot with an arrow. The department didn’t believe that
a mature buffalo could be brought down with a simple
weapon such as the bow and arrow. (Evidently, they didn’t
know much about the history of the Indians in their own
state.)

72 www.traditionalbowhunter.com
 Hill hired two local cowboys as his gun backups. They
chided him, saying that there was no way he could ever hope
to kill such an animal with such a silly weapon. But Howard
knew better. After locating a herd of buffalo, Howard took off
after them on his pony, cutting out the bull he wanted to
shoot from the herd. As the pony ran along beside the bull,
Howard sent a shaft deep into the animal’s side. The buffalo
stumbled and crashed to ground. When the cowboys came
riding up, they were astonished at how quickly the buffalo
had succumbed to the arrow, and said it was the fastest and
cleanest kill they had ever seen.
During the next four years, Howard would discover that
bamboo was a much better material for his bows than yew.
Its elasticity was far superior to other bow woods, and its
cast was much farther. Over time he eventually settled on
what he considered to be the best bamboo for longbows:
Chinese tonkin bamboo.
Howard’s favorite bows were “Grandma,” which drew 65
pounds, and “Grandpa,” at 85 pounds. Grandpa was Howard’s
favorite hunting bow for big game, as well as the bow he used
for his exhibitions. Grandma was used for hunting smaller
game like rabbits and quail, and on occasion during his
demonstrations. When asked why he chose the longbow over given the job to place arrows accurately not only in targets,
the recurve, he simply stated, “I use the straight-end split but into the stunt men. To stop the arrows, each stunt man
bamboo longbow for the simple reason that it requires a less had under his armor a 1/16-inch steel plate sandwiched
exacting hold and loose to get necessary accuracy while hunt- between a felt pad on the inside and three inches of balsa
ing, where quick shots must be made from unconventional wood on the outside. By the time the movie was complete,
positions—standing, kneeling or sitting—not the traditional Howard had “killed” eleven men, but many of the scenes
target archer’s pose. Also, the longbow throws a heavy arrow required several shots to get it right. In the end, he shot 45
much better than any recurve bow designed, which is neces- arrows at men and never missed. “Had any of those forty-
sary for sufficient big game penetration.” five arrows missed its mark, it would have been too bad,”
Over the years, Howard had come up with what he felt Howard was quoted as saying.
was the best broadhead design for bowhunting. This head Howard was so good in front of the camera that he was
had a blade of 18-gauge steel that was 3 3/8 inches long and hired to do all the shooting in the films Elizabeth of Essex,
1 1/8 inches wide at the back, giving it a 3:1 ratio. The ferrule They Died with their Boots On, Dodge City, Buffalo Bill and
was made of Duralumin and was 11/32 inches wide. In addi- The Bandits of Sherwood Forest.
tion, the blade boasted a concave edge that Howard felt gave Howard gave up shooting in archery competitions in
it better penetration than a convex edged design. In describ- 1945. By that time, he had amassed a record of 196 consecu-
ing his favorite broadhead, he stated, “This type has the tive first place finishes in field archery tournaments over a
most penetration of any broadhead I have ever used. If cor- 25-year period. He was so superior to all the other archers in
rectly made, this head will not wind plane under any circum- the field that many of them refused to shoot if he entered a
stances. It will cut from four to five inches of bone without specific event. Others, for want of an explanation of his abil-
bending or dulling.” ity, claimed he cheated somehow even though every event
In 1937, Warner Brothers Studio was getting ready to was judged by officials. It was a no-win situation, so Howard
produce the movie Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn as the went on the road giving his archery exhibitions to fascinated
famed archer, and was trying to find someone who could crowds. His ability to shoot anything out of the air, from a
shoot a bow well enough for the film. Howard proved to be four-inch round disk all the way down to an aspirin, was
the only man who could consistently hit the target and was phenomenal and at one time he shot 12 dimes out of the air

Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 73

before he missed one. Another feat was his ability to place
eight arrows in the air before the first one could hit the
ground, showing his mastery of speed shooting.
Howard’s influence on the public was never more proven
than when in 1941 at Grants Park, Chicago, Illinois, he drew
a crowd of over 35,000 to watch one of his archery exhibi-
tions. Never before or since has one man shooting a bow
attracted so many people. So excited were the spectators
that they literally attacked Howard after the show and pro-
ceeded to tear at his clothes, eventually ripping off his shirt,
and took his bow, arrows, and quiver for souvenirs.
Not since Saxton Pope and Art Young in 1923 had any-
one attempted to shoot dangerous African game with the
bow and arrow, so Howard decided in 1949 to make a trip to
the Dark Continent and record his exploits on film. With
$50,000 he borrowed from a friend in Texas, he amassed all
the equipment and provisions. He and his entourage left the
United States on November 2, 1949. During the course of his
safari Howard bagged an unprecedented number of animals
with the bow and arrow. Included in his bag, not to mention
several dozen different birds, ducks, fish and reptiles, he
killed three elephants, one Cape buffalo, two lions, a leopard,
zebra, hartebeest, four impala, three wildebeest, several In 1949, Howard Hill traveled to Africa to make a
gazelle, warthogs, and two cheetah. film about bowhunting the Dark Continent. He suc-
When he returned from Africa, Howard spent the next ceeded in taking several dozen species, including this
year and half cutting and editing the film to produce a movie python. The exploits of his journey were made into the
of his safari. In addition to the full-length feature, several famous film “Tembo.”
shorts were made to be rented out to archery clubs and
movie studios. After several interested studios bid on the Not only was Howard successful in producing one of the
movie, Howard eventually sold the rights to RKO Studios first full length movies on bowhunting in Africa, he was a very
who released the movie Tembo in 1952. It immediately successful writer. His first article appeared in Outdoor Life in
became an overnight success. Tembo is still a widely sought- March of 1936 called “Buffalo Hunt Indian Style.” He went on
after film that has been translated into seven languages and to pen several more features for Outdoor Life and collected
shown in over 57 different countries. them and many others in his first book, Hunting with the Bow
and Arrow, in 1953. Then in 1954 he released his second book,
Wild Adventure. Both of these books are classic archery liter-
ature and are still available in reprint today.
Howard Hill passed away in a hospital room on
February 4, 1975, at the age of 75 from cancer. At his funeral
there were hundreds of people, many of them having to pay
their respects from outside the chapel as there was standing
room only in the church.
In life Howard Hill was at the top of his sport. Never has
there been any person who has so dominated a sport as he
did. His list of accomplishments and feats with the bow and
arrow will probably never be surpassed and has earned
Howard Hill the title of the World’s Greatest Archer.

