Sometimes we find the lifestyle and sometimes the lifestyle finds us. A brief survey of our contributors (and our readership) would confirm just that. Fortunate is the archer born into a bowhunting family who most likely tightened their toddler fist around a kids’ bow before age two. Others find an introduction to bows and arrows later in life through friends or co-workers. Or here, after they tied the knot with world-class bowhunters, Lori Thomas and Krista Holbrook soon learned that the couple who hunts together, stays together. Then, on the other hand, we find Melody Haege who eventually placed a recurve bow into her somewhat reluctant husband’s hand. And soon, other family members were also infected with bow fever. So, read on, and share their stories with a significant other. Bows, camouflage, and deer stands might not be in their future but there’s more to shared outdoor experiences than that, as with my friends Todd and Deb Gregory. Deb has successfully hunted Eastern turkey but she’s just as content to join Todd for stump shooting, scouting, and tracking. —David Tetzlaff

Lori’s best “backyard” buck taken on Thanksgiving Day while Don was in the kitchen cooking.

Adventure—By Marriage

Lori Thomas

Growing up as a proud fourth generation Montanan exposed me to the hunting tradition from an early age. My dad had been an avid hunter from the time he was young. We always had a freezer full of venison even though he grew up on a cattle ranch. That said, I never killed a big game animal until I was in my early 20s and married with small kids. I went out with a rifle I had practiced firing a time or two, leaned over the hood of the truck, and killed my first buck. Frankly, I didn’t find that experience very gratifying.
Fast forward to 10 years later and a new husband. Having made lots of mistakes during my first marriage, I decided that this time I was going to find activities to share with my husband. Needless to say, when I married Don Thomas I knew I was signing up for adventures in the outdoors with a strong emphasis on bowhunting.

I received my first bow as a Christmas gift, a beautiful one-piece longbow made by our friend Dick Robertson. Every bow Dick makes gets a name. This one was dubbed “Pocahontas.” I started practicing right away. The 3-D bear target in our front yard became a pincushion for my wooden arrows. I went to the archery range to shoot regularly and tagged along on hunting expeditions trying to absorb all the advice I was getting. I spent countless hours trying to walk quietly in the woods, paying attention to the wind direction, and watching for the subtle signs of game in my surroundings. I sat in stands and watched deer sneak by, imagining the perfect shot angle.

It was almost three years before I felt confident that I was ready to try shooting my first animal. I can still remember climbing up into the “Hot Tub Stand,” within sight of our house and near a well-traveled deer trail. Don made sure I was securely fastened in my safety belt, positioned on my stand, broadheads sharpened, and ready to go before he was off in a different direction to sit in a stand himself.
It wasn’t long before I heard a stick crunch behind me. I turned just enough to catch sight of a mature whitetail doe headed down the trail. Going through the mental checklist of all the advice I had been given, I waited for her to stop slightly quartering away, picked a spot, came to full draw, and let go. To be honest, everything from then on was a bit of a blur as excitement and apprehension overtook me. Did I hit her in the right place? What direction did she go? Would there be a blood trail and enough light left to follow her up before dark? To make a long story short, with the help of my trusty bowhunting mentor and husband, I recovered the deer within 100 yards. That was the beginning of a 25-year adventure with longbows and recurves.

I must have won the husband bowhunter lottery when I married Don. Thanks to his love of the outdoors, hunting, and writing, I have enjoyed opportunities to hunt all over the world, from Alaska to Africa, South America, Australia, and New Caledonia. The people we have met and the places we have seen have been just as rewarding as any animals I have taken with traditional gear.

I have my own spot on our dining room wall where I can admire some of the animals I have taken over the years. The mountain lion reminds me of a negative 20-degree morning in February years ago. I was accompanied by special friends who looked on as I nervously made a perfect shot. There is a Greater kudu taken with a San bushman at my side after we had trailed it all day. A second arrow finished what I had started the prior evening.

An Australian boar taken with Lori’s Aussie mates, the late, great, Bill Baker on left, and Brad Kane on the right.

These dusty mounts really just remind me of those moments. I am not one for the record books. Being close to an animal while carrying a traditional bow is excitement enough. I have learned from Don that I have to do everything perfectly and the quarry must make a mistake. Therein lies the excitement when everything actually aligns! Antlers on the wall are a secondary consideration for us. We both love to cook and are always trying to come up with a new twist on wild game. Our kids, now in their 30s and 40s, never come home for a visit without bringing a cooler to raid one of the freezers. I think they like telling their “foodie” friends about our adventures with bow and arrow.

