[David Petersen]

in reply to: Help my poor shoulder please! #35328

Both of my shoulders are wrecked, yet I continue to shoot up to 54# without undue pain–due to professional physical therapy. Quit shooting for now and ask around your area for the best PT. As in all professions there’s a huge difference in quality. A good one will be able to identify the source of your pain and will relieve that pain significantly almost overnight via repositioning (like chiropractic but without the violent popping of joints), and a combo of high and low tech “hands on” therapies. When I fell out of a tree a couple of years ago and tore a rotator cuff–the big muscle in the front of your shoulder–and wanted to avoid surgery, the PT took me from extreme pain to occasional and bearable pain within a week’s (three) visits. And they’ll give you a regimen of fairly easy daily stretches and exercises which, if you stick with them, will keep you pain free forever or until you hurt yourself again. And they don’t cost that much. They take all insurance and medicare and if you tell them you don’t have insurance, they’ll offer great deals that no doctor or bone-cruncher I’ve known can or will match. Along with acupuncture, PT is the best approach to pain relief I’ve found in a long and painful life. Best luck.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Orion Rising!! #34977

The heavens speak best to those who rise before dawn. Except hunting season, that ain’t me. So far as the “feeling” that our time is here, for me it’s the quality of the light in the northern sky, and simply … a feeling. It seems stronger than usual this year, judging by the reports I’m getting from others. Let us hope it bodes well for all concerned.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Treed Partridges and trail cams #34262

I salute you and your bro-in-law, Mike! A cam and bait on 40 acres! That’s like using a sonar fish-finder in a bucket of water, geeze. You can bet that young man had been “educated” by TV shows, videos and “hunting” magazines. 🙄

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Trad bowhunting education?? #34259

Clay — You do things your own way, and you do them exceptionally well. I suggest that you construct an appealing program, not just for kids but anyone who wants in, so that it can become the model for others. This will also benefit your writing, filming, etc. When I taught college I was pioneering classes they hadn’t had there before, so every night I had to sit down and work up a lesson plan for the next day. I guarantee you I learned far more than any of my students (which, being a Rocky Mtn. ski school, sadly didn’t take much). I would concentrate on values and the lifetime joy and satisfaction available from embracing those values–the value of the deep pre-historical tradition of the stickbow and wood arrow, the value of minimalism and doing more with less, the value of doing for yourself rather than just being a consumer, the value of working with your hands to make as much of your own gear as possible, the value of learning about and coming to love and fight to protect the animals we love to hunt and the places they must have to live, the value of woodsmanship (especially woodsmanship) and so on. Thanks for doing this and I hope you have a strong turnout.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: 300 gr. blunts? #34119

Thanks for all the good ideas, guys and Mom.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: roving with tuffheads #33688

I’ll be doing the same with field points, since I can’t find a blunt glue-on at 300 grains. But you’re right that there’s no better hunting practice than roving with broadheads. But here we’re short on soft dirt and long on rocks and fire-hardened trees you’d never get a broadhead out of.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Does not a heavy point make FOC? #33685

Kevin– As stated in another thread here somewhere, the primary reason for rear-tapered shafts is that they come out of paradox faster, which should result in better flight and a bit more retained speed … which is likely as responsible for the added penetration as the slight weight gain up front/FOC. I know you prefer straight shafts but most wood shooters I’ve known prefer tapered for the same reasons I do. Also, if you’re going for EFOC, the lighter the shaft the better, so long as you have 650 minimum total. So tapering heavy wood shafts increases FOC not only by the weight up front but also by the lack of weight at the back. But frankly, I shoot tapered simply because they fly better for me, and I need all the help I can get. 😆

[David Petersen]

in reply to: 300 gr. blunts? #32975

Great idea, Alex, thanks! I’ll give it a try. I wouldn’t think it would last long at all, but then even my budget can handle a roll of “duck” tape. I would like to see Joe at Tuffhead offer them, as he does for the 225s, but if there’s not enough market to break even, that’s no way to stay in business.

Only barely mid-Aug. but already the days and nights are cooling and the light is changing. Notwithstanding my various old-man ailments, my body is spending more time on the mountain and my spirit it there full-time. The foam target is getting boring and roaming calls out loud! Even Doc Dave, that old curmudgeon, is feeling it. Soon!

[David Petersen]

in reply to: COULDN'T HELP MYSELF #32821

Grumpy — My grandson calls me Grumps, though I can’t imagine why. 😆 That’s a radical looking bow–thick limbs at the ends and short abrupt riser. Very handsome wood. Make it yourself?