74 www.traditionalbowhunter.com

Under the Shadow of Man-Eaters, The
Life and Legend of Jim Corbett
Author: Jerry A. Jaleel
Price: Various, Used
Jim Corbett fans will likely fight the
temptation to skip quickly ahead to
page 189 of Jerry Jaleel’s Under the
Shadow of Man-Eaters, as here we find
a previously unpublished Corbett
adventure, “The Chirgudi Man-Eater.”
But before we wade into leopards
behaving badly, some clarity is
required. Readers of Corbett’s own
material have often pondered the 16-
year pause in the telling of his tales.
Author Jaleel offers up this explana-
tion—stories during that time (1910-
1926) were often written under a pseu-
donym or just an initial, “Mr. C,” for
example. And as gifted a writer as
Corbett would eventually become, his
first stabs at the craft were soundly
Book Reviews
By David Tetzlaff
rejected by the widely read and popular
Blackwood’s Magazine. Here we also
encounter an interesting twist that
accommodates the literary mood of the
times—the story of the Chirgudi cat
was written by Corbett’s friend, Jack
Ramsay Tainsh, who sets out after the
leopard with one “Bob Lawson” who,
coincidentally, shares no less than
seven obvious and historical similari-
ties with our Jim Corbett. Although this
story was not personally penned by
Corbett, it is consistent with many of
his other narratives—an all-nighter,
balanced on a shaky, elevated perch,
and fighting exhaustion and poor shoot-
ing light while a patient big cat waits
for sleep to overtake its intended vic-
tim. By Tainsh’s telling, it is about as
close as Corbett ever came to getting his
ticket punched.
As we’ve previously explored several
other Corbett titles, this column obvi-
ously makes no apologies in its enthusi-
astic praise of the man and the hunter.
He was the quintessential dragon slay-
er of his day. Author Jaleel reminds us
of what we have always known: Corbett
possessed a deep affection for India and
its people, and they for him. With little
thought for his personal safety, time
after time he delivered local popula-
tions from feline evil. But we will leave
the reader to discover or re-read
Corbett’s material in which we find so
little of his personal life. In these pages,
Jaleel generously fills in many of the
gaps.
At age six, Jim Corbett lost his
father to heart disease. The Indian jun-
gle became his refuge and would
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
remain so until he retired to Kenya
shortly after India claimed independ-
ence in 1947. The young Corbett would
learn to identify every animal and plant
and, chaperoned by the family garden-
er, would sleep out in tiger territory
with only a small campfire to discour-
age overly curious cats. At 17 Corbett
found his first paying job, but it certain-
ly was not an easy one. His task as a
fuel inspector for the Bengal and
Northwestern Railway was to supply
500,000 cubic feet of forest timber that
would serve as locomotive fuel. He had
to organize his own labor force and was
given two years to complete the job.
Corbett finished six months ahead of
schedule. He then spent a year hopping
from one railroad job to another until
obtaining permanent work as a trans-
shipment inspector, which meant he
could be organizing cluttered storage
yards or shoveling coal 14 hours a day.
Under these conditions, we first
learn why Corbett was so loved and
trusted. The railroad was long delin-
quent in delivering pay to Corbett and
his crew. Yet the work continued with-
out complaint until Corbett himself had
had enough. A terse telegraph to the
corporate office quickly fixed the bla-
tant oversight: “Work at Mokameh
Ghat ceases at midday today unless I
am assured that 12,000 rupees has
been dispatched by the morning train.”
Corbett’s standing amongst his workers
rose yet again when he built a school for
their children and a recreation club for
his men, whom he then taught to play
sports.
And here, while on the theme of
75
benevolence, author Jaleel makes an
interesting contrast between Corbett
and John Patterson of Tsavo man-eater
fame. Both men were British, worked
for railroads, and displayed uncommon
bravery. But, in Jaleel’s opinion, there
the similarities end. Corbett gave gen-
erously from his own salary and offered,
“compassion, love and trust,” while
Patterson, overseeing an imported
Indian labor force, “fined his workers
heavily to discipline them, and
harassed them regularly in public.” Yet,
one cannot argue the end results—both
men risked their lives to save others.
(And yes, some would convincingly
argue that Patterson’s efforts were self-
serving to some extent. It’s hard to
build your bridge when the local
wildlife is eating the hired help.)
Corbett, after leaving his beloved
India, never developed the same affec-
tion for Africa and said as much in wist-
ful letters to his friends: “If I am well
enough, I will come to India this win-
ter.” That being said, Corbett, the natu-
ralist and photographer, found Africa
and its wildlife an enriching environ-
ment. A favorite was Tree Tops, which is
now an expansive, upscale lodge, but in
the 1950s it was a rather simple affair
(think Tarzan’s treehouse in the Johnny
Weissmuller films). Tree Tops attracted
international attention when Princess
Elizabeth spent the evening there
watching elephants, rhinos, and other
76
game on February 5, 1952. And who
spent the long night perched on the
treehouse’s ladder guarding the
Princess for fear of an overly curious
leopard, or worse, as those were the
years of the Mau Mau conflict? One Jim
Corbett, of course.
Author Jerry Jaleel’s deep affection
for his subject material should be noted
here. In the summer of 1994, he flew to
Kenya to visit Corbett’s final resting
place. Finding the gravesite in disre-
