A bowhunting acquaintance once said of my fondness of archery, you’ve been around archery since dirt.
Ever since Robin Hood came out as a TV show in the late 1950 and early 1960’s I had found my hero, to fight for truth and justice and to live off the game and fish in the field and streams of Sherwood Forest. Millions of young boys like me took to the field and forest with makeshift longbows made of a maple or hickory sapling. There were no video games back then. My mother who was a home maker said to my brother and I during the summer, lunch is at 12 and dinner is at 5 pm. Go play till then, and get out of the house.
Even back then I absorbed the honorable nature of Robin Hood played by Richard Greene to fight for rights of the people and the rule of law by a just leader and not the tyrant that Prince John portrayed on TV in the early 1960’s.
I built my first long bow at the age of 6 from a maple sapling and string from the kitchen drawer. I used whatever I could get to shoot as an arrow, often it was a shaft of goldenrod. Later at 10 years old I bugged my mother to use her S&H Green Stamps to purchase my first recurve bow. I was on my way to becoming a hunter back then. My father worked building nuclear submarines but in his spare time when he was not gardening, he had a long bow he would sometimes shoot in the back yard.
Enter the Rifle – My dad taught my brother and I to shoot a single shot 22 rifle and worked us up to a 30-30 and 38-55 Winchester for deer hunting. I killed my first deer, a doe, with the 38-55 Winchester and loved that lever action.
My love of hunting was equal to my love of shooting and hunting with both gun and bow, it is a life long passion I cherish.
Back to the Bow – I shot instinctive for years thanks to Fred Bear, who I personally met at Kittery Trading Post in the 1960’s. I was good at it on targets. But then I tried the first compound bows and they gave me a huge edge in hunting, though I still had a nostalgic love of recurves and long bows.
Back in the 1970’s, my first new compound bow was a Herter’s Power Magnum. Today it is a museum piece, one of the first production compound bows. It had a set of timing cams that you could adjust with an Allen wrench. Timing cam’s? What the heck is that! The second bow was a Martin Cougar magnum 50% let off. I ran the 3D archery program at a local club for many years with great satisfaction. I have endeavored to study bow-building long bows and recurves for a time and made a dozen Self Bows of hickory and maple but it did not hold my interest as a life long endeavor as I still loved to hunt first and foremost.
The third compound bow was a High Country Sniper I won in a raffle w/65% let off which I took to Africa with great success. I competed with it at 3D archery and at indoor league where I won my share of trophies. I was pleased to often be top shot in my archery league.
My fourth bow is a Hoyt X-Tec (a 10 year old bow) which I shot at 70 lbs for quite some time. Of late I have a pinched neck nerve but am trying to get my bow arm back in shape for some whitetail action using much less poundage.
Good Hunting!
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