Best luck with the surgery tomorrow. I’m going in for a “procedure” tomorrow myself, and hope I can hold off on hernia surgery until after firewood and hunting season. Then I’ll be looking at a 3-month no-hard-labor recovery time right through the heavy snow season, oh boy.

I share this personal info only because misery loves company. Best luck, Dave

[David Petersen]

in reply to: broadhead target #31722

Steve — I was introduced to Red Green when visiting Val Geist at his home on Vancouver Island, BC. He is apparently something of a Canadian hero, like John Wayne here. 😛 It was one of only two programs that Val and his wife Renate tried never to miss. Val is among the smartest people I’ve ever known and his wife is even smarter. Being a Mensa reject myself, it’s about the only TV program I know about that I feel like I’m missing by not having TV for the past 45 years. Being a fellow intellectual, 🙄 I’d expect that you’d like it too. 😆

Now for the requisite topical connection: When I first started building wood bows I experimented with various very low-tech bow backing materials and the best I found was … duck tape. You can even get it in camo at WalMart these days. It helps minimize splinters rising on the back and can add a couple of pounds dray weight if applied correctly. Red Green’s influence is international. 😆

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Treed Partridges and trail cams #31478

Bruce — I think you speak for most western hunters insofar as trail cams have little value in “patterning” game for hunting, because they have so much land to roam across and neither elk nor mule deer follow predictable patterns or trails as whitetails do. So even if I wanted to use a cam to help me hunt, it would be a waste of time. But I don’t, as already stated here. For me, game cams have become an off-season hobby totally unrelated to hunting but closely related to my love of wildlife. For years I’ve sat here in the shack and from time to time thought “I wonder what’s going on “out there” right now? My primary targets are bears, and I don’t even hunt bears. I use only infrared cams so the woods aren’t lighted up as from lightning. On the other hand–I know of one well-known and respected trad bowhunter who sings the glories of monitoring his next intended trophy whitetail with game cams–and this within huge areas of planted “deer crops.” To each his own but to me that akin to building an electronic high fence. Crop baits, photo monitoring, tree stands in all the right places … where is the actual hunting here? It’s not so much a matter of ethics (though arguments can certainly be made there) but rather a matter of trading a true hunting experience for a virtual hunt. Doesn’t interest me. But as a totally separate off-season outdoor recreation–something that will get me out hiking along in the woods in summer and winter, I love it. And I love sharing the results. In fact I just bought a second cam and have two of them out there working as we speak. I just hope I can remember where they are. 😆 If I got any sense this was in any way disturbing wildlife, warning them away from needed resources like water, I wouldn’t do it. Nor can electronics ever replace the joy and satisfaction of good old-fashion sign reading. IMO

[David Petersen]

in reply to: broadhead target #30816

Steve — You must be a Red Green fan, given your affection for duck tape. 😆

I have no need for a broadhead target, since I do little practice shooting with broadheads. Using a dirt pile (not as clean as I’d like but with the bulletproof heads I shoot, no biggie) to make sure all my year’s hunting broadheads are shooting well, and shooting to the same place as the field points. This often takes only one shot per head to confirm (largely because the broads I shoot are long and narrow and shoot just like target points). Then I touch up the broadheads as necessary, usually just a few strokes with a fine stone on the KME, and put them in my bow quiver, hunt ready, doing the remainder of my practice with field points or blunts for stumping. If hitting a small rock within a pile of dirt once or twice significantly damages a broadhead, it’s an excellent signal that the head is structurally incompetent and you need to switch to something more substantial. IMO.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Otzi Exhibition #29615

Jim — I think most of the game there and then was smallish, most ovids like, as pronounced back in Okie, “Shammy.” Alps eagles have no problem lifting them from cliffs. Of course they’re small targets too.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: The ugly underbelly of "preserve" "hunting" #29609

You nailed it, Alex: “landowner rights” is a hugely controversial and hurtful issues here in the West. In extreme cases, as quoted here, it is sociopathic, to say the least. I have much more to say on this rancid issue but will stifle, so as not to force our Beloved Webmom to hit the Big Red Button.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Oil rub arrow finish? #29532

Tex — I used three coats of Tung oil finish, a day apart. I would think it’s perfectly fine to glue on the feathers a day after the final coat. The stuff is thin and you have to wipe it off within about 5 minutes of applying or it gets tacky. Wipe it real good, then a final wipe the following day and it seems bone dry. I had something come up and it was a couple of days before I applied fletching, using Duco and it’s a really solid bond. Another great thing about oil vs. a hard finish is that when you get a scratch or small nick in the wood, just wipe over it with a bit of oil and the flaw becomes invisible and you’re ready to shoot again. Why the heck did it take me 50 years to learn about this? 🙄

[Author]

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