David Petersen wrote: I recall someone here saying on another thread not too long ago words to the effect that “I get more satisfaction from missing a shot with my longbow than I ever did making shots with a compound.” For an example. Not that the easiest can’t be gratifying, but just that the more challenging is even more gratifying. Otherwise, why the heck are we shooting longbows and recurves?
So true.
It’s a topic that comes up time and time again, but I think it’s always interesting to think about where we draw the “traditional” line:
1) Do we define “traditional” as how Fred Bear did it? or Howard Hill? They are both considered “traditional” icons, yet used quite different equipment. Is a 12th century Mongol, with a short recurve, less “traditional” than a 12th century English longbowman?
2) Are seflbows more “traditional” than composites? Composite bowmaking techniques actually go back thousands of years. Is that less tradition?
3) Is wearing camo less “traditional” than not wearing it? People have camouflaged their clothes and their bodies, in various ways, since the beginning of hunting. In many ways, plaid is actually a more historically recent development than camo clothing, if we really want to get nitpicky. I’ve always found it funny, for example, when people will acknowledge that they revere Fred Bear, yet in the next breath they disparage wearing camo as less than “traditional,” yet Fred had no qualms about wearing it at all.
As Alex said, it’s a spectrum. But in many ways, there are plenty of thought-provoking exceptions to the rule in how I hear people typically define “traditional.”
For me, it’s simply hunting and/or target shooting with a bow that does not have wheels, sights or any of the other reliances. Other than that, I see more strength in numbers than in splitting hairs. We are all part of the tradition, and, as someone much smarter than me said, “tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
