[Charles Ek]

in reply to: Food for a Backpack Hunt #54319

I just stopped the video when he said his day starts with a Mountain House breakfast product.

I’ve eaten the stuff, I’ve sold it and I know people like it. But it is much more expensive (and, not infrequently, far less satisfying from an eating perspective) than learning how to use commonly available foodstuffs and reusable packaging.

My advice is to take to heart the lessons of the National Outdoor Leadership School on this subject. No, I’m not a devotee graduate, or a paid endorser. I’m just a fan:

NOLS Cookery

And a day without oatmeal first thing in the morning is a day spent in town for me. Well, actually, I eat it in town several times a month as well.

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: Buying used recruves and longbows #54298

Smithhammer wrote: [quote=colmike]

Seriously, though – if you can’t inspect the bow personally, then at least purchase from a reputable seller (personally, I’m leer of used bows on eBay, for example – you may not have any known history of the bow). And don’t be afraid to ask for additional pics of the bow, if needed. Trad archery shops like Rocky Mountain Specialty have an extensive selection of used bows and stand by what they sell.

OTOH …

I’ve bought four bows on eBay without having handled them first. Three were exactly as described and are shot several times a month each. The fourth is on its way to me now.

Lots of folks have had lots of luck buying used bows this way, and sometimes a person gets burned very, very badly. I won’t buy anything on eBay without the Buyer Protection Plan in force for the item. I look at the seller’s photos more intently than your proctologist looked at your last colonoscopy. I do a lot of research on the history of how the bow has performed through the years. I skip anything that doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy.

YMMV, in a big, big way. 😉

I should add – prices are sliding downward right now like you-know-what through a goose. Buy a bargain to shoot, but don’t expect to make any money off buying and selling used bows for some time to come. The bloom went off these particular tulip bulbs quite a while ago, and vultures like me have been having our pick of tasty morsels. 😈

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: Ethical Shots #50467

Fallguy wrote: The neck shot was the meat hunters shot of choice with a rifle because of the shock damage to the spinal cord that dropped them on the spot.

Been there, done that with a rifle at 35 yards while I waited for a buck to come around a corner. But I would never attempt a neck shot with a bow.

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: The way to practice a perfect shot #48218

I think I just found my new motto for both practice and hunting, in the text under that second video:

“When we face the target we are facing ourselves as a mirror.”

Dunno ’bout you folks, but this statement brings it all together for me when I contemplate getting ready for the shot, beginning with the making of arrows and all the way through to releasing one at a live animal.

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: New books #44008

dfudala wrote: Being an Upper-Midwesterner and a frequent traveler of the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota, I’m quite embarrassed that I did not know of him earlier in life. Fantastic reads! I Read “Runes” while on vacation this year on Saganaga Lake in the BWCAW. For those with ties or interest in the Upper Great Lakes region, I highly recommend!

Better late than never. 😉 He’s been a hero in my family since even before the days when he used to be hung in effigy in Ely. My mom grew up in Embarrass and I was raised in Duluth and the Cities. Family vacations were usually canoe trips.

You’ll want to read pretty much everything he published.

Hope Sag was kind to you and you didn’t have some extra, unplanned reading time …

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: New books #44003

Smithhammer wrote:

It’s also worth pointing out though, that one of the big reasons so many ranchers hated him was because he refused to write up every dead livestock as a “wolf kill” just because a rancher said so. He did thorough investigations of every livestock carcass that was reported to be the result of a wolf, and in the vast majority of cases, he found no evidence that wolves were the culprit – it was usually disease, poor livestock mgmt. that resulted in an accident, etc. Very few people on the anti-side of the argument, or at the federal agency he worked for, wanted to hear that – they just wanted every livestock death attributed to wolves, even when the facts clearly said otherwise.

The same thing goes on in Norway among some Sami reindeer herders with regard to exaggerated reports of depredation by bears, wolves, wolverines and lynx.

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: I got this old BOW #39285

I had to take a break from shooting my 1958 Bear Kodiak to respond to this. Just kidding – it was my 1968 Bear Grizzly. Or maybe it was the custom selfbow made for my dad … in 1943.

As noted above, if the bow is in good condition, there is no reason not to shoot it. The bows from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s will probably go on killing game long after we Boomers have passed from the scene.

As for the strung/unstrung question, you’ll hear all sorts of opinions both ways, some occasionally taking pains to differentiate between longbows and recurves, selfbows and all other bows, etc., etc.

