Ya, those look about right to me!  Arrows.  Let me be perfectly honest about arrows and bow shooting…………………………..CONFUSING!…………………………….

I have learned that the more I know about shooting a bow the more I want to know about shooting a bow.  And the more I know about the physics of shooting that arrow from that bow, the more I want to know about the physics of the arrow being shot from that bow.  I want to know what the effect the string has on the flight of the arrow, the effect it has on the tips of the bow itself and the dynamics of the “what if” I pluck the string to my right….to my left….to my up…to my down….(I’m a pretty good little plucker).  I’ve said it before…there is a whole lot more to shooting a bow and arrow than meets the eye….never look the point of the arrow right in the eye….

We all know the internet is FULL of good stuff.  There is something for EVERYONE on it and I for one use it alot!  I try and share as much as I can with you as well and I hope some of it has been useful to you.  But there is ONE big thing missing and maybe it is my calling to fill in this gap….NOWHERE is there a chart, a graph, a youtube video or anything that asks….Hey dude!  Ya YOU!  What bow weight are you shooting?  What is your draw length?  What kind of arrow shaft do you like to shoot (wood, carbon, aluminum, titanium, fiberglas, ford, chevy)?  What is the type of string you shoot on your bow (fast flight, dacron, toolie root)?  Are you shooting a compound bow?  Recurve?  Longbow?  Sling shot?  NOWHERE is there the question about “how long have you been shooting a bow”!  Do you shoot using a release?  Three fingers under?  Split finger?  What’s your mothers maiden name?   None of that!!!!

So, after 15 months of shooting my bow and arrows….I’m still not sure I’m shooting the arrow I should be shooting with my bow.  Maybe it is part of the learning curve being instilled by those who actually know.  My initiation so to speak.  Rather than dunking me in a dunking tank filled with pepsi rather than beer, I am being initiated this way.  I think others feel the same way.  AND I think that is why a lot of “traditional” bow shooters break ranks and pick up the compound bows that have the little wheels helping with the “let off” and the sights that help with “aiming”….all the big boys shoot those bows and know exactly what spine weight arrows to shoot, exactly what vanes to have on the nock end, what points to have on the leading edge.  But with us traditional guys, it is all up to us to figure it out.  Go to the arrow/bow store and look around….300 spine arrows are everywhere….fancy triggered releases for a nominal fee….strings that are guaranteed to “fit” your bow.  Charts and graphs and pictures of guys and gals with huge trophies and sponsorships abounding everywhere.

Go to a traditional bow shop, tucked back in the corner of the ghetto (low rent) area of the city, suburb, county or remote area on the edge of a wilderness, and you see, Joe Traditional, sitting there making his own string, whittling on his arrows or pulling his new fletchings from the wing of a turkey he just shot that morning.  He may even have a set up to knap his next set of arrow heads from the flint rock he picked up while turkey hunting.

I’ve learned in this short period of time, Traditional bow shooters are a little bit of a different breed of cat.  They speak softly and always refer to you (and themselves) as a “trad”…short for traditional….shooter.  Then eye ball you up and down and look over your stuff.  Always there is a comment sent your way to see what knowledge you know about the “old guys” of the sport.  Guys like Fred Bear (the Jim Bridger of the group), or Jim Hill.  I love it.  And of course I know nothing about these guys, but I do love to listen to a couple of “trads” trading stories and telling what I think are outright lies.  Trying to convince me (the know nothing new guy) that they know it all and are about to educate (I almost spelled that Edjukate) me on all of this stuff.  Which they will and I will try and learn.

OK.  So I’m a Trad shooter.  One who is going to, hopefully, take his first and probably only mule deer buck using a recurve bow.  I need to know what is going to be the “right” arrow to use.  I’ve already decided on the broad head.  A single bevel made by Badger and probably in right bevel (Now I’m getting somewhere…you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about….gottcha!).  125 Grain!  Gottcha agin!  And I’m going to be fletched (gottcha) with right helical, right wing barred cock feather and right wing hen feathers in white….gottcha!  Damn it is so nice to know what I’m talking about!

But what about the arrow?  The shaft!?!  Someone please give me “the shaft”, I should be shooting!!!!!  I’ve been getting the shaft most of my life, but right now knowing exactly what shaft would be nice.  Arrow shafts come in “flexibilities” from “whip sticks” (the kind you hated as a child), to stiff as a board shafts (the kind you order to build your house but come somewhat less stiff than you thought you ordered).  They measure these pretty much the same, but record and report them in different ways, depending on the manufacturer.  Wood shafts?  10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60…or something like that.  Aluminum shafts?  1616, 1816, 2016, 2116, 2216…..repeat….  Carbon shafts?  3035, 400, 150, 5575……………OH MY HECK!

And then there are the ends of the shafts.  Do I want a screw in point?  A glue on point?  A glue on nock?  A nock that presses into the shaft of the hollow arrow?  Do I want fletching made of real turkey feathers or plastic or rubber?  How long should those fletchings be?  2 inch?  3 inch?  4 inch?  5 inch?  Straight?  1 degree offset?  Helical?   AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

What happened to the day of Geronimo?

Me.. want.. simple!

And so, my thought on all of this.  As a beginning archer.  A simple…yes simple…chart that shows me what I want to know.  I enter my bow weight as manufactured.  In my case 55 pound limbs.  I enter my draw length.  As measured by pulling my bow back with an arrow hooked to the string and measuring the distance from the string (inside the nock) to the “target” side of the bow (my draw length).  I enter my “desired” arrow point weight (100 grains, 125 grains etc.).  I enter my desired fletching size and type.  (3 inch/4 inch etc., straight, offset, helical).  And VOOOOEELLLLA it tells me I need to order and shoot, X in wood, Y in Carbon, Z in Aluminum, Q in Fiberglas and P in my mothers maiden name.

I have been on a couple, well maybe several traditional (trad, get used to it) forums and for the life of me, they are adding much to this confusion.  Looking at the arrow spine charts in the books and on line I feel that the spine I should be using is 500 spine for my weight of bow and my draw length, but I’m pushing into the 600 spine zone.  So, with adding or decreasing the weight of my point I can soften or stiffen the spine until my bow likes it.  (Sort of like having a new “one year old pit bull dog”.  You keep feeding it with different stuff until it quits biting you and likes what you are feeding it).  But lately I have found this one Trad forum where the guys/gals are shooting 600 spine arrows out of their 40 pound bows and 200 grain points up front and getting exceptional results down range!   THAT CAN’T HAPPEN FOLKS!  NOT FROM WHAT I’VE READ!  NOT FROM WHAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED IN MY OWN TIME!!!!   NOOOOOOOO!!!!

As I calm myself I ask, how can a 40 pound bow shoot a 600 spine arrow with 200 grains up front and hit anything it is pointed at….NOPE…can’t happen!  Not when my bow is shooting roughly 47 pounds and 500 spine arrows with 125 grains up front and doing “pretty good”.

Keep in mind…more weight up front makes the spine of the arrow “weaker”.  Will the difference of 7 pounds of draw weight make that much difference in arrow dynamics from a 600 spine and a 500 spine against a 200 grain tip and a 125 grain tip??????

I need a good psychiatrist and someone to make this simple chart and post it on the internet………………………….soon.

I had to get this posted before April 1st or someone would think I was pulling an April Fools joke!

March 21, 2016

Bears Butt

It’s raining and snowing outside and no reason for me not to continue to get ready for the archery hunt coming up in 5 months….that seems like a long time but for me it isn’t.  I have lots to do, especially practice shooting to be ready for the hunt.  Part of that preparation is getting my bow camouflaged.  I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it lately and there are lots of ways I could go.  A good camoed up bow could look like this:

Where did that come from?  Not a camo bow tie!  Good grief.  Has my site been hacked?  Is my guardian FortiPress not working?  Everything is fine folks.  I put that one in to get your attention.

Camouflage has been around a goodly length of time and it has and is changing constantly.  New ideas keep popping up as to what the clothing and other cover-ups need to look like in order to hide you the best.  It mostly catches the hunters as I don’t think we know what the animals are seeing.  We could be standing out like sore thumbs.  I know of at least one hunter who doesn’t believe in camo much and wears his plaid shirts and relies on being down wind from his game.  He is a good “killer” of animals as well, so his methods work.  I personally like to look the part.  You know the guy in the truck all camoed up from the top of his head to the bottoms of the soles on his boots.   You never know when you are going to have to sneak up on the beer cooler.

Well, my choices are plenty as to how to camo my bow.  I could buy some of the commercially made wrapping tape.  It goes on quickly, is quiet in the brush and comes off without leaving a big mess.  It comes in a variety of camo patterns too, more than one would know for sure and it would take me all day to figure out which pattern to buy.

These are very nice and I got to use it a couple of years ago on the turkey hunt.  Weasel let me take the shotgun with it wrapped on.  It was easy and sure enough hid the shotgun well.  So well in fact I could have lost it when I set it down once to go relieve myself.  It’s funny how camouflage works.  Here you are sitting in your spot up against a tree and along comes another hunter and takes a leak right on you.  Of course he has to go drop his drawers and clean up after you cough and move.  Ah yes!  Camo!

There was another very tempting type of camo for my bow limbs.  It is made like a skinny sock and you take the string off the limb and put the sock over it, then put the sting back on.  The tension of the string against the sock,keeps the sock up tight on the end of the limb, while the lower part (closest to your bow hand) fits snug against the riser.  Again, they come in all the patterns out there.

There are even “ghillie suit” kinds, with all the loose “leaves” flapping around.   Those were really intriguing to me and I almost went that direction.  But, after thinking about it and remembering about how I camoed up my shotgun and then later the bow quiver…remember those two camo jobs?

Here is a reminder:

I set my mind to doing just that to my bow.  Keep in mind, my bow is not the most expensive one on the market, but it does seem to send an occasional arrow to the mark I’m trying to hit (I still have that 5 months to make those arrows hit that mark more often than not) and so for me to experiment with a camo paint job is not something I am afraid to try.  I got out the same mix of paints I used on that bow quiver, sat  back and looked at my bow limbs and then bit the bullet.  Grabbed up some fine sandpaper and went to roughing up the surface.  I can tell you right now, once you touch the surface of that shiny fiberglas with sand paper, your mind just says…well, dummy, you’ve done it now, you might as well finish what you started….

I spray painted on some “flat” tan color and let it dry.  Then I got out some flat black and another color of lighter tan, also flat…..you have to have the “flat” paint because you don’t want your camo job to shine in the sunlight.  It will shine enough because flat is only so flat.  With the other two cans of paints I just sprayed a dab here and there to break things up a bit.  I could have stopped right there but I was on a quest and had to keep adding more to it.

I was sitting here thinking about the “colors” of the woods in August and September and in my minds eye I could see differing shades of greens, some light to dark yellows and oranges and of course lots of browns and blacks and greys.  I have all those colors in little bottles in Sherry’s area, the same paints the kids use to paint pumpkins for halloween.  I like those little bottles of paints.  Water soluble and flat colors.  I dabbed those here and there on the limbs as well.  Sometimes in the length direction of the limb, sometimes across.  And then when I figured I was all done, I sat back and looked at what I had in front of me.

As a “next to finishing touch” I added my signature squigglie!  

I was pretty happy at this point and the last thing that was needed was to spray the whole shooting match with “flat” clear lacquer!  When that was dry I took these pictures!

So, there you have it!  My camo bow!  I only put the paint on the side that will face the animals when I’m drawn back and I stayed away from painting the wood riser.  I’ll do something with that before the hunt but I don’t want to paint it, I like the wood look.  I’ll most likely cover it with some of the wrap tape.

And this is what it will look like to the big old buck that comes to water next August!

March 29, 2016

Bears Butt