[David Petersen]

in reply to: First Osage Bow **Updated w/ Pics** #25694

Jeremy, your problem is absolutely common to beginning bowyers, myself definitely included. Thus do we accidentally build a lot of “kids” bows. 😛 Depending on a lot of things, it’s possible to get the draw weight up to where you want it by cutting the limb tips to make the bow shorter. But this only works if you have a pretty long bow to start with, and there’s always the danger of falling into the “leveling the table legs” trap. But a thought worth entertaining, at least. Purdy bow you have there.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Looking for Staves in Colorado #24599

Actually guys, I mean Vol. 1 (nor corrected in my original post). Just forgot to put the space in the V. 1 😛

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Looking for Staves in Colorado #23926

Shawn — Not to rain on your picnic, but with only 2 weeks you’d be lucky just to find a good stave, much less build a bow. It’s not a process that fares well when rushed. My advice is to spend whatever bowbuilding time and energy you have right now on getting a copy of The Bowyer’s Bible Vol. I and reading it cover to cover, then with that knowledge deciding what kind of wood you want to use, and asking around (including of course here) where’s the best place to order it. Staves only get better as they age, and as the guy who got me started once advised, “You don’t need a special place to build a selfbow. If you really want to do it badly enough, you’ll find a way. I once built a nice selfbow on the tailgate of my pickup in a WY blizzard.” Bow building is a great hobby, with all the satisfactions of fine woodworking and a whole lot more. No need to rush. Best luck, Dave (who long long ago wasted his leaves home with reloading .45 ammo and shooting it up as fast as I could pull the trigger, when I could have done that on Uncle Sam’s expense anytime, anywhere I was stationed) 😛

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Alternate arrow wood species #23874

Giggles — I once make some Osage arrows and found them to be too heavy to use, and very inconsistent in weight from shaft to shaft. I think you’d have to make a hundred shafts to get a good weight match on a dozen, and then you’d have a dozen good wood fish arrows. 😀 Seriously, my attempt was limited and so may not be representative. If you use a woodstove, I find that bow scraps make excellent kindling.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Trad-Bow arrow speed & KE #23790

Thanks for covering the tech aspects, Arne. I can only emphasize that when applied to hunting KE means almost nothing as an indicator of penetration and killing power, since a typically very light high-KE arrow’s speed comes to almost a full stop as soon as it hits flesh or bone (especially if using some of the lousy broadheads marketed to compounders these days, particularly mechanicals), crumbling that speed-squared bragging figure to almost nothing in far less than a heartbeat. To the contrary, a heavy arrow (high momentum) with the right broadhead (one that holds together and minimizes friction in passing through tissues, esp. heavy bone) retains far more of its energy and forward momentum on impact with flesh, providing greater penetration and lethality even though shot from lighter bows with lower speeds. In sum, speed helps but it’s a false god to pray to for max penetration and lethality. That is the standard traditional view, as proved out both in the Ashby studies and in the field every fall. You’ll know you’ve successfully made the transition to traditionalist worldview when you no longer worry about speed and no longer even think about KE.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Wood and FOC #23511

Troy — I’ve tried footed shafts for FOC, a few years ago, and was disappointed in that they added more weight to the shaft than FOC, since the footing’s weight is spread through several inches. I’m having better luck with lighter wood solid shafts, single-tapered of course, and the heaviest head I can find. But maybe it can be done …

[David Petersen]

in reply to: The bug has me so I started a new bow (finally finished) #22642

That looks like a dandy, Troy. Especially the antler bits and the wood lams in the limbs. Nice overall design as well. I know some of the limb tips will get cut off, but even so that’s some serious recurve. Let us know how she shoots.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Is camo necessary? #21660

That’s it, Joseph! Thank you. Great book and darned shame he never got around to writing its equal before dying young. Thinking of Southern writers named Harry, reminds me of another great, Harry Cruz (was it Harry? I know Cruz is right), the South’s answer to Hunter Thompson.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Tularemia and Hunting Safety #21598

Other threads here, First and Second Kills, have worried me on precisely this account. Most states set rabbit seasons to begin in Oct. to be after the first frost, which supposedly either kills “rabbit fever” or kills the sick rabbits that have it. Yet I too have eaten many a summer rabbit–my Boy Scout troop was old school, great leaders just back from WWII and/or Korea, mostly farm boys who knew how to survive by foraging. Among the skills they taught us was building snares for bunnies, and we caught and ate many in summer, cooked on a spit over a campfire. But even then the folk wisdom was to not clean a summer rabbit if you had cuts or sores on your hands, and to cook the meat well. While I have no scientific facts on this ready at hand, and too lazy to look ’em up just now, these cautions always worked for me.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Last Colorado Grizzly #20559

