I shot this young Billy in the mid 1990's , it was my first game kill using a Selfbow and Believe me I was a little more ATHLETIC then compared to now . Very unlucky goat in my veiw - talk about in the wrong spot at the wrong time .
The bow was made from a Jarrah floorboard purchased from a local hardware supplier . Jarrah is a very deep red/ brown coloured Australian native timber that gets a lot of use in furniture and flooring . I backed the bow with a couple of strips of Kangaroo rawhide to prevent splinters rising . This is a very old practice amounst Selfbow makers when using wood of questionable tension strength to prevent splinters rising . I was pretty new to making selfbows at the time and did this more as insurance , further pieces of that board proved to be great unbacked selfbows .
Anyhow - this goat was in a mob of about 40 animals , my mates Dave and Sam and I had snuck up to within bow range . It was Daves shot so we watched as he shot his goat - unfortunatly a bit off target so we had a chase on our hands - in this country once game is out of sight it's lost and none of us being black trackers in the red soil and abundant red stones blood sign and spoor is incredibly difficult to follow .
Daves goat dropped out of the mob and headed to a Dam in the back of this paddock - Dave signalled all's OK so we took off across the plain you can see in the background in an attempt to ambush the fast disappearing goats as they circled back through the treeline in the background to the area we spooked them out of .
We caught up to the mob - JUST - they had no idea we where there and as I was in a better position than Sam and between gasps for breath after our long sprint and I mean long - perhaps a couple of Kilometres I sent a homemade Ramin shaft on it's journey - a very long shot for me of 35 yards at the big billy Beor Goat cross coming up the tail of the mob , the bugger took off as my arrow arched toward him passed exactly where his vitals would have been and poleaxed this poor little bloke - he was pretty good chewin , backstraps cooked up in the wood fired oven the next night
regards Jacko
