[David Petersen]

in reply to: "The Good Hunt" film update #47729

While I appreciate the offers to help, I think we’re better off keeping the dialogue between me and Christopher for now. He wants to make it work and I have given him an ultimatum. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t “come around” … as soon as he return from his latest trip to Africa.

So far as a director’s cut and deleted scenes, I don’t think so. Once we get the right scenes into the film, those that have been deleted are generally better left that way. On the DVD however there will be extra material, mostly in the form of two group conversations with fellow thoughtful hunters, including our own Thomas Downing, with his dad and his eldest son. I am a picky old fart, but like Clay, who is giving his film away, I’m not in this for profit and don’t play ever to make a penny from it. (DVD sales will go to recoup the filmmaker’s expenses beyond funds raised). So all I get is personal satisfaction of a job well done. That’s a very strong motivator.

In any event I am not panicked and didn’t mean to stir ire against the filmmaker, who has staked his financial and professional future on this film (big mistake, I say). I just wanted to explain why it’s taking so long–inexcusable–and share my concerns with you. As it stands it’s not “bad,” but merely pointless. Like a novelist who has lots of good material to work with but hasn’t yet quite figured the best way to present it as a story with a beginning, a middle, an end, and an obvious point. We will get there and thanks again for your support and patience.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: When "friends" turn out to be enemies #46888

http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IndustryInfluenceReport.pdf

Here it is again. You may have to cut and paste into the google search bar. It’s a must-read.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: TAPERED SHAFTS…historically speaking #44146

Thanks, Ed. I had wondered about foreshafts. Since we don’t have cane around here, they must have used another material for the arrow shafts. Unfortunately, the local Ute tribal museum has none such on display and no tribal archery history expert. As Ralph says, largely a culture lost.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: TAPERED SHAFTS…historically speaking #43390

Ralph, as a Texican, you should be mighty proud of the Comanches, the N.A. equivalent to Mongollian horse warriors, the finest who ever lived. I went to high school with several “Comanch,” including one lovely girl named Janice Mommadaddy, who years later I learned was a niece of literary icon M. Scott Mommaday. And my wife had dated the great-great grandson of Quanah Parker before I came along. I have no interest in agricultural or “civilized” Indians, but only Plains Indians, those wild and free hunters and warriors. Although TX is far south of the classic buffalo plains, those Comanche of the Staked Plains were superb human beings. You’ve read Alan Lemay, I suppose?

[David Petersen]

in reply to: TAPERED SHAFTS…historically speaking #43344

Thanks, Ralph. I presume you mean “myth #2” about bird points being used for big game? If properly documented with research based on evidence I can well accept this. This overview does not do that. But that’s not my point of curiosity, which is how they attached such small points to shafts large and tip-strong enough to penetrate tough mammal hide and tissue? The quandary remains: If they narrowed the shaft tips to provide a nice tapered fit for a tiny point, how were those narrow tips strong enough to withstand penetration resistance? I have no position on the use of bird points, but only a question about how they were attached in such a way as to make them utilitarian for hunting. Darned old curiosity is like a brain worm. 😆

The young hen turkey I’m watching out my window scavenging below the bird feeder is quickly turning white with snow and doesn’t even seem to notice. Sometimes, “brainlessness” seems to offer a survival advantage. Just look at me!

[David Petersen]

in reply to: What ya got goin? #43328

5pm in SW CO, snowing and sticking. As I type this, there’s a hen turkey (a hen jake, it appears) pecking and scratching around under the bird feeder. I wish I could go out there and shake some sunflower seed down for her. Now that they know it’s here, the seed, they, or she, will be back. Turkeys are among the easiest “wild” animals to tame and yet another reason baiting them isn’t hunting. Of course I don’t have a camera out here in the office. But you’ve all seen turkeys before. This reminds me of all the times over the years when I would head up the mountain on foot before daylight to hunt elk, and almost immediately encounter a herd behind a summer neighbor’s cabin, who keeps out a salt block. How weird it felt to have to dodge around those elk and keep going up the mountain looking for animals I didn’t feel I was taking unfair advantage of. In the fall season when all turkeys are legal, a young female would be my pick every time for the table. There is no trophy value in turkeys, no matter how some try to make us believe there is. The trophy is hunting them square and fair and once in a while, winning. Whoever says you can’t love to hunt and love wild animals simultaneously, is pretty darn clueless. What a lovely spring snow!