I leave my fiberglass-laminate recurves strung. Until I get nervous about the weeks that have passed. Then I dither long enough to remember that the whole reason I have them is to shoot them, and it’s handier to keep them strung and I do more shooting that way. (Makes no sense, but there it is.) I do leave my selfbows unstrung. When the snow gets too deep in the winter for stumping, I unstring all of them. At least for a week or so …

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: What ya got goin? #39226

Forty-six days to deer and turkey openers here in NH. In the meantime, whenever practicing where granite is way more common than corn and bean fields, remember these words:

“Always bet on blunt.”

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: lightweight wool with 36 inseem #36482

Try L.L. Bean. They stock unfinished pants, and I bet they’d have something that long. Their fee to hem pants is not outrageous, as I recall. You might even find something in their outlet store already finished, although the size is quite uncommon as you know.

Their website is down right now, which is akin to Starbuck’s running out of coffee … ❗

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: What ya got goin? #29080

Apart from its shooting qualities, I found the 66 inches of my longbow handy once when I sat down next to an underground nest and shed my pack for a lunch break. The locals came boiling out looking for a fight. I fled and had to use the longbow to retrieve my pack when I came back.

Raspberries are at peak here. Which is undoubtedly why we had a furry black, yearling visitor last evening. Went to the neighbor and suggested it would be a good idea to put the goats and chickens in their respective sheds for the night. Got a dozen eggs in return. 🙂

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: countdown! #14668

Sixty-seven days and counting until the Sept. 15th opener here in NH. We will then have three months to kill a deer and a turkey. Small game starts Oct. 1.

Starting to ignore other publicized events during that time period, which is itself a welcome phenological sign of things to come. 😀

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: Where do you stand? #13116

Of all places, I stumbled across this in The Economist:

In a dark wood – Can bows and arrows save hunting in America?

“American hunting has thrived because it shuns the elitism and snobberies of the Old World. With each passing year, market forces have delivered weapons and gadgets that allow anyone to play Teddy Roosevelt, big-game hunter, further democratising the hunt. Yet to advocates of primitive hunting, those same forces—faster, easier, bigger—weaken the sport’s Rooseveltian values, and help explain its slow decline. Thanks to bowhunting, recent trends have been on the primitivists’ side. The juggernaut of commerce is now catching up. A very American contest looms.”

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: New books #63339

“The Grizzly Maze – Timothy Treadwell’s Fatal Obsession With Alaskan Bears”, by Nick Jans.

Think you know the Treadwell story? Nope, not until you’ve read this book. And the 31-page afterword (discussing the dangerousness of bears and what to do about it) is a rare piece of clarity on a subject too often characterized by a lot of BS.

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: new (sort of) Bear Kodiak #53868

quiverfull wrote: anyone shot the new Bear Kodiak remake? How does it shoot compared to the old ones? sure is a handsome bow…JB

Haven’t shot it, but everything I’ve read from those who have boils down to this:

1. It’s a helluva bow, worthy of its name and probably even the price.

2. The appearance of the leather grip is a disappointment to some and is often swapped out by those who are particular about such things.

I have a ’58, which is near enough to the ’59 that I feel very confident in recommending the purchase of the new version, if you’e so inclined.

[Charles Ek]

in reply to: Woodies #45588

I’ve been thinking for the last few weeks about the fact that Ishi footed his arrows. I think I’m ready to follow his example, for reasons of strength and FOC:

“The sticks thus straightened he ran back and forth between two grooved pieces of sandstone or revolved them on his thigh while holding the stones in his hand, until they were smooth and reduced to a diameter of about five-sixteenths of an inch. Next they were cut into lengths of approximately twenty-six inches. The larger end was now bound with a buckskin thong and drilled out for the depth of an inch and a half to receive the end of the foreshaft. He drilled this hole by fixing a long, sharp bone in the ground between his great toes and revolved the upright shaft between his palms on this fixed point, the buckskin binding keeping the wood from splitting.

“The foreshaft was made of heavier wood, frequently mountain mahogany. It was the same diameter as the arrow, only tapering a trifle toward the front end, and usually was about six inches long. This was carefully shaped into a spindle at the larger end and set in the recently drilled hole of the shaft, using glue or resin for this purpose. The joint was bound with chewed sinew, set in glue.”

How Ishi made his bow and his method of shooting

[Author]

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