Today was a snow day off from trapping and so I asked Winemaker what she would like me to do since I was home….she said, nothing.  She didn’t count on me being home and she would continue to do what she had planned and they didn’t include me!  OK!  Then I’ll try and make myself a quiver to hold my arrows.

I went scrounging for materials and this is what I found:

I have been on line and found what others have done using PVC pipe, Pringles tubes, even tubes that Christmas wrap comes on.  But I want mine to look special.  How special?  Well, I’ve never made one so let’s learn and do this together.

I have some leather from a very poorly built leather scabbard I won, a fairly large piece of wool material that came from Marla Jo making my capote many years ago.  A bag of leather scraps.  The trimmings off a felt hat.  Lots of artificial sinew and a needle and scissors.

I have more than that, but I had decided this is what I was going to make my quiver out of and I really am leaning toward the wool material.

Any good quiver is going to have an open end in which to put the arrows….right?  So I grabbed the felt scraps and bent it around in a circle….hmmmmm….looks like if I attached the two ends together it would make an adequate quiver opening.

So, I made a cut and got a board, hammer and a nail….gotta make holes in order to sew it together.

The needle and sinew were next to grab and sew, sew, sew….

Ok, once I have both ends made, how am I going to hold them together?  Gotta find something.

Whenever I’m faced with an unknown like this, I wander around the house looking for something that might work.  Down in the basement I found an old wooden ramrod.  That would work just fine.  I came up, made a guesstimate as to how long it should be and went to the shop to cut it off.  I figured about 16 inches should be good enough for my quiver.  Out at the shop I saw a wooden dowel under my toolbox lid!  Hey!  That is smaller in diameter, plenty stiff….that will work just fine!

I put the ramrod back and pushed the dowel into the sewn parts of the felt ends.

Hey, now I need a way for the arrows to stop and not drop through to the ground.  A wood plug?  Leather?  How will I attach it to the felt circle?  I could cut a wood plug the size of the inside of the felt circle and then tack it with small tacks or brads….hmmmmm, again.

Scrounging through the bag of leather scraps I found an old mountain man belt I had made about 30 years ago.  It was about 3 inches wide and who says the bottom felt has to be round.  Why not oval?  That’s it!  If I place the leather on the outside of the felt and scrunch it together and sew it, it will make a fine bottom for my quiver!

Heck ya!  That will work just fine!  Now for the outer part….leather or wool cloth?  Leather?  Wool Cloth?  I tried them both and came away thinking the wool cloth looked a whole lot better than the leather.  I’ll make a leather one some other time.

I placed the wool on the parts I had and held it firmly with both hands.  It looked like it will work just fine.  After all, I’m just making a bag to hold arrows in right?  Once I was convinced it would work, I pinched down on the parts where I would begin my sewing and grabbed up the needle and sinew.  Stitching this way and that (I’m not very good at sewing) and trying not to make it look like too much of a mess, I finally arrived at something that will hold arrows and also tie onto my belt.

It might not look like much to you, but to me it will be a whole lot better than carrying around a box that holds my arrows!

There you go!  Quivers made easy!

Bears Butt

March 3, 2015

The second day of the Golden Spike 3D shoot was just as much, if not more, fun than the first day.   I was not sure what to expect on that first day but was totally ready for day number 2.  I wanted to get there to help where I could, but also wanted to shoot for the fun of it.

Weasel and I got a little practice in down at the fun shoot area.  We tossed in a few bucks and took a few shots at the clay pigeons.  I even managed to hit a few at that 30 yard range.  I wasn’t about to try and thread one through that big old hole in the “Iron Maiden” however.  But a few guys gave it a go and there were a lot of “BOINGS” to be heard.  Each boing cost the archer an arrow.  Weasel managed to thread one down through it for a perfect shot.

Well, I was a little more “on my game” during the shooting.  I’d have to say more relaxed than the day before is more like it.  And with Weasel and our shooting partner Mr. Brimberry shooting for serious money, I tried not to get in their way.  My arrows were always far and away from any money shots.  Not by choice mind you, more like, lucky I hit the foam.

There was this “one time” however:

That’s Bears Butt’s arrow closest to the red dot.  Not quite enough for a 12, but a good solid 10!  And I’ll take that any day!

There were others having a great time hitting the reds and scoring 12’s.

You have to admit it doesn’t get any better than that at 60 yards!  Nearly a perfectly placed shot!

And then of course the dreaded Alligator.  One of my shots at that critter, hit the dirt just in front of it, bounced up and hit the log in behind it and ended up outside the shooting area.  Luckily my arrow didn’t have enough force to poke a hole in the arena siding and ended up resting nicely in a safe place to be picked up during cleanup.  But, some shooters tagged out with 12’s in the scoring, like this young lady!

It doesn’t get much better!

I noticed today there were fewer hunters in the woods than on day one.  I suppose more people had figured out how to shoot and keep the arrows out of the trees.  Whatever the case the house was just as full on day two as it was on day one.

The signup ended at 3 p.m., but the shooting continued until everyone had their shots done.  As the last group of shooters worked their way down to the final station, the clean up crew were moving targets and taking down trees and signs.  I was very impressed with the organization of this group of bowmen.

And when it was all over the arena looked better than it did when the setup first began!

(This picture is of the arena when we first started to set up, Weasel was supposed to send me a copy of a picture after cleanup, but I haven’t gotten it yet).

A very fun time!  Thank you Brigham Bowmen for pulling off this great shoot.  Well over 400 archers came to this fun time!  Next year the goal is over 500 shooters!  Let’s make it happen!

Oh, my first day of shooting netted me a fun score of 230 and with some limited knowledge about the targets and less of them jumping the string, I came through with a whopping 260 on day two!  I’ll take that score and the fact that on day one I had 22 “zeros”…..Day two was an improvement of only 19 “zeros”!  WAHOOO for me!

Bears Butt

March 2, 2015

Yesterday was day one of this 3D shoot and the very first one I have ever been to.  It was very fun to shoot in it and not exactly what I had expected.  My light poundage bow did very well and it actually can shoot out to 60 yards pretty good.  I actually hit the buffalo out at that range with it!  The whole range setup is pretty cool, and with arrows flying all over the place at the same time it is amazing arrows don’t collide in flight.  I’m sure over time it does happen.  The folks who were there enjoying the day all had fun.

There sure could be more spectators to this event and perhaps as more and more people get into archery that will come to be.  In the meantime, we will just enjoy it as it is.

I don’t know how many shooters came out to this event, but the line was pretty full all day long.  With how the shoot has to be conducted I think I was on the line shooting for about 3 hours.  Maybe less, but it did take quite awhile.  The spectators that were there all had someone they were watching participate and that was interesting to watch as well.  The first shooting station is WAYYYYY down at the far end of the picture above this statement and as the shooting progresses, the shooters move down toward the close end of this picture.  25 stations in all.  The spectators worked their way down the bleachers along with the shooters.  Heckling and fun was had all along the way.  Friends and family all out for a good time!  Some very serious shooters and a ton of not so serious shooters.  I had to be one that was not so serious because I sure shot a lot of dirt….actually….I killed the dirt real good!

Once the shooters shot their two shots each, they closed the line and everyone went down to retrieve their arrows and score their targets (at least those who were actually scoring, some were just shooting to be shooting and having fun doing it).  People were criss-crossing all over the arena because of the way it was set up.  It was fun no matter.

If you are reading this and want to come out and see what it is all about, please do.  You won’t regret it!  They have a food vendor there that does smoked food…..even smoked pizza!  I’ve never heard of smoked pizza, but they came and gave us a sample of it and it was wonderful!  They also have smoked pulled pork and rib sandwiches….YUMMY STUFF!  A couple of other vendors are there selling archery related gear as well!  The Brigham Bowmen are raffling off some very cool stuff and they have a fun shoot going on where you can play to win tickets for a great bow sight they are giving away.  Shoot an arrow through a hole in a big metal plate and you get 5 tickets towards winning that sight.  Or shoot and hit a clay pigeon and win a ticket for it as well.  I’ll tell you right now, there were a LOT of arrows that didn’t make it through that hole!  BOING!  $6 down the tube!  Arrows are not cheap!  But there were a lot of folks that could thread that arrow right down that hole with no problem….not me!  My arrows are sacred to me.  I will be shooting at the clay birds though.  If I win the sight I won’t have any reason to keep it as it doesn’t fit on a traditional bow.

No matter if you are interested in archery or not, you should treat yourself by coming out and seeing what these folks are doing!  Weasel is shooting for score today and I hope he wins some cash.  It will cost him $30 to shoot for the money.  He will have to do better today than he did yesterday in order to win anything, but he posted up a pretty impressive score yesterday even at that.  FUN!  I ended up with a 230 score (possible 600)!

Scoring went like this:  Hit the red dot on the target and get 12 points.  Any hit in the kill zone got you 10 and a hit anywhere else on the target got an 8.  My first two targets were dirt balls and the third I bounced one in to the leg for a solid 8.  Then another zero followed by 3 8’s in a row!  I was getting hot at that point!  With a ton of luck I hit the kill zone for a 10 on target number 8!  Number 9 was another leg hit and target 10 I hit two kill zones!  That wouldn’t happen again until target number 25, where I scored two 10’s on the carp!  It is hard to imagine not getting 10’s at targets less than 10 feet away!

Well, I’ll end this with my favorite picture of the whole day and probably the whole event.  I don’t know who the gentleman was that brought his young son out, but there is something to be said about a young shooter enjoying the day.  He shot 6 arrows at every target as he went along with his dad.

THIS IS WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT FOLKS!

Bears Butt

March 1, 2015