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in reply to: Need info for WV deer hunt #11042
Thanks Steve and Paleo — This is a low-odds hunt, as my host has just taken up pully bowhunting and a main reason he wants me there is to help him transition to a longbow. Nor has he owned the land for long. I won’t have any time to scout or familiarize myself with the place, etc. I like the bench advice, as elk do much the same so it will feel natural. I was told to get the UU tag and I got that and everything else the website told me I needed, $166 total. But I saw nothing about a carcass tag being required and will need to check that out asap. Thanks again, dave
in reply to: Small Game Heads #63626I second Steve on Hex heads, as do all the local trad hunters I know. They not only are lethal on small game but don’t penetrate as far into stumps and such as traditional steel blunts and their sharp edges tend to catch on ground debree to limit “sliding and hiding” for easy recovery. I use both glue-on and screw-in and they come in various weights.
in reply to: Personal Observations: Broadheads & Sharpening #60693Patrick — If you “can’t even finish a beer,” you DO have a problem! At my “mature” stage in life, finishing “a” beer is never a problem. Rather, it’s “drink2P3.” 😛 When you gonna grow up, boy? 😉 anon —
in reply to: My latest project (Elm #60302A very cool bow, Holten! I’ve always been a big fan of the Holmegaard style, though I’m yet to build one. This hybrid maintains that charm. I hope you’ll build one “seriously” to be a shooter. Dave
in reply to: Four wheelers… #60292Good to hear from you here, Vermonter1.
And Larry — that’s downright poetical! 😆 dp
in reply to: First EFOC Deer Down #57988M — your experience here makes a good comment to the “appropriate discussion” thread on this forum also. It seems that some folks approach the heavy arrow/EFoC discussion as an either/or choice: either heavy arrows/ EFoC, or perfect flight and arrow placement on target. But in my experience the two used together have a strong synergy so that you get everything in one package. No either/or involved. Next month I’m heading east to hunt whitetails in W. VA, which I’m assuming (knowing nothing about it, really) will be small. And in Dec. I head down to AZ to hunt the tiny Coues whitetail. In both instances I will be shooting my elk arrows — single-bevel heads, 680 grain total arrow weight with 26% FoC. Not because I feel I need that much penetration power on small deer, but because this setup shoots so darn beautifully from both my 53# and 55# Shrew longbows. There is no either/or choice involved. It’s totally win/win in my experience. Odd about your off-angled arrow. Maybe got turned by a rib going out, or by a glance against a tree after pass-through? dave p
in reply to: Four wheelers… #57973You got it, Fallguy: an increasingly soft-bellied nation, laziness and relentless advertising by the motorhead industry all work together to have made ATVs a “required” part of “modern” hunting in America.
Last Saturday, my friend Dave Sigurslid killed a 4×4 bull elk some 2 miles and a thousand vertical feet above the truck. Working together we had it quartered, boned and bagged in 1.5 hours, having brought everything we’d need for success in our hunting packs. We then spent the rest of daylight packing it out (4 hours), mostly downhill but very convoluted mountain terrain with thick brush, rocky ground and tons of blowdown timber. We did it all in one long go by leapfrogging two loads each. I carried my pack and Dave’s strapped on top plus antlers, and he hauled what we later learned was 91 pounds on a small frame pack. We’d go a quarter-mile or so, drop the packs, walk back up and each sling a game bag, each with a full boned ham, about 40 pounds each, over a shoulder and take it down past the packs, and so on, over and over. You couldn’t even have gotten an ATV anywhere near there. And to walk down and get a horse, even if we had access to one, seems like more work than what we did. I am 64 and skinny with arthritis. Doc Dave is 61 with a surgically fused spine and asthma. We are of course braggishly proud of what we did … and what kind of pride does using an ATV to do all the work bring? Four years ago Alex Bugnon and I hauled out his cow elk in one load, about a mile, with no packs but only game bags, some 70 pounds each, Santa Claus style. It hurt but it worked and it made us stronger in the doing, not weaker. Bottom line IMHO, whether a whole deer or elk parts, if you aren’t prepared to get your meat out from a place by muscle power, you shouldn’t be hunting in that place. dp
in reply to: Anyone own a Shakespeare? #55088Chris: No, but I do own a well-worn copy of “The Compleat Works of Shakespeare.” Any bow that can measure up to the “S” name must be the real deal! 😀 dave
in reply to: Our general season opens tomorrow #55082Jon — as you well know, gear is fun to fuss with in off-season, and given that our species is “techno-hominid” an issue that fascinates us nearly as much as sex. (“Nearly” is the key word here! :P). But you got all that wired so when you go out there, as I’m sure you will, forget the gear and concentrate on the blessings of being alone in a wild quiet place. Gear is mere preparation. The essence and heart of the hunt is purely “being there” in full. But you know all this! Go get some! I’m jealous as hell, my resident season being over for another year (though I’ll be in AZ this winter and tinkering with going to W. VA to meet a friend for deer next month). There is no such thing as a “bad” hunt if we “do it right.” Those last three words are the hard part to figure, and I don’t think I’ll ever live long enough to figure it out in words — though we all know what it is when we’re out there doing and feeling it. Just the opposite of “Whack ’em and stack ’em.” For me, the electrically tense moments when we have game in sight, as with the long hours and days when we don’t, but wait in patient hope nonetheless, are the primary links to the entire history and heart of our species.