Sorry, for some reason I couldn’t get both pics into the same post. Here’s the other …

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Last Colorado Grizzly #20554

Yep, JD, if I were hunting in grizzly areas I’d really keep my eyes open, always wear bear spray and never use a game call. (In Yellowstone, grizzlies kill lots of bulls during rut, ambushing them in their distraction.) In daylight, I love the feeling and have never felt fear even when a grizzly once walked right through out campsite in a MT backcountry area. At night, well, I don’t get much sleep. 🙄

Here are a couple of pics of “the Wiseman bear,” Colorado’s last “confirmed” (that almost always means dead) grizzly, Sept. 23, 1979, S. San Juan Wilderness, right where it fell. Not a great shot but all that survived; I took it from a 5×7 print. The skull is the same bear and it’s easy to see why it didn’t make short work of Wiseman. A very old bear, around 25, it had horrible teeth and jaws pocketed with abscess and heavy arthritis growths on every joint in its body. Had it been a prime grizzly, Wiseman would not have lasted long.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: New Shrew #18947

Welcome 2fletch. The magic seems to be working.

[David Petersen]

in reply to: New Shrew #18147

http://www.shrewbows.com should take you right to it, with plenty photos. But the price! $105 is mighty rich for my blood (anyone know what EF sells them for?). Yet I see it as my duty to tests these endless gotta-have new accessories for youse guys, which often cost me double since I have learned that popping the news to my wife over dinner and drinks out is the safest way to go about it. 😈

[David Petersen]

in reply to: Colorado Burning #18136

John and Bruce — It’s north-central CO that’s taking the biggest beating, along the WY border near Ft. Collins, a major university town, followed by Colo. Springs, a major Front Range city, then down here in the SW corner around Durango. Right now we have five local fires burning around us from east, south and west (north are the big mountains which are wetter, cooler, and thus less threatened). Right now the only threatened town is Mancos, a half-hour west of Durango. But we can see the billowing, cumulous-like smoke clouds streaked with red and as I sit here in my office shack with door and windows open I sure smell smoke. Hot, very dry (humidity around 10 percent) and an ongoing drought. Ironically it’s ten years exactly since the big Missionary Ridge fires fried out local mountains to a charred crisp, nearly burned us out and we were forecefully evacuated by the Nat. Guard. Today, I enjoy premiere elk hunting in the new aspens sprouted by that fire. I just wish these things didn’t always happen precisely on the cusp of elk calving and deer fawning time. After the 2002 fires I walked the surrounded smoking moonscape that had been lovely forest, and found numerous cremated deer skeletons, still articulated but if you touched one it would collapse in a pile of ash. SO many newborns, small game and birds die in these fires and all the other wildlife is pushed into escape habitat that has threats of its own. Poor darn bears were already suffering from a late frost that killed about a third of the survival-essential Gambel’s oak and radically reduces the fall acorn production. Grass and forbes are too dry to have any nutrition. And now this. Almost always, wildlife suffers even more than we do from our mistakes of past and present. Thanks for your concern. We are OK, at least here in the San Juans. Dave

[David Petersen]

in reply to: "Don't look back – something might be gaining on you." #18124

Wolf– while I agree with you in general, IMHO the old “united we stand” slogan often as not has been used against ethical hunting by unethical hunters and organizations, and enough said about that here.

Alex, I pretty much agree with you right down the line. Weapons that require less skill and thus less personal investment in learning, attract more but less-skilled and less motivated hunters. Many, but not enough of them, eventually graduate when they learn the basics and start craving more challenge and personal satisfaction in “success.” Where I get upset in all of this is the impact such weapons as compound devices and x-guns can and do have on trad hunters and archery seasons. Easier, low-skilled weapons attract more, lower skilled hunters, who nonetheless kill more game and before we know it our archery seasons are threatened with being restricted due unsustainable kill numbers. Virtually all archery seasons are classified as “primitive weapons.” To interpret a merely historical weapon like the x-gun as “primitive” is an error of semantics that works against us. While busting seasons down into shorter bits has all sorts of pitfalls, I’ve come to believe that’s inevitable if we wish to hunt traditionally without mobs of non-trad “archers” out there with us, too often on ATVs. I’d strongly support, for example, a monthlong archery season in CO for trad archers, overlapped by two weeks for compound devices and NO x-guns, never ever in any archery season. Another way to fairly deal with compound devices skewing kill ratios for “archery” seasons would be a law cutting one percent of the hunting season for each percent of let-off at full draw. We can have longer seasons, or more “efficient” weapons, but it’s patentently undemocratic to expect both.

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