This is a long story, and I haven't told anyone yet, so it's been bottled up inside me for a while, (hence distances are longer, racks are bigger and the slight cross breeze turned into a tornado) and now I'm telling it.
This last season was the first season that I'd gone deer hunting with a long bow. Yes, a long bow with cedar arrows to boot. I had been hunting with a shotgun (unsuccessfully the season before last. However, I put the shotgun away when I discovered my six year old knew how to pick the lock to the gun cabinet and picked up a compound instead.
So I was passing by a pawnshop and saw an Oneaida Aeroforce. I had always thought they were cool bows, and at $100, I figured I couldn't get hurt. I bought it and practiced with it (never having even shot a compound before I learned that dry-firing is a bad thing, and I've got the scars to prove it). So I practiced until at twenty yards I could hit a four inch target every time.
And then Deer season comes around, and I go out for one last practice, and the darned thing is out of tune again. The power cables had stretched. So I drive up to Marion, they replace the cables, tell me I have to replace the cable every year, and then tell me that it's time I buy a new bow. I hunted with it that year, but I was soured on it.
I decided to switch. I borrowed my dad's Montana longbow (no wheels, no gadgets no tuning every dern year, just a stick and a string)
So I practiced with that, and practiced and practiced. Until it broke. (I shot it with a fractured nock a couple times and the one end delaminated. It was just like dry firing. Again, I have a scar to prove it)
So it was time to buy a new bow, and I did. It's 68" 60# bamboo sandwiched between carbon with a Kingwood riser. Absolutely beautiful, and faster than all get out. And so I practiced with this bow, and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced.
And then Deer season came. And I was there, behind a tree, and the buck came in to 17 yards and I shot. I was surprised that the decision to shoot the deer wasn't difficult. The question was more "How do I make this shot". The arrow went through his heart and out the other side, he lasted all of twenty yards and then dropped. My first deer with a long bow and cedar arrows.
I bring this up now because it's time for dinner, and I have the last package of frozen venison steak in my refrigerator defrosting, and tonight, although it's on 5 degrees outside, I'm going to barbecue.
Have a good evening everyone.
