The Bowhiking Chronicles #091518: The Errant Bow

You’ll often hear me mention that I usually hunt alone, and when I decide to bring someone along it often spells trouble. In my adult life, the only consistent hunting partner that I’ve ever had, is my best friend since almost birth. But life has a way of shifting things around and it [...]

The Bowhiking Chronicles #091518: The Errant Bow2025-04-12T12:12:50-06:00

Broadhead Sharpening with Hand Stone and Strop

Every bowhunter needs a sharp broadhead at the business end of the arrow. Most of us hone our broadheads ourselves, but a truly sharp edge can be elusive for many of us, sometimes seeming like black magic. This tutorial will get you started with a simple method and a pocket kit for honing [...]

Broadhead Sharpening with Hand Stone and Strop2025-04-01T10:48:29-06:00

The Bowhiking Chronicles #051519: Bear Shafted

Raise your hand if you consider yourself a diehard, through-and-through traditional bowhunter. Also raise your hand, if you’ve found that any time you try to deviate from the creed…things have a way of going south. Well, I’ve come to find that in the thick and steep country where I live and hunt, walking [...]

The Bowhiking Chronicles #051519: Bear Shafted2025-03-26T11:51:19-06:00

The Speed of the Longbow

Jake Hamilton belted it out on the radio as I drove into the fading darkness. There was something electric and alive that day that seemed to super charge the air and, as if solar powered, the intensity grew even stronger with the rising sun. My thumbs drummed vigorously to the beat on my [...]

The Speed of the Longbow2024-08-22T08:40:59-06:00

Dupe ’em with Decoys

Using decoys to help lure animals into range goes back almost as far as our hunting history does. In fact, early man and Native Americans were the first to employ many of the same strategies we still use today to kill animals. I am sure our forefathers learned a lot of their hunting [...]

Dupe ’em with Decoys2024-07-26T15:37:52-06:00

Adventures on the Martin

The whine of the diesel pushed us down the rain-soaked asphalt, green moss popping up through the cracks in the shoulder. The trees lining the highway from the airport drip with tendrils of olive and gray, a moss that resembles Hagrid’s beard. The sharp peaks push up straight from the Copper River Delta [...]

Adventures on the Martin2024-07-09T14:10:50-06:00

The Bowhiking Chronicles #050112: The Shakedown

Sheyk-doun; verb A shakedown is a period of testing or a trial journey undergone by a ship, aircraft or other craft and its crew before being declared operational. Statistically, a proportion of the components will fail after a relatively short period of use, and those that survive this period can be expected to last for [...]

The Bowhiking Chronicles #050112: The Shakedown2025-04-15T21:38:09-06:00

I Married a Bowhunter

Sometimes we find the lifestyle and sometimes the lifestyle finds us. A brief survey of our contributors (and our readership) would confirm just that. Fortunate is the archer born into a bowhunting family who most likely tightened their toddler fist around a kids’ bow before age two. Others find an introduction to bows [...]

I Married a Bowhunter2024-06-19T11:31:03-06:00

Hunting Stingrays; Learning From a Pioneer

The small skiff motored ahead through an increasingly stiffening headwind as the archers strained to see through the choppy surface and murky depths. Suddenly, one of the bowmen shouted “RAY” and pointed starboard with his arrow. Almost drawing simultaneously as the skiff turned sharply toward the ray, two arrows cut the water just as [...]

Hunting Stingrays; Learning From a Pioneer2024-06-19T12:22:28-06:00

Opening Day

I was working at my desk in mid-June when I got a call from my friend Virgil Vosse, who owns North Archery, from France. He said that he was one of four Parisian artisans who were being interviewed for a documentary to be aired on France’s largest television station. The kicker was he [...]

Opening Day2024-06-05T10:26:52-06:00
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