Finally accepting that I couldn't beat the TP shooting right handed and moving to left hand shooting.  The joy of the hunt has been reawakened and I no longer have any doubt in my abilities.

ChuckC

Prior to having rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder, my hunting buddy Southpawshooter lent me his 54# Fedora recurve so I could learn to shoot left handed.

Months of practice before ordering myself a 52# left hand Fedora. Managed to take 2 does that fall. Now I'm really enjoying bowhunting both RH and LH but learning to master left handed ranks right up there with all my hunts.

Finally!

so far for me it's taking a chamios and a tahr, spot and stalk with my recurve. Both were DIY hunts on public land in new zealand, backpack in and out. No choppers!

so far for me it's taking a chamios and a tahr, spot and stalk with my recurve. Both were DIY hunts on public land in new zealand, backpack in and out. No choppers!

I would say all the GREAT people that I had a chance to meet and share camp with.

would luv to say that after 62 years of shooting I finally beat target panic only that would be a big lie!

Passing on the tradition to my son.

Taking my first primitive deer with a selfbow that I made.  This was my first deer with non modern equipment.

 

Three carp with one shot!

I would have to say it is the friendships I have made at ShrewHaven.

My first primitive kill with a cedar self bow. 40pounds

What makes this so special is that the bowyer Rick Byrd from Centerpoint Tx that made this bow, made it by using two cedar billets.  He collected the cedar billets from a cedar tree that was about 40 yds from where I shot this buck.

He did not like the bow because it was to light on poundage for him.  I asked him what he was going to do with it.  He asked me if I wanted to buy it.  I said yes how much?  He said $50.00

It was a great bow and finally broke one day.  I glued it back up but just as wall hanger now.

Here's mine

Learning to bow hunt with the right equipment; trad!

200 lb (8 year and 8 month old) black hear in the north ga mountains.  Spot and Stalk.  I hiked over 100 miles that summer to find the only ridge I could that had acorns.  Saw 29 bears between June and October in about 11 trips.  Killed her the first time I hunted that ridge at daylight and put three more buddies on bears that fall.

Not an accomplishment so much as honoring a shared commitment. I mostly hunt with my Dad and my 3 brothers or some combination thereof, and we cannot abide a hit deer left, unfound, in the woods. Three deer stick out in my memory where the five of us crawled on hands and knees in the dark and the rain to find and follow a blood trail by the dim light of small flashlights, circling through honeysuckle and blackberry briar thickets, shimmying under barbed wire fences, wading shallow rivers and picking through cattail swamps to find hit deer that ran further than we would hope. Working together and finding those deer was validation of our "code".

Being the only guy out of my group of buddies that shoots a trad bow.  They don't understand what they are missing.

My first trad deer 2008

 

Having children that like to hunt.

For me it was getting so many kids and people into bowhunting and wildlife, animals come second