Oops … sorry. It’s happy hour again. All I meant to say to you and all our friends just now getting your/their seasons opening is, “Yeah! I’m jealous! Make the most of it!” 😀 Crazy dave
in reply to: Appropriate discussion? #55071BadShotDad — right on! You said it all in very few words.
Ed — did/do you know Ann Causey? She was a Ph.D. professor of ethics at a southern university who is the One Single Person who started the entire “hunters fixing hunting” movement IMHO, and yet I failed to name her in my brief list, above. (Oldtimer’s or Happy hour disease, forgive me Ann). She was a nonhunter who on the second go-round married a hunter and combined her love and respect for him and his ethics with her academic studies and published a paper on hunting ethics, subsequently abbreviated in Bugle magazine, which started those of us who value and can handle painful/masochistic thinking and self-criticism to really thinking about ourselves and not only how we hunt, but why we hunt how we hunt. This was some 20 years ago. Then she just disappeared. Wherever you are, my endless thanks, Ann Causey!
in reply to: Appropriate discussion? #54803Ed — you went to considerable effort to collect and post and respond to all this info. Thanks you sir. So far as openly discussing “what went wrong and why” — I see it as the only ethical choice. Otherwise we simply continue to wallow in willful ignorance. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed to say that the traditional community is the only branch of bowhunting that seems more interested in admitting our flaws and correcting them, than going gleefully along with a “stuff happens” attitude. Stuff does happen, of course, which is precisely why we are morally bound to make every possible preparation to minimize the harm and loss when it does. “There is no such thing as overkill.”
This discussion reminds me of 20 years or so ago when the dominant feeling regards openly discussing all of hunting’s many flaws, we referred to as the “bunker mentality.” It went like, “All hunters have to stick together and support one another against the antis, even if we don’t necessarily agree.” Used to be we heard that constantly. But not much any more! That’s because a core of us, mostly writing for Bugle at the time and thanks to the forward-looking leadership of RMEF at the time (no more, sadly), started focusing on openly discussing what was/is wrong with hunting. I published “A Hunter’s Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport,” which was a collection of hunters discussing what’s wrong with hunting and how to fix it. Jim Posewitz wrote “Beyond Fair Chase”where he discussed the basic morality of hunting in very simple terms and made it available to hunter safety classes. Scott Stouder, in Bugle and Mule Deer magazines and a syndicated newspaper column, really raised hell with the bunker (sub)mentality. Ted Kerasote and others. And did we ever find a welcome audience among mainstream hunters. Soon most hunter safety courses had incorporated or expanded an ethical aspect to all classes. In short, by opening a critical discussion of hunting’s problems among hunters, hunters took that conversation away from the antis and hushed them up somewhat, at the same time raising the collective ethics of hunters. And throughout, traditional-values hunters were and remain in the lead.
Now Ed Ashby and we are doing the same with the “technical ethics” aspects of bowhunting. My applause and gratitude are endless. dave
in reply to: Wensel woodsman for elk #54783Alaska Bowhunting Supply (ABS) now has a carbon touch-up sharpener for single-bevels, set at 25 degrees. It works great on super-hard heads like their Ashby and the Grizzly, once you have the bevel set. I wish it were larger for a better grip and didn’t cost so much ($30) plus shipping, but darn that things puts an edge on and I’ll never be without one henceforth. Just google ABS and go to sharpeners. This thing is so new that I doubt Dr. Ashby has had time to check it out, but if you have Ed, whatchathink? dave p
in reply to: Single bevel? #52865Turtlebunting — the only problem with the Z No Mercy, which otherwise is a great head, is that they are too soft to handle heavy bone hits (exceptions noted). So if you can’t get ’em sharp I’d say you’re seriously sharpening-challenged! 😛 I’m in full agree with all that Ireland has to say here, and would add that ABS has a great little carbon “touch up” single-bevel sharpener on the market now and I hope others will follow soon. First you have to get the head seriously sharp, as per Sharpster/KME’s advice. Then touch it up and keep it sharp with the ABS tool. That’s all I know about it at the moment. dp 🙄
in reply to: Bow Storage (sorry for the repeat) #52862NH — sorry to post when I’m sure others know more and better … but something about a 0 in the response box always prompts me. So, for starters I can say that I’ve always hung my bows unbraced and vertical on a wall peg or etc. — that is, the peg goes between the limb and the string. In the really old days, guys were hanging bows unstrung from two pegs, horizontally. But that may have been as much for display as for preservation. Back then and still now the one thing you don’t want to do is stand a bow on the floor, so that all the weight is on the bottom limb tip, strung or unstrung. And finally, in general a glass-lam bow can be hung strung for long periods with no problems, but never leave an all-wood bow strung when you’re not shooting it. Hope that helps and sparks others to offer their knowledge and experience. dp
in reply to: Single bevel? #51459Steve — as Doc Ashby and others have testified, presence or lack of a strong blood trail has more to do with shot location and whether or not we get full pass-through than it does with broadhead type. A low lung hit with full pass-through will provide a good blood trail most often, while a high lung hit with or without pass-through allows blood to pool internally. Esp. true for elk since their lung cavity can hold buckets of blood. Mye experience with single-bevel has been precisely what Ashby reports and has shown in photos — a huge entrance wound and exit wound with the hide on the exit side all chopped up from being twisted as the head goes through. Another shot through the shoulder blade busted a nice big hole and got 19″ penetration. Other can and will do as they wish but I’m absolutely convinced and will never again use anything else for elk. dp
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