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Just wondering about others thoughts on hunting with traditional equipment – if you can boil down and distill the reasons into a short statement? Myself, having started bowhunting at the dawn of the compound age (mid 70’s) never started out with a recurve. I switched largely because I could see bows were turning into nothing more than ugly killing machines and the game we hunt into targets. I love the beauty of wood, turkey feather fletching and the lightness of these bows in my hands. Less is more baby! Kind of roughly I suppose, I’ve summed up to myself “The animal deserves to live. I really don’t need the meat. Make it a challenge”. That said, I do hunt to kill and love success, but it’s far from necessary anymore. Would love to hear others’ “short statements” if they’re out there.
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I personally feel that for the species I hunt which wouyld be whitetails, elk and maybe moose that the recurves I use are superior to any compound out there.
Given the bush and other conditions it is still a twenty yard or less game.
In summation if you can shoot traditional equipment good out to twenty yards then I would say your chances of scoring are higher:!::!:
I’m using the landscape where I live and hunt as the bench mark for this maybe, slightly bold statement ! !
Bruce
I do like the nice lines and looks of a nice recurve as well 😉
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I tend to gravitate toward things for which the process is at least, if not more, important then the ends. Fly fishing is like that for more me, and so is traditional archery. Both have given me a great excuse to go to amazing, remote and wild places, spend time in them, and learn. And at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s all about for me – lifelong learning and spending as much time as possible in wild places.
I also feel that in this day and age, the outdoors have come to be viewed too much as some sort of personal gymnasium. Climbing, mountain biking, skiing, even hiking at the pace that most people do it, has become too frenetic, too about the “person” rather than the “place.” I partake in these activities too, and I realize I’m making a sweeping generalization here for which there are lots of exceptions, but I think most of you get my point – the whole “push your limits, extreme, on the edge” culture that has come to define what so many view as being outdoors. Fewer and fewer people go into the outdoors simply to sit, listen and observe as quietly as possible. Bowhunting does this for me – so much so that it’s what I prefer to do even outside of hunting season, to simply hike out somewhere and sit and listen and watch.
I’m amazed at how much people miss, being so focused on moving fast and “pushing their limits” while traveling outdoors. The funny thing is that I think for a lot of people, having to sit quietly and observe for extended periods of time in the outdoors would probably “push their limits” more than anything. I have friends who simply can’t do it, and don’t understand why you would.
In addition, I’m a Sagittarius – we’re born to have a bow in our hands…:wink:
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I began hunting with a Firearm, then switched to Muzzloader, then handgun, then C-pound, it was while hunting with a C-pound that I started hanging out at NW Archery and met Glenn St.Charles, I found that I agreed with his “walk in the woods” philosophy, as hunting was more of a way to get out and just explore, enjoy peace and solitude, leave my problems at home, and just commune with “My Own True God”, any harvested animals were just icing on the cake, and a return to responsibilities.
I always had an appreciation for fine craftsmanship, and wood has always been one of my favorite mediums, but it was not until I had some “equipment malfunctions” and the cold, unfeeling nature of a machined “metal” riser, that I made the full switch to using a recurve to hunt with, instead of just a bow to play around with.
I feel that I could probably get an Elk every year if I was still using a C-pound, due to the ability to increase my range by 15 yards (currently 30), but the actual sense of fulfillment would be diminished, as I feel anybody can make an accurate shot using sights and a release, from a “machine”, but to be able to make the shot with an extension of yourself (as I feel with my recurve) is why I hunt, everything else is secondary…
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On word,,, KISS
Troy
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On the surface, traditional archery equipment is simple, a stick and string, I like that, keeps me grounded. Start questioning your equipment,your grip,release,form,bow weight,string, fletching, on and on, and it will take more than a lifetime to understand. I like that too!
Besides nothing compares to the look and feel of traditional tackle, simply ageless.
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I can echo most of the reasons already given. But honestly, I believe it is similar as to why I love my wife of 27 years; there is just something about it I can’t explain. Its kind of like why you find certain music appealing. In my opinion, if you can give a list of reasons, maybe you’re just trying to justify it to yourself.
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CareyE wrote: I can echo most of the reasons already given. But honestly, I believe it is similar as to why I love my wife of 27 years; there is just something about it I can’t explain. Its kind of like why you find certain music appealing. In my opinion, if you can give a list of reasons, maybe you’re just trying to justify it to yourself.
I’ll give you your last sentence. To an extent I know that’s true for me. I do value meat and antlers as a huge part of my success and since I’ve gone this trad route I’ve been in the dumps with that. So yes, I do try to justify and understand why I went down this road sometimes.
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Personally, I work in a very high tech electrical job in South America. Everything I do is with a laptop or a smart phone. However,when I am back home in Idaho, I choose to use flintlock muzzleloaders or archery gear and treck a lot in the mountians as the original people in this valley did. I have recently started recurve shooting and foresee my compound hanging on the wall. For me it is the balance in life that is important and using traditional equipment provides that balance.
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I simply enjoy getting back to basics in the woods with a simple stick and string without all the complications of the more “modern” equipment. That I find a recurve more effective and reliable than a compound is an added bonus.