pair, he corralled some helping hands,
lifted the sunken headstone, and
restored the site, all at his own expense
(Corbett’s publisher and a surviving rel-
ative sadly had no interest in assisting
in the effort).
Under the Shadow of Man-Eaters is
requisite reading for every Corbett
admirer and will certainly encourage
those not familiar with his works to
explore his own titles. Man-Eaters of
Kumaon would be an excellent start.
Son of the Longbow
Author: Marv Clyncke
Price: $29.95
A third of the way into Son of the
Longbow, author Marv Clyncke
reminds readers that there is “in shape”
and then there is “in mountain shape.”
After Clyncke successfully arrows yet
another one of his many high country
mule deer bucks, a young acquaintance
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
offered to pack the boned-out buck
down to the trailhead. Just 150 yards
into the effort, the thirty-something
hunter dumped the pack, “It’s too
heavy!” Clyncke, who was 60 at the
time, just smirked and shouldered the
pack for the two-mile hike.
Marv Clyncke should be no stranger
to TBM readers nor to the many
Colorado and national organizations he
has contributed to over the past six
decades. His many organizational
accomplishments noted on the book’s
back cover speak of one who has rede-
fined passion and “give back” for the
entirety of his bowhunting career. Early
chapters in Son of the Longbow follow
the author from his first bow kill (his
father’s prized but obnoxious rooster),
to meeting his beloved wife of 60 years,
Judy, and their journey raising a family
in the outdoor lifestyle. Throughout this
volume, Clyncke is not stingy in the
photography department. Every chap-
ter of this 344-page effort contains mul-
tiple visual reminders of the topic at
hand. Of special note are the many pho-
tos in which the hunter and the game
are in the same frame. These photos
certainly bring the reader into the
moment and the type of terrain
Clyncke, family, and friends find game
to stalk at altitudes of 12,000 feet and
higher. The author devotes one entire
chapter to the topic:
Every hunter should make an effort
to take success and camp trip photos.
One doesn’t have to buy expensive cam-
era equipment to do so these days. Every
photographic company makes small
shirt-pocket digital cameras that all
have variable lenses, in other words,
telephoto capabilities that produce
excellent photos. Very easy to do if you
just make yourself do it.
Clyncke and company, throughout
this volume, pursue elk, moose, prong-
horn, big horn and Dall sheep, moun-
tain goat, whitetail, cougar, javelina,
bear, turkey, feral hog, and small game.
But as those who have read Clyncke’s
magazine articles or have attended his
public speaking engagements already
know—this man lives for mule deer and
hunting them where others cannot or
will not go. And he’s really good at the
craft. Of course, it was a steep learning
curve, and he blew out plenty of bucks
in the process but eventually he refined
his tactics and big antlered deer began
to fill walls and freezer space.
Near the close of his book, we accom-
pany Clyncke and Judy on an Italian
vacation in which they meet archery
shop owner and traditional artifact col-
lector, Filippo Donadoni. Of course, in
any archery discussion shooting styles
will be a matter of keen interest.
Clyncke shares Donadoni’s thoughts on
the predatory eye:
Filippo believes and is a student of
the traditional relationship between the
predators and shooting a bow. He
believes predators “aim” for their prey
with both eyes open so when a lion
jumps, an eagle dives, or a stone is
thrown, the predator has already calcu-
lated in his brain the exact distance and
spot. He believes as tennis players, bas-
ketball players, and baseball players do,
that if one practices the concentration of
mental aiming for an exact spot with
both eyes locked on that spot, the arrow
will end up in that spot.
As our modern archery legends
mature, Son of the Longbow and similar
efforts become more and more impor-
tant not only as welcome additions to
our libraries, but to remind us that
Clyncke and his contemporaries paved
a path of mentoring, leadership, and
some fine how-to’s on the high slopes
and dark timber of the mountain West.
Self-published material has certain-
ly become more commonplace in the
outdoor genre and provides a vehicle for
authors to reach their intended audi-
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TAPERED CEDAR ARROWS, barred feathers, laminat-
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BAMBOO BACKED BOWS of Osage, Yellow Heart and
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Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021
ence. However, as this column has noted
previously, authors should strongly con-
sider utilizing the skills of an experi-
enced proofreader prior to presenting
the finished product.
The book is available through the
website sonofthelongbow.com.
Book Reviewer David Tetzlaff lives,
hunts, fishes, and enjoys wildlife pho-
tography in central Florida. He is chas-
ing a new career as a real estate photog-
rapher and drone pilot. He can be
reached at davidgrayoak@gmail.com.
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of thousands of items (pictures). www.hideandfur.com (208)
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BOW FOR SALE Gary Bassett takedown recurve 60” 59#
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$1.90 per word, $38 minimum. Must be
paid in full & received by August 5, 2021
for the Dec/Jan 2022 issue.
Please include full name, address, &
phone # if not stated in your ad.
Classifieds must be prepaid.
Contact Kerri Doyle at 208-853-0555 or
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77
 Traditional Harvests