I am now approaching the 30-year anniversary with my bowhunter husband. He has taught me to bowhunt, flyfish, shoot a shotgun, and encouraged my photography endeavors. I have progressed with a camera from slide film to digital and now supply most of the photos that accompany his writing. Photography has become another activity we enjoy doing together. I have never ventured away from my traditional bowhunting roots and still shoot a Robertson bow. My current favorite is a 3-piece takedown recurve named “Knotty Butt Nice.” I have never once pulled back a “compound arrow flinging device,” as Dick and Don would describe them!

Perhaps the best part of marrying a bowhunter has been the opportunity to meet the amazing people who make up the traditional archery family. We have made lifelong friends all over the world. Growing older with our friends and watching their children and grandchildren take up the tradition has been priceless.

Krista’s favorite meat, taken with an Osage bow and a quiver made from a brain-tanned deer hide.

Becoming a Bowhunter

Krista Holbrook

Fortunate indeed is the woman who has the opportunity to learn to hunt. Late period European culture found females pursuing domestic skills, while males were taken afield and taught outdoor pursuits. Sadly, that same mindset often persists today even though more recent archaeological records and historical notes are filled with accounts of female archers and hunters. I’m sure childhood camping trips to the Everglades contributed to my comfort in the wilderness as an adult, but my brother was permitted to tag along with the adult hunters while I fished and explored. I recall him receiving archery lessons at the local community center while we girls were taught sewing.

Fast forward to meeting my husband Sterling who is an avid, lifelong traditional bowhunter. Joining him occasionally on hunting trips, I initially hung out in camp reading and relaxing. He taught me how to shoot a bow, which was surely a patient labor of love as I exhibited very little natural aptitude. We also enjoyed attending archery tournaments together when I had finally developed basic proficiency.

That first day when I went bowhunting with my husband, I could never have imagined how much it would change and influence my life. A whitetail deer slipped up close behind me, caught my wind, blew an alarm, and made a rapid escape. It would be several years and many frosty mornings before I would take a deer with my longbow. But the things I would see and the lessons I would learn from nature would enrich my life and guide my time spent afield. I found the journey to be absolutely transformational; hunting completely changed my relationship with the natural world. Many people when they think of hunting think only of killing. And I admit my initial reaction to the suggestion of hunting was likely, would I want to kill an animal? But there is so much more to bowhunting than killing. The journey from observer to efficient predator is a long but satisfying one.

During those first few years, Sterling would scout and locate our hunt area and then walk me into a good spot to hunt. As my interest grew, I joined him on those expeditions, learning to identify food sources, bedding areas, and travel corridors. The more I learned about my quarry, the deeper my investment in the hunting craft became. What plants did they eat, where did they sleep, how could they possibly smell me from so far away? A true hunter must be a superb naturalist.

Bowhunting to me is about being immersed in nature. The more I learned about which vegetation wildlife consumed, the more interested I became in plants and trees. Observing animals foraging awakened a desire in me to do the same. Like primitive man, I often nibble my way through the wilderness, obtaining minerals and nutrients lost to our modern diet. I believe that wildcrafting edibles, medicinal herbs, and teas makes one a better hunter. It encourages you to slow down and really examine your environment.

Proper care of the food resource quickly became, and remains, a priority as well as a labor of love. When cleaning game I have always been slow and methodical as no one will ever take better care of your meat than you do. And what an amazingly nutritious meal you can create from organic meat. Learning to clean and butcher my harvest increased my interest in a variety of meats—those often-over-looked morsels that were prized in centuries past—tongue, heart, testicles, liver, and more, so now I’m a meats kind of girl. Performing a necropsy taught me much about anatomy, resilience, and recovery, as well as offering a visual of my quarry’s current diet.

Krista and Sterling used teamwork to harvest this nice buck.

Navigation, however, is my weakest skill set. I’ve become lost on more than one occasion when thinking I knew exactly where I was. Sterling seems to have an innate sense of place and direction, but I struggle to this day. I can follow a general topo map and use a compass and GPS, but natural navigation is one skill that just never came easily. Sterling told me to always know where north is and re-establish its position and use visualization of the country and awareness to stay oriented. Over the years, however, I have finally become more comfortable and more satisfied with my ability.

I think the most satisfaction I’ve found in the world of traditional bowhunting came when I learned how to make my own tackle. Simple items at first—bow strings or a finger tab, were soon followed by more demanding efforts. I learned to tan a hide in the traditional manner (using the animal’s brain), and I also crafted a Lakota-style hunting quiver. What a pleasure it is to carry the evidence of past successes on future hunts. Sterling and I attended an Osage bow building class many years ago. He had long been hunting successfully with a homemade selfbow when I decided to give it a try. It was love at first hunt! My Osage bow belonged in the woods, and I harvested over half a dozen deer and hogs the first season I hunted with it.

