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Recreation and Sports > Back to Basics
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Ken Mcbroom
I decided years ago that the bow and arrow would be my weapon of
choice and believe me I get some funny looks when I pull a bow out of the truck
during gun season but I’m alright with that. I began bow hunting when I was
fourteen. It was a Browning Nomad was the weapon along with a leather quiver of
cedar arrows with the famous Bear broad heads glued to the tips. That bow was a
gift from my dad and has just resurfaced from storage and will soon see action once
again as I plan to up the challenge even more by using more primitive equipment in
my search for Whitetail. Some say that is a little on the weird side of things given
the high tech. options that are available, my Dad leads the way with that notion even
though he used the same bow before I was born. He says he had to use the recurve
because it was his only choice. He now can’t believe that I want to use it again.
It was while hunting with this bow that I had two of my most memorable hunts.
Each ended with a clean miss but each one more vivid and remembered more often
than any of my higher tech. hunts, even those that resulted in a kill. Why? I’m not
sure, but I tend to believe that it has something to do with the fact that everything
was simple and the focus was on hunting and not arrow speed or whether or not I
left my release in the truck. One of those hunts was a doe that caught me asleep. I
heard her and opened my eyes to find her walking straight for me. I was sitting in
what we call a hog blind, brush strategically placed around the hunter to conceal
him or her. In other words long before I used a tree stand. I can see her now in my
head coming straight for me on a trail I located that morning coming up the
mountain from the fields below. She got within ten yards of my hog blind before her
walking woke me. I had an arrow ready but clicked it on the riser in my haste to take
a shot before she walked over me. She heard the click and jumped around and went
about fifteen yards to my left. Perfect! I missed and the cedar arrow found one of its
cousins and the old Bear Broad head is still in that cedar tree atop a well-traveled
ridge in Tennessee.
The one hunt that stands out more than any other was a stare down between
me, an adolescent, and a six point buck, yet another adolescent trying to make his
way in this crazy world. I was hunting on a piece of property that was thick with
deer. I am grateful for that piece of land, maybe two hundred acres, where I
wandered and learned so much about hunting and life. What I would give for a nice
piece of land again to hunt where the deer, for the most part, go unmolested and
tend to go about their business in a normal manner. Anyway that’s another story in
and of itself.
That morning I slipped into my thick brown Walls insulated coveralls and left
the house before daylight to walk the half mile behind the house to a ridge where I
had seen a lot of rubs. I slipped slowly down an old fencerow that skirted the entire
perimeter of the property. Arrow nocked, eyes peeled, I was stopped in my tracks by
a small six point just inside the cedar thicket that I was skirting. I froze, as did the
buck. I was hunched over as I was creeping along and keeping a low profile. The six
point stared at me and I stared back, each waiting for the other to make a move.
The deer was no more than twenty yards and I knew that I could hit a paper plate at
thirty with the Browning Nomad so I stood my ground. Finally my legs began to
shake and a pain was beginning to run up my back and into my shoulders.
The minutes went by and finally the buck began to feed again but I had already
learned on previous hunts that deer will try to fool you into thinking they are
feeding then jerk their head up and look to see if you moved or not. After several
attempts to catch me moving the buck finally decided the coast was clear and began
to feed normally again. By now my whole body is in pain but I manage to straighten
up enough to attempt a shot. The six points never noticed me until I began the draw
and he looked me straight in the eyes and by the look on his face I knew he was not
long for that spot and I was hoping he was not long for this world. Well, as is the
case in the real world and away from the target range my arrow failed to find its
mark and the little six point bounded away unharmed with that cedar arrow also
finding a distant cousin and lodging in the base of a big cedar tree.
Those two hunts have got to be two of my favorite and as the bow hunting
options become more plentiful and higher tech. those two memories creep into my
head more and more often. I have been fortunate to harvest several animals in my
thirty-seven years as well as several with my bow, which is an older High Country
compound that I love to shoot. With age comes the desire to go back to my roots
and try to relive those feelings of simple one on one confrontation with the animal
without the added worries of all the high tech. gadgets that seem to clutter the
mind and not only take away from your wallet but also from the experience.
I have to admit that I have yet to convert to the old recurve but let’s just say I
have taken the time to dig it out of the barn and I am now in the tedious process of
refinishing it. I plan to get some cedar shafts and hunt down some of my old Bear
broad heads to glue to the tip. The desire to go back to the basics is slowly creeping
back into my mind, an example being this article. I will keep you posted as to the
hunts that transpire in the seasons to come and the experiences that follow.
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