[David Petersen]

in reply to: TAPERED SHAFTS…historically speaking #42295

Along this line of thinking, I’ve wondered what kind of shaft tips the tiny stone “bird points” were mounted to. A standard diameter shaft would be so outsizied for these little broadheads that it would almost be like a blunt. And if they tapered the shafts down to fit the little heads, I’d think they would be really fragile and break with every shot … which sort of seems to cast doubt on the theory that bird points were commonly used for big game. And the FOC would be in the minus real. Can anyone shed informed light on this little mystery?

[David Petersen]

in reply to: What ya got goin? #42285

I got out midmorning for a few hours today with Dave Sigurslid, my first turkey hunt this year. Heard a couple of distant gobbles, saw lots of fresh sign, but no close action. And no matter! The grass is green, willows are heavy with catkins, the wildflowers are gorgeous, all the birds are singing their spring love songs, the woodpeckers hammering everywhere, the creek running cold and clear, elk fat with calves and standing around in grassy meadows by the hundreds and it just smells like spring everywhere. It was hard returning to the quiet empty cabin. Soon, I’m going to take the dogs up the creek on a super short backpack trip and bivouac there for a night, near a small waterfall. It’s something I’ve talked of doing for decades and just never got around to. Now is the time.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: "The Good Hunt" film update #39850

Well friends, I hate to be a party pooper, but I’m at odds with the filmmaker, Christopher. With every cut and especially the “almost final,” he seems to be wandering farther from “just a good honest film about the heart of real hunting and how it has shaped a life for some, namely me,” to something I can’t relate to. This “art” thing has gone into a realm that leaves me behind. I made the mistake of viewing the most recent cut on the worst night in the ER at the Denver cancer hospital, watching my wife die … and I reacted to Christopher as you might expect, with terse strong negative emotion. Today I watched it again, at home, on the “big” screen with good sound and striving for professionalism rather than emotion in my response … but didn’t much change my reaction. I have told him that he can do whatever version of “art” film he wishes for the European film festival circuit that he is shooting for, but unless he wants me to disown it totally he will do a significantly different version for the U.S., for me, and mostly for contributors and supporters; you. Christopher is a talented and exceptionally good-hearted young man. But he needs to quit listening to his high-priced “expert” editors and follow his own instincts, which were clearly present in the first cut more than a year ago. I also told him he was acting like a trust-funder who was working on a pet project when there wasn’t anything more exciting going on. Year and a half of messing around and still now film! The longer the “post production” continues, the higher your expectations will be and, thus, the greater the potential disappointment. Since so many of you contributed to this project and so many others supported it here, I have always considered it “our” film, with me speaking for you, much as I’ve always tried to do when writing and as Clay Hayes does in his excellent film. I hope I am still doing that now that I feel forced to “call BS” on this well-intended but gone-astray young filmmaker. There is plenty of good material there and I’m determined to steer him back toward it. Art is a luxury. Truth is a necessity. I’ll keep you posted and am far from having lost confidence. Sometimes success just needs a sharp kick in the butt. DP

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Caroline & David Petersen #33602