The majority of my hunting experience has occurred on public land in the Deep South. Never much of a trophy hunter, my goal has generally been to put meat on the table. For me, hunting involves remorse for taking a life, tempered by the satisfaction of becoming self-sufficient.
Reflecting back on 40-plus years together and recalling the many remote hunts my husband and I have enjoyed, I can feel how much our bond as a couple has been strengthened by hunting together.

Melody Haege was all smiles upon recovering her
husband’s deer despite needing crutches to navigate the woods.

Traditionally Contagious

Melody Haege

My mom grew up rifle and shotgun hunting with her family in northern Minnesota. My first hunting memories were of helping her drive deer on our farm in Wisconsin. It was a shotgun-only zone and I remember her using a vintage Ithaca single-shot 20-gauge to bring home deer. Kids didn’t typically hunt where we lived, we just helped with the drives. It was meat hunting and, truthfully, I did not realize that I could have participated. We had nothing of a hunting culture or any deeply engrained traditions in that farming community, it was simply an exercise in freezer-filling.

My husband’s family was different. Every November they traveled to central Wisconsin for a huge whitetail party hunt. Using deer drives, opening weekend always produced plenty of deer including a few nice bucks. His family generously gave me a great spot for my first ever hunt in 2015. I was 28-years-old with four little kids and a fresh hunter safety card in my pocket. I was one of the few adults (and the only one carrying a nursing baby) in a classroom full of excited 10 to 12-year-olds also eager to earn their certification. Within minutes after first light I had my first deer that fell with a clean 75-yard-shot. I had quite a few tags that year for hunting agricultural land and filled every one of them. The next season, I took a buck from 125 yards.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that I knew zero about hunting and zero about deer. I was a shooter, not a hunter. I’m not saying that hunting with a rifle is wrong, but in that moment I truly felt that I had cheated that buck and it made me sad, as if I could have done better. Those first few years of easy won success with a rifle are what eventually drove me to pick up a traditional bow. I knew I wanted to hunt differently.

At first, I endured a lot of ridicule for my choice; that it wasn’t an ethical weapon or that it was just a romantic notion and next to impossible. The argument of ethics was particularly interesting to me because that was exactly what had inspired me to pick up a traditional bow in the first place. I wanted to be skilled to take a deer. I wanted to have the victory hard won without any modern conveniences. In a society that increasingly seeks to remove discomfort and make every task easier, I wanted to break away from the crowd.

My family and friends are a prime example of how passion can be contagious. No one in my family had ever tried archery when I first picked up a bow, but that all changed quickly. Within a couple of years of seeing the joy I had in shooting; my dad bought a Holm longbow. And after borrowing one of my bows for a while, my brother now has a Black Widow he uses to hunt deer and target shoot. Countless friends now have a pastime that, before my incessant preaching, was not even on their radar. I make a practice of putting a bow into the hands of anyone who comes to my house. If they are physically able and if their interest is piqued, I do everything in my power to get them a bow of their own.

However, the most successful convert to the traditional bowhunting world is my husband. Initially, he was as skeptical as everyone else had been. A former compound shooter, he didn’t think much about the efficiency or accuracy of shooting traditional tackle. I remember telling him that with a trad bow, it is the person who is accurate, not the bow. The compound, the firearm, the crossbow, they are weapons designed to take the ability for human error as far out of the equation as possible. He was dubious but enjoyed practicing with me and soon proved to be a very proficient archer. When my Achilles tendon ruptured in September of 2022 and effectively sidelined me for the season, I told him that I expected him to get a deer with my Black Widow PCH since I couldn’t be in the woods. I was half joking, but he took it very seriously.

We spent every evening going over maps of our hunting area and I showed him where I had taken a doe the previous year and where they often bedded and came out to feed. He also did his own scouting and hunted diligently, heading straight to the stand after work for most of October and planning morning hunts for the days when he was home. Before hitting the woods on the morning of November 3rd, he shared his well-thought-out plan to take the long way in to avoid spooking anything or getting winded. I decided I would take my crutches down into our woods and sit on the edge with my longbow. My hunt was a complete bust, crutches and a non-weight bearing boot made me clumsy and loud.

“I shot something big. I’m coming to get you so you can help me trail it,” was the text I read after I saw a buck burst out of the woods in front of me. My disappointment over my own failed attempt was forgotten in the excitement of trying to hobble back to our house to help him trail his deer. Truthfully, I don’t know that I’ve ever been that excited over a deer I shot myself! He brought me to a walking 70-yard blood trail with a 10-point buck at the end, a beautiful animal with one perfect shot placed through him. My husband’s arrow did what it was made to do with skill and countless hours of practice making it fly true.

My journey into hunting, especially traditional bowhunting, is likely different than one would expect. Still, I am glad I didn’t let age, being a woman in a male-dominated sport, or limitations in knowledge stop me from pursuing hunting. I learned, I practiced, and most of all, I found it to be a bridge to building relationships with people I love.