TRAD EQUIPMENT! Lordy Momma is there a plethora of “stuff” one can choose from today!

Often, I look at bows and other items. Too often! I suspect that is not a “disease” I alone am inflicted with. 😀

The options one can choose from in bowyers, bow woods, too many to name, bow types galore PLUS available lengths and TD options.

Broadhead types and material, bevel options, lengths and widths. Arrow shaft material options. Styles of fully tapered, tapered fletchment, parallel, various diameters. Screw in inserts. Glue on heads. Replaceable blades or hand sharpened. Weighted inserts, heavy adaptors……and more!

Solid color feathers, natural barred, imitation barred, parabolic, shield, and many other shapes and even “man made” fletching. 😯

The list goes on and is continuing to increase in number showing that “traditional archery” is indeed ALIVE AND WELL! 😀

Yes, my friends, “technology” has INDEED been a part of our traditional life and is not limited to the wheely class archer/hunter.

Such has always been the case. Few realize that when fiberglass laminations were “new” to the bowyer and available bows out there and Easton started playing with aluminum shafts……..THE MAJORITY of hunters within that era turned up their noses. I could name several other, new ideas at the time, that caused similar uproar, yet today are accepted as “normal”.

“It wasn’t traditional” to them. Case in point is that our sport, TOO, is ever changing and expanding and way back then, as the case is now, personal opinions of these changes rode the rocky boat in some high seas.

The largest difference NOW (yet one more technological change) is we can complain and whine OR tip our hat to the “new and improved” before any number of readers on the web! 😉

Every single reader that I am blessed to share this with, IS one, or knows one, or knows OF a “collector” of traditional archery. One who stives to glean the finds of the equipment from yesteryear, always looking for that “new in box” or “mint” or “rare” specimen to add to his or her hoard.

This endeavor is a fine thing for one to do should they be “deep pocketed” enough to do so. Should want to get SERIOUS about a collection, the amount of money one could invest (and it is that…..an investment) more money than I care to think about.

Within these “collectables” lives our past, our tradition. The word “tradition” involves some variety of “the way we have always done it” and is closely hand in hand with reasoning that it is still our belief that this is the WAY it should continue to be done yet we see that even within THAT, there are indeed changes that are acceptable……….OVER TIME.

One day in the future, the new “state of the art” longbow you recently purchased will be “collectable” to some degree or another. Tell me. At that time will your bow still complete it’s intended purpose with the same or similar efficiency/style/grace it does today? Most likely I think we would agree that it will.

While there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with wanting the newest/fastest/best/neatest/smoothest/prettiest whiz bang of the day forget not the bows and equipment of our sports forefathers.

Be it Bear, Shakespeare, Root, Wing, Browning, Black Hawk, Elburg, Howatt……this list goes on and on, there exists a great many bows and other items from our sport’s past that ALSO ‘git-r-done’ with a flair of dignity every archer should experience.

I cannot offer this to you without fair warning.

Hunting with equipment once state of the art from years gone long ago is one of the MOST ADDICTING pastimes I have ever encountered and when you put your calculator down and just hunt a matched set from your choice of so many out there I believe you too will find that “extra something” within the true tradition of this wonderful way of life.

God Bless!

Steve Sr.