I am traumatized, gutted, in the deepest pain of my life. This evening, as Carolyn would herself put it with a giggle, she went “up in smoke.” I can’t and won’t attempt to burden you with my utterly hopeless pain beyond what I’ve already shamelessly inflicted, but just have to say with the deepest gratitude that I have checked in here many times through this horrific ordeal and your support–most of you I’ve never even met and some of you who have no reason whatsoever to give a damn about me much less my wife–you have quite literally saved my life. I add my endless gratitude to Webmom Robin for letting this totally “inappropriate” thread run its course. Gradually, I will be back to stir the pot here as always. I’ve not even tried to sort out what it says of my life that a bunch of “strangers” on a hunting website have come to mean so much to me, to be such a central part of my life, a happy addiction, but that is how it is. And Carolyn knew it too and supported it without reserve, even as she knows how you are helping us now. We, C and me, are not an inch different than everyone else. As I keep telling myself, “it’s just our turn.” But damn, it still hurts, brothers and sisters!

I haven’t heard a gobble yet, but on the long fast 2-hour hike I took this evening with the dogs while C was making her final physical transition, I found a jake turd and a couple of tracks on a high dry ridge, while there was zip for sign where you’d expect it; that’s among the wonders of nature: total unpredictability … and I found an arrowhead! Nature heals. Not instantly, but eventually, and as wholly as possible. And it asks nothing in return but love and respect. Now get out there and get ’em gobbling, amigos! Forgive me, but I love you all. Dave and Caroline

[David Petersen]

in reply to: "The Good Hunt" film update #28210

Yes! What Mike said. 😀

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Caroline & David Petersen #26576

Dear tradbow friends. We would have preferred to have kept this family tragedy close to the bone, but since loving friends have shared the news here, I am truly staggered by the outpouring of support from so many, few of whom have even met Caroline, unless they have read “On the Wild Edge.” As you can imagine, I’m not my usual chatty self. But I can’t let all of your well wishes go unanswered. I am doubly touched since I am a curmudgeon who never goes out of my way to make friends and am so often critical. We are a family here, some of us, and I love you all for the support. This is rock bottom and no break in the clouds. Until it’s over, a few months at most and likely much sooner, I will be scarce. Please no phone calls, flowers or any such. You have already done what you can by expressing concern. And please keep Larry F. in your thoughts as well. Many of you already know the pain of losing the one person in the world you love and need most, and the rest will someday have to face the same. We are not exempt. It just happens to be our turn, so much sooner than seems fair.

Abrazos, Dave

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Dreaming #18841

Hammer and our other fly-tossers and tiers must be out fishing, else they’d have commented that argus feathers are commonly used in flies. Google “greater argus pheasant feathers for sale” and you’ll find ’em for $8 to $9 each, or you can buy your own bird and pluck it naked. The back feathers are long enough, I’d think you could get enough 5″ feathers for a couple of arrows out of one. But how do they hold up and fly, and sound? Better on the wall, methinks.

Here is what they look like when plucked. Eat ’em if you got ’em.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Video–2014 Backcountry Hunters and Anglers National Rendezvous Denver #18770

Great video! Thanks for posting, Steve. I didn’t even see anyone there with a video cam … but they’re so small these days. I was there all weekend and never saw a frown or heard a harsh word, as it should be.

Earlier I tried to post a link to the 10-year anniversary video shown there, but it wasn’t “up” yet. Here it is …

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Left Wing or Right Wing Helical? #18046

Fellers,

To be honest I’d have to go have a look to be sure. But yes I likely to shoot left-wing. If so it was not a conscious choice so much as utility. I recall buying a bulk lot of left-wing feathers years ago, so I get left-wing single-bevels to match. I’ve never had a head loosen on a game shot. But, having done it as recently as yesterday, I am reminded that when I tune new broadheads, one or two shots each before a good sharpening for hunting, the heads tend to loosing with every shot (into soft dirt). But why not fine-fine-tune? For most of us who aren’t privileged, most of the year is spent dreaming about and “preparing for” a small window of hunting. So we have the time and we have the deferred energy, so why not “overkill” in tuning as well as gear? It’s always good to hear from you, Joe. Like Doc Ed, you’re a solid rock of fact over mere preference and emotion.

[Author]

Posts