Tony Jester of Madison, IN with his first traditional kill. Tony used a 55# Martin Matt Poli of Holland, PA took his first traditional deer using a 40# Old
Willow, Grizzlystik Sitka arrow, and a 150-grain Wasp traditional head. Mountain Mesa longbow and a 250gr Abowyer Brown Bear broadhead.

Joe Garris Sr. of New Jersey with one of two bucks he took during the 2020
archery season. Joe used 45# Bear Super Kodiak, Easton Legacy aluminum
shaft, and German Jager broadheads.
Joe is the father of our contributor Beka Garris.

Photo submissions are always welcome. You can email high-resolution

images to tjc@tradbow.com, or mail photos to TBM, P.O. Box 15060, Boise,
Idaho 83715. Include name, city and state, and equipment used.

Please note that images are published in chronological order in which they George "Buddy" Darden of Thomson, GA took this boar hog on a
are received. PBS/TBG Blackbeard Island hunt with his 46# Black Widow
recurve, Surewood shafts, and 160-grain ACE broadhead.
Matt Steed from McCool, MS harvested this doe using a 50# Wes Wallace
recurve, Surewood shaft and Zwickey No Mercy broadhead.
This big Minnesota tom turkey was taken by Kurt Haugen of Clara City,
MN. Kurt used a 46# Morrison longbow, Douglas fir shaft tipped with a
Zephyr Tempest broadhead.

Brian Hoffman of Lawrence, KS with a large wild boar taken in Oklahoma. Brian used a DAS Tribute bow, Victory
VAP TKO arrow, and Steel Force broadhead. He said the boar charged him twice, but not the third time!
 Tips From the Old Timer
Personal Protection, Bow Tuning, and Form
By Dennis Kamstra

P
ersonal protection is becoming a big issue, but pur-
chasing firearms is becoming a hassle. I have a
friend in the “protection” industry who advised the
following: Forget standard pepper spray and hand-held
Tasers as they require close contact, which is a threat in
itself. Instead, have access to a can of wasp spray. It will
reach out to 25 feet or more and when sprayed in the eyes, it
will require hospitalization. Those of us who travel in bear
country probably have a can of bear spray, which will work
just as well. I own guard dogs that tend to fight each other
when excited. I’ve found both of these sprays very effective
in breaking up a dog fight. I have many scars to attest that
other options do not work as well! The author picked up these tweezers with an
* * * attached magnifying glass from Harbor Freight.
Perhaps my eyes are failing with advancing age, but
extracting thorns (a constant endeavor here in Africa) is wooden handle longbows and recurves), the problem of
becoming more difficult. I came across a magnifying tweez- arrow strike is even more of an issue. Metal handle bows are
ers that is a real blessing. I picked it up in the States easier to tune because the riser strength is such that the
(Harbor Freight), but I’m sure one can Goggle it and have it bows can be center-shot, or even past center-shot, allowing
delivered. I am attaching a photo so you can have a visual. the archer to use an adjustable arrow rest. Center-shot bows
Get a couple, as you will use them for lots of stuff besides are much more accommodating of arrow spine. It has been
sliver extraction (like inserting those little screws in eye my experience that arrow strike is much more common on
glass frames). non-center-shot bows, because then arrow spine is critical.
* * * When using aluminum or carbon shafts, the spine is
very consistent but not so much with wooden shafts, which I
I want to continue some thoughts on tuning a bow with think is a big factor in arrow strike. So, those of us who
broadhead arrows (after touching on this subject in previous choose wooden shafts must be very cognizant of “matched”
columns). I have been receiving e-mails from frustrated shafts. Try to purchase shafts with less than five pounds of
readers on this subject. It seems that the one common difference in spine, and you will be a long way into solving
denominator problem is the arrow striking the bow shelf. We arrow strike problems. I prefer big, heavy broadheads, and
should be familiar with the archer’s paradox, in which the this in itself presents more of a problem with arrow flight.
arrow bends around the bow at release and continues to Remember, the fletching is supposed to be the “rudder” steer-
ocellate for several feet before straightening into a perfect ing the arrow. With wide broadheads rudder control can be
flight pattern. Several things can affect this bending and compromised, which can cause all kinds of arrow flight prob-
could contribute to the arrow striking the bow shelf: point or lems. I get around this issue by using bigger feathers or
broadhead weight, arrow material, arrow length, arrow going to four-fletch instead of three. I might add here that
diameter, and wall thickness (aluminum and carbon). feathers have more “drag” than plastic vanes and will conse-
The right combination of all the above is the trick to quently “steer” the arrow better.
proper arrow flight. If a bow is not center-shot (most all
80 www.traditionalbowhunter.com