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If you have to justify why to someone, they already don’t get it. You can try to explain it, but they won’t know until they try. SO… To do it is to know, to live, to absorb the whole experience. It’s that way with most anything worthwhile.
( How can you experience something squinting through a 1/4 inch peep hole? I don’t have one on my front door either! 🙂 )
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Smithhammer, I completely agree with everything except the last statement… about being a sagittarius 😀
Seriously, very well said, and I personally echo your thoughts. My own spin is one of wanting the emphasis being on my abilities on any given day vs techno-gadgetry outcomes.
After my military service, I didn’t hunt or even touch a gun for 11 years…
Traditional bows are warm to the touch compared to metal and composites in more than just the literal sense.
Just my 2 cents,
Mudd Foot
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Soul,personal achievement and challenge,handcraftmanship,simplicity,eye appeal,fun.
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Paleo,
You said it, “Less is more”. If I could condense it down, those three words would describe it for me. My short experimentation with compounds only revealed to me that growing merchandising machine that is today’s outdoor industry and it turned me off completely. Between that and what Smithammer described as that frenetic “look at me” culture that has developed, aside from hunting, but has completely infiltrated and become an intergral part of commercial outdoor sports, hunting included, Traditional was somewhere I could escape to and become grounded again. Like returning home after being away fro awhile. Maybe I’m just getting old and anything new is suspect, but I know what I like and I’ve been Trad longer than I’ve been anything else.
Duncan
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Northener wrote: I suppose one could say Traditional Archery is, What it Isn’t.
I can not take the credit, I saw that saying for a Whiskey add. Made me think, about Traditional archery, seems to fit pretty good.
I really like that! The replies up there are another big reason I took to these waters – good people with a good sense of sportsmanship for the most part. Even though I don’t personally know any of you, I’d bet most of us would get on pretty well out in the sticks.
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When I got my first bow in the early 70s I don’t remember anything but recurves being in the store. Then so many years later when I picked up that bow again, I considered a compound, but ended up staying with the recurve and now a longbow. All the reasons described above probably fit for me, too, especially the simplicity aspect. Learning to shoot and try to shoot well has not been exactly simple in many ways, considering form, bow tuning, arrow tuning, choices of feathers and broadheads, shafts. But when you boil it down to sticks and strings and shooting where you’re looking, it becomes pretty basic.
I’m surrounded by technology that is always changing. It’s fact of life that what works just fine becomes obsolete and requires expensive upgrades, even if you don’t require the bells and whistles that make it better. My quiet walks with the stick and string and dog are ways to get away from all that. Watching my son and daughter launch an arrow take me right back to my first yellow fiberglass bow as a kid.
It’s good for us to become that basic person that gets hidden under all the crap of technology and trends. It’s a great reminder that we’re just animals among animals.
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Traditional Archery is part of my quest for simplicity in all of life. I enjoy being independent of the archery shop when it comes time to change a string or fletchings. It is also about keeping the emphasis on the critters and the time in the woods and off of material posessions or the latest and greatest.
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I make and hunt with gear I made with my own 2 litle. That includes the selfbow, self arrows with shafts that are hand planed or harvested from nature. from stock and my own trade points cut out of metal. You can’t beat it! Jawge
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I hunt in very extreme environments . . . equipment failure in the field is not an option! If there isn’t anything to bump or break than that equals a greater probability of success!
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I make my own arrows and craft my flemish twist strings. I like doing this for myself and others, sometimes even getting them to learn the crafts. It puts more enjoyment into mine and their shooting and hunting. I admire those who can make “all” their equipment. It doesn’t really take much convincing once they see the beauty of wooden shafts and the amazingly simplistic method of making your own string. Just my humble opinion….or philosophy. Wayne
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I love it because of the simplicity that allows my mind, that gets sorely tired of the complexities of modernism, a place to chill out. Simple is as simple does and I see no need to complicate! A bow in hand, an arrow in flight and a target in mind, wow!
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Does anyone think a little part of it brings back the freedom of the “kid days” too? I roamed the woods with my 30lb Stemmler fiberglass bow (which I still have) in gradeschool days. Without even thinking I could hit or come close to things crazy distances away. I was this dumb once (well, I was dumb a lot growing up!) – with a grade school friend after school with our bows, family dog way ahead of us in a field – I bet him I could come close to the dog. At over 100 yards I came within inches when I realized I might injure or kill the dog! Brainless! My best arrow wobbled like a knuckleball and was missing a fletch, but I could make the dang thing go where I wanted. Go figure! All I want to do now is recapture those carefree days and that ability.
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I just turned 46 a few days ago and this is only my second season hunting. I have fished my entire life without trying hunting. My Father passed away eight years ago and I got his two recurves a few years back. I practiced a lot and became confident enough to take the required hunter safety class and to get my license. I planned to take my first deer with my Fathers Black Widow recurve but when it came apart while practicing about a month and a half before the season started this year I thought it was over. My brother in law loaned me his Shakespeare recurve to use this season. He is a compound shooter but my Dad had picked this bow out for my sister to give to him many years ago. I took my first deer this season in October with the very bow that my Dad had chosen. When I go out into the woods with this bow in my hand I feel the connection with my Dad. I love the simplicity of stick and string.
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paleoman wrote: Just wondering about others thoughts on hunting with traditional equipment – if you can boil down and distill the reasons into a short statement? Myself, having started bowhunting at the dawn of the compound age (mid 70’s) never started out with a recurve. I switched largely because I could see bows were turning into nothing more than ugly killing machines and the game we hunt into targets. I love the beauty of wood, turkey feather fletching and the lightness of these bows in my hands. Less is more baby! Kind of roughly I suppose, I’ve summed up to myself “The animal deserves to live. I really don’t need the meat. Make it a challenge”. That said, I do hunt to kill and love success, but it’s far from necessary anymore. Would love to hear others’ “short statements” if they’re out there.
I feel a connection with my ancestors and with nature that I can’t get hunting with high tech gear. Hunting with a bow and arrow is an OLD pastime. I get a similar kick out of paddling a canoe. Are there more efficient means of getting downriver? Who cares? There is something life affirming about achieving a goal with your own hands and your own ability. I have to carry a firearm every day at work and I know more than I care to about their efficiency. Hunting with a gun began to feel sort of sinful to me about ten years ago. Not much sport in shooting something that can’t shoot back…. Just my opinion. Hunting with equipment that I build myself has taught me to love the sport of hunting again. I love the noble simplicity of it.
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Basically its fun. Simple fun at that. Not the complicated like hunting can become if you let it. If it wasn’t enjoyable I wouldn’t do it. That and the fact that nothing beats fresh wild game in terms of taste.
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All the above.
It’s the “beauty” of it all.
Beauty in the simplicity
Beauty in the bows and arrows themselves.
Beauty in the ability to put yourself into your equipment.
And oh so beautiful………to watch that arrow fly!
IMHO, there is even a beauty in the fact that it is so natural to us…….that we cannot really describe it to others as well as we would like.
God Bless
Steve Sr.
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My Dad gave me a Bear bow (30#) for my Christmas present in ’57. Except for a brief experiment with a compound bow in ’76-’77, I’ve always had a recurve bow. Ron Laclair befriended me in ’81 and I’ve been using mostly long bows since. The only way I can explain my feelings is….Joy in my heart. Put a longbow or recurve in my hand and a quiver of arrows on my back (or at my side) and when I’m in the woods or fields everything seems to be so surreal…..it’s like i’m in another state of mind, in another place or time. I can enjoy so much around me. I’m ecstatic. It’s a magical time that I treasure everytime I can be one with my bow and arrow. Tom
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Well, I was going to say: “What Smithhammer said! Except I ain’t no stinkin’ saggytaurus.” But Mudd Foot beat me to it, oh well.
Welcome to tradbow.com, Sweet T.
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Smithhammer wrote: I tend to gravitate toward things for which the process is at least, if not more, important then the ends. Fly fishing is like that for more me, and so is traditional archery. Both have given me a great excuse to go to amazing, remote and wild places, spend time in them, and learn. And at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s all about for me – lifelong learning and spending as much time as possible in wild places.
I also feel that in this day and age, the outdoors have come to be viewed too much as some sort of personal gymnasium. Climbing, mountain biking, skiing, even hiking at the pace that most people do it, has become too frenetic, too about the “person” rather than the “place.” I partake in these activities too, and I realize I’m making a sweeping generalization here for which there are lots of exceptions, but I think most of you get my point – the whole “push your limits, extreme, on the edge” culture that has come to define what so many view as being outdoors. Fewer and fewer people go into the outdoors simply to sit, listen and observe as quietly as possible. Bowhunting does this for me – so much so that it’s what I prefer to do even outside of hunting season, to simply hike out somewhere and sit and listen and watch.
I’m amazed at how much people miss, being so focused on moving fast and “pushing their limits” while traveling outdoors. The funny thing is that I think for a lot of people, having to sit quietly and observe for extended periods of time in the outdoors would probably “push their limits” more than anything. I have friends who simply can’t do it, and don’t understand why you would.
In addition, I’m a Sagittarius – we’re born to have a bow in our hands…:wink:
Well said. Reading it, I remembered something I heard somewhere about the difference between the whites and the Native Americans. When asked what the difference was, whoever it was stated that the Indians just wanted to “Be”, and that the whites wanted to “be” someplace else. I’m not trying to impart nobility to our choices, but I think we just want to “be”:)
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I started with a Traditional Longbow in the Pre Compound Era. I always loved Longbows, as works of art and beauty. To me.. Traditional Bowhunting is hunting in it’s purest form. And to me epitomizes skill, strength, solitude and peace.
Traditional Bowhunting IS Fair Chase at it’s finest.
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I personally got tired of the compound, as that is how I started out. I disliked the exact reason why so many like them–they are too precise. I think it detracted from my abilities to rely on woodsmanship. Plus it makes me feel connected to our ancestors somehow. I love that the longbow limits my hunting distances, is lighter, quieter, prettier, and that it was made out of something alive. The compound will never have any of these qualities.
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