Feather Arrow Holder
I am always struggling to keep my arrow on the shelf while hunting, so I came up with this nice looking arrow holder.
Elastic Arm Bands for Archery
About once a year, I spend an hour sewing a dozen elastic bands for sleeve protection. These are very simple to make: just snug the elastic around your arm while wearing a heavy coat, then mark it with a sharpie marker or pin it with a safety pin. Use that measurement as a [...]
Elk Tactics for Traditional Bowhunters
The wide-racked herd bull stood facing me at six yards, moaning, drooling, and mooing like an Angus. A string of slobber nearly reached the ground as he rocked back and forth. I knelt behind a three-foot spruce with my longbow, hoping for a shot opportunity on this last morning of a long season. [...]
Trekking Poles
Nowadays, I don’t leave home without them. Years ago, I was several miles into a tough cougar chase when things went from bad to worse. Bright sun had caused evaporating scent conditions on the snow, and only one of our three hounds was still on the lion track when I started a long, [...]
The Bowhiking Chronicles #091213: Late Start, Fell Apart
You’ve heard it likely thousands of times throughout your life: “The early bird gets the worm.” I suppose that it’s true; especially with elk hunting. I recall one September, being frustrated that “my mountain” suddenly hosted triple the amount of pickup trucks, and therefor triple the amount of competing bowhunters. Opening day found [...]
Nock Fit
When Dacron was the only bowstring material used, almost every nock commercially available would fit snugly on a bowstring. Today many bowyers are building bows that can shoot Fast Flight or other non-stretch string material. These new materials are much stronger and much thinner than Dacron, so a smaller number of strands are [...]
Skin a Cat: Glove or Tab?
While a few of us still shoot with bare fingers, most traditional bowhunters soon learn that archery is a lot more accurate and comfortable with something between the fingers of your dominant arm and the bowstring. The choices are pretty simple: tab or glove? Once that decision is made, not many change, and [...]
How To Make a Toothbrush Rest
The brush rest, in my opinion, is the most durable and aesthetically pleasing method I have seen for shooting a traditional bow with an elevated rest. I used to shoot my recurve off the shelf, but after experimenting with the brush rest and settling on a style/method of attaching it to my bow, [...]
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 [...]
Glassy Eyed
From The Traditional Bowhunter's Handbook If you want to take high quality, life-like images of your trophy in the field, you ought to keep a set of taxidermy glass eyes in your hunting pack. When you get ready to shoot your photos, simply slip the glass eyes over the animal's eyes and under [...]