I long ago determined that plastic
vanes are not for me and my bow setup.
For those of you who have a long draw
(over 29 inches), the issue of spine
becomes even more difficult. Let me cut
to the chase by advising you to build
several arrows of differing spine (slight-
ly under spine to ten pounds over spine)
and differing fletching (high and low
profile as well as 3- and 4-fletch). Use
the same broadhead on all arrows. Dust
your bow shelf with baby powder and
use trial and error to find the best
arrow flight.
I also recommend using a straight
fletch rather than severe off-set.
Remember that one more variable is
the nocking point on your string. You
might try raising the nocking point
higher than you would with field points.
I know this is time consuming, but it
should be a labor of love. Once you find
the best combination, be sure to write
down everything regarding that arrow
choice (weight, diameter, type of wood,
length of shaft, type of fletching,
straight or off-set fletching, height of
fletching, weight and size of broadhead,
and FOC of the finished arrow). All that
information should be saved for that
specific bow, for the rest of its life.
* * * a seasoned bowhunter who was not
Now that you have tuned equip- more than happy to start you on the
ment, the only other potential problem right path.
is your shooting mechanics. This simply * * *
breaks down into four parts: bow grip, So, now you have matched equip-
full draw, proper release, and proper fol- ment and solid shooting mechanics.
low through. Of these four, the last two What can go wrong? I don’t know
seem to be the most common shooting “what” will go wrong, but I can tell you
flaws, so let’s address both. To obtain “when.” That is when that 10-point
proper release, you must hold the string buck slowly walks within your shooting
correctly. Pick up a full paint can, using distance! Everything you have learned
only your drawing fingers, and hang the could easily go out the window.
can down next to your leg. Look at your Remember to take five deep breaths
knuckles; they will be straight and not with slow exhalation, if time allows. As
cupped. That is how your knuckles easily as that, everything will come
should look at full draw. If knuckles are back into perspective. Trust me on this
cupped at full draw, you are using one!
arm/shoulder muscles instead of back
muscles to pull the bow. Use the mus- Dennis is a retired professional
cles between your shoulder blades! If hunter now living in South Africa. He
you accomplish these two things, your has done competitive archery as well as
release will be crisp and your drawing global bowhunting in over 60 years of
hand will recoil straight back (rather traditional archery. Consequently, he
than with the dreaded hay hook, fly has admitted to making just about every
away release). shooting error in the book. He hopes that
Most important (in my opinion) his mistakes may lead to your successes.
and is the follow through. That bow arm His e-mail: safariden@aol.com.
should not move after release! This is
the most common shooting error I have
observed in over 60 years of shooting a
bow. Invariably, a poor shooter will drop
the bow arm at release. If you find your-
self dropping your bow arm, you are
probably watching the arrow in flight
rather than continuing to concentrate
on your aiming spot until the arrow
strikes that spot. Ask a competent
archery coach to analyze your shooting
style and observe your follow through.
As with any hand/eye coordinated
sport, the follow through is the diagnos-
tic result of everything preceding. Set
up your digital camera on a tripod and
take a movie of yourself shooting. Self-
analysis is the best training. If you are
a newcomer to the sport, forward the
movie to someone with experience and
ask them to assist you. I have never met
Traditional Bowhunter® Aug/Sep 2021 81
Campfire Philosopher
Alone
By Mark Nelson
A
few years back, I was on day
five of an eight-day solo
bowhunt for elk high in the
mountains of Wyoming. I found myself
some distance from camp just at
timberline as evening descended. As if
both sun and moon had been placed on
a balance scale, the massive sun slowly
lowered below a distant peak, lifting the
full moon above the eastern horizon.
I had no need of my headlamp as I
made my way through the stunted
pines of the krumholtz under the
moon’s soft light. Traversing a long
subalpine meadow, I followed a small
stream flashing in the night back to
camp. Flipping the headlamp on for the
first time that night, I prepared dinner.
Once ready, I doused the lamp and ate
my dinner alone. Alone. The word
evokes feelings of isolation and fear. My
thesaurus lists the synonyms of
“lonely,” “lonesome,” “deserted,”
“forlorn,” and “forsaken.” Many dangers
lurk in the dark. An errant slip or a
momentary blunder with a skinning
knife, and life as you know it may end.
There are many dangers in the world,
and why tempt fate by subjecting
yourself to more?
Yet on that solo bowhunt, I was far
from alone or forsaken. As I ate, I looked
over a meadow awash in the supple
beams of the moon. The small creek
that guided me back to camp gurgled its
way down the mountain. My head
turned at the click of hooves from the
sparse timber near my tent. My eyes,
accustomed to the darkness, saw the
source of the sound was a raghorn bull
elk, its cream-colored coat glowing in
82
the night. He walked through my camp
30 yards from where I ate. If I were to
tell of that hunt, descriptions would
include alpine, frost, the winged
eruption of a blue grouse, and the
musky scent of bull elk. The word
“forlorn” would not be uttered.
I often hear advice that sportsmen
and women should not hunt alone.
Many hunter education classes speak of
solo hunting as ill-advised. Two is
better than one. The current culture
reflects this protective mentality with
the creation of safe spaces from danger,
real or imagined, at universities and in
work places. Even Solomon in all his
wisdom says, “Two are better than
one.... If either of them falls down, one
can help the other up. But pity anyone
who falls and has no one to help them
up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)
I’m not disagreeing with Solomon’s
sage advice, and I know the benefits of
companionship are innumerable. I
enjoy hunts and outings with family
and friends, and I fondly look back on
those memories. But if I were to never
go out into the backcountry alone,
something special would be lost. When
on my own, I move and travel with a
heightened awareness, knowing a lack
of concentration could result in a
broken leg, or worse. My mind unwinds
and allows for deeper thoughts and
introspection than it ever would in a
camp full of camo-clad friends. While I
am an advocate for going it alone, I take
measures to mitigate the inherent
danger.
I think of the sorry story of Carl
McCunn, which spurs me on to tell my
www.traditionalbowhunter.com
wife where I’ll be hunting and when she
can expect to hear from me. McCunn
was dropped off by a float plane on the
southern portion of Alaska’s Brooks
Range in the spring of 1981. His plan
was to stay for five months
photographing the tundra and wildlife.
Unfortunately, he failed to arrange for a
pickup and was fairly vague on his
intentions with friends and family.
State troopers found his body late that
winter in his wall tent. He had run out
of food in early autumn and kept a
diary of the grim experience until he
used a bullet to end his travails.
Prior to GPS technologies, I relied on
someone to come looking for me if I
didn’t show at my designated time. I
knew that wouldn’t do much good if I
ran into trouble early into my hunts.
The thought of laying at the bottom of a
canyon with a broken back for a week
certainly was on my mind. These days I
carry a small Garmin satellite
communicator, which allows for
immediate contact with the outside
world. While I am still extra cautious
when I’m on my own, the little device I
keep in my pack, along with other
survival items, gives me some peace of
mind.
Even with all of those precautions, I
know I am taking added risk by going it
alone…but that is a big part of the
allure. If you haven’t hunted for more
than two or three days on your own, it’s
time to step out of that safe space
you’ve been hiding in.
Mark Nelson works for the
Wyoming Game and Fish Department
in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In addition to
bowhunting, Mark is an avid fly fisher-
man and wildlife photographer. Mark’s
photographs can be seen at his website
MLeonardphoto.com.