Author: Thom

Africa 2017, preparations begin!

After doing much research and more than a little soul searching, I’ve decided to hunt Africa next year.  To be blunt, my desire to hunt a few animals over there has been uncontrollably strong. I want to experience the African bush, meet the people, and pursue the animals. The thing that weighed directly against this idea is the fact I’ve never pursued an animal I didn’t intend to eat.

That last part was a real gotcha for me, I’ve gone back and forth on the idea for years without coming to a clear conclusion. At least, until now. I was very fortunate in harvesting 4 animals this year, and with my freezer being so full I was able to give some meat to friends and family members who cherished the gift. This got me thinking about the stories of a Professional Hunter (PH) I met a while ago. He talked about American and European hunters shooting trophy animals and all of the meat not consumed in camp feeding nearby villagers. I read many accounts from both folks with hunting experiences over there, as well as a few articles from anti-hunters. Both sides gave some excellent points to really help me challenge my internal position.

Land in South Africa is privately owned. Just like ranches in Texas, everyone fences off their land from their neighbors. Whatever animals are within that fence are the property of that landowner. Landowners need to manage the herds at a healthy level so they don’t overpopulate leading to a crash or a disease break out.

That last part is important to understand. There are x number of hectares for a given ranch, only so much food can be grown in that land area. If there are too many impala, some must get killed to prevent them all from starving. These herds will be managed to a given number. Some animals will be killed by either paying hunters, or hired guns.

While other countries in Africa have held more appeal to me personally due to lack of fences, what I’ve come to appreciate about South Africa is just how well they have designed their hunting system. Truly it’s remarkable, when I look at all the different game laws in all the different US states, it’s amazing we don’t take some proven practices from them.

There are just a few animals I get really excited about, the vast majority I could take or leave. I must say the Cape Buffalo is singular in it’s effect on me.  It is by far the biggest and most dangerous of any animal I want to pursue in my lifetime. When it came time to plan my hunt, it was the one hunt I had to do.

Dare To Bowhunt is the operation I have chosen to go with. They hunt exclusively with bows, and Lammie himself is a recurve guy from what I’ve heard from some of his past clients.  I don’t have a long list of animals I want to hunt in Africa, but I will pursue the Buffalo first and foremost. Being a hog hunter, I really hope to get a chance at a warthog. I’ve also heard that impala is delicious (and VERY abundant on the property) so I’d like to harvest one of them too.

Given that a longbow Buffalo hunt is a pretty serious endeavor, I started preparations back in September. First thing was to come up with a workout plan to slowly build up to a point where I could comfortably handle my 85# longbow again. Most important part of the plan was minimizing the risk of injury ahead of the hunt. I have read and reread repeatedly Africa’s Most Dangerous and Buffalo! which I borrowed from my friend James.

January will bring the purchasing of some boots better suited for this environment, moving up to my 75# longbow for winter leagues, and purchasing airfare. It feels good to be doing so many preparations this far out, hopefully it will remove stress as the time gets closer.

The Dogma of “Quality” Deer Management

I must start by saying, I’m a huge fan of QDMA as an organization.

I believe QDMA is the backlash of failed State run game management. Even now, 30 years after the founding of QDMA the state of South Carolina allows hunting for archery and firearms from August 15th until January 1st. Bag limit is one buck per day, except on Sundays unless you are on private land. So if you hunt public land 6 days a week, and can get access to private land on Sundays, you could kill 107 bucks per year per hunter. That is over the counter. You can additionally apply for anterless tags or use generous landowner tags if you know someone.

There was a well earned reason for the backlash! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to pick on South Carolina. It is a state that I truly love to hunt. I was shocked to buy a Georgia hunting license and find that it allowed me to kill up to 10 deer, 1 bear, unlimited hogs, and turkeys. While I appreciate their marketing departments zeal in recruiting me as an out of state hunter, what is the herd effect of issuing licenses this way?

What do you do if you can’t change the state regulations, but you see a sick herd? Grassroots says you collect up your neighbors, compare notes, educate one another, and agree to fix your local herd. It’s a situation where “what is right” is more important than “what is legal.”

Two years ago I had the opportunity to spend a bunch of time with a biologist and a landowner going over a property and discussing habitat and management strategies. I found out later the biologist was the founder of QDMA, and the landowner was the first president of QDMA. Small world huh?

Here is the first thing I realized about these two, they are very dynamic people. They both look in the micro at any immediate area, and can instantly relate it to a macro level of herd management. They seemed very comfortable looking at 10 or 20 acres, then go straight into the macro issues facing a 3 county area.

The big thing I realized in the next few hours as a fly on the wall, these guys were not set on any “4 points on one side” sort of hard rule. In reality, 4 points on one side probably wouldn’t be a hard push on the property we were on. Instead they were really focused on the overall health of the land and the animals living there. It was a very dynamic discussion.

Dogma. Where I hunted today in Michigan was a non-QDMA tract ajoined to a few QDMA tracts. Several men are very stringent about their 8 point (Eastern count) minimum on any buck killed. I decided to target a button buck or a spike.

“Sacrillege!!!!” you say. I thought about it long and hard, I tried to think of it like a biologist. Here is what I realized:

  1. QDMA is working! There are many bucks 2.5 and 3.5 years old, and maybe even a few older. A few very good looking 8s, 10s, and even a 12 point or two. The mature bucks are in great shape but I don’t see any on camera nearing the end of their natural life. These are breeders that are spreading great genes! We need these bucks alive and rutting as many does as they can!
  2. This county was hit HARD with EHD for two years in a row. Herd die off was estimated at 50% each year. When herds are at 25% of their counts from just a couple years ago, it would be an injustice to kill a doe. They are EHD resistent and proven breeders. I saw one doe with two fawns, and one with triplets. Clearly I couldn’t shoot a fertile doe like that with the herd down the way it is.
  3. Yearling does will be critically important in recovering the herd over the next several years. These are completely off limits to my conscious.
  4. Dry does, you know, the big old horse heads. I would have gladly taken one of these, but it’s hard to know if they are past their mating years, or if they just lost this years young to a car or coyotes. Better to pass on these if not certain (and I’m rarely certain.)
  5. What does that leave? Immature bucks, or not hunting. Sure if a cow horn came by that would be a great cull, but I’ve never seen one in this county. Removing a spