About a month ago I was at a farmers market and met a man that made bird and bat boxes. We talked for some time and we found we had something in common which was shooting bows and hunting with them. He invited me out to his place yesterday for a get together with him and group of his friends to do some shooting.
When I got there with my son we walked in and I instantly saw that my son and I were the minority with our sticks. I am not posting this to degrade or slam anyones preferencs to what they shoot, but to tell about a funny thing that happened.
Wheels were everywhere. Shot distances started at thirty yrds. Mind you I don't shoot much past 20 and my son about 15. They had a tree stand shot set up and my son(9 yrs old) just had to shoot out of it. So I checked it out and got him safe and ready to go. It was only about 12-15 feet high still high enough for him. As he was getting himself ready to shoot he droped his bow to the ground.
The surrounding group of on lookers all gasped and an erie silence overcame the shoot. I simply walked over and picked up his bow and exclaimed "Glad that wasn't a compound" and started to laugh. I know they all probably thought I was an idiot for laughing but what do you do. I guess my son broke the ice for the both of us.
We shot at all their targets before we left and went into the brush looking for our high and wide arrows laughing the whole time we were there. We had a great day. Made some new friends and will go back next year when he has his shoot again. :)
Did the bow hold up, or did it break? I dropped a 64" recurve 25 feet from a tree on a windy day once, man was I scared. But it was like nothing happened, bow was fine.
Yeah, just IMAGINE all the adjustments to be made on a tricked out wheelie if it was dropped, yikes.
Thats a good story,reminds me of a turning point in my archery career.Met a guy once that shot longbows and invited him to our local club shoot.We all shot wheel bows,he showed up with a friend who also had a longbow.We had a few ladder stands about 10-12' tall and they would pitch there bows up to each other once they climbed up.Then to the shock on my face they would just pitch them on the ground once they shot.Maybe cause he built his own bows but I thought that was so cool.I bought my first longbow a couple months later and never looked back,that was 29 years ago.
I hunted Newfoundland once and the guy I hunted with was using his longbow as a walking stick and to help him get up small embankments. I thought it was a switch I should make..from recurve to LB, but I suck at shooting longbows sooooooo.........
LOL, every once in a while when shooting with some compound family members, I'll hold my old recurve out, say this is what I like about these. And just let it fall... The bewildered look is always worth it!
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The bow was fine. He has one of those old red Bear fiberglss bows with the black rubber handle. Those things will hold up to his abuse. Trust me if he would have droped some thing a little more delicate I probably would have cried in front of the other shooters instead of laughed. LOL Still has made me chuckle today. Its one of those thing I'll see when I'm laying on my death bed.
I was in Montana with a good friend of mine and after a long walk around and up the mountain we decided to take a game trail back down the face. It had been drizzling all day and the decent was somewhat steep and slippery. I was leading the way and didn't notice until we were near the bottom that he was using his bow as a walking stick (on the downhill side of the trail) and clinging to the sage brush (on the uphill side). It was at that point it dawned on me - he is afraid of heights! Although he or I didn't take a big game animal on that trip, he put a nice grouse in his game bag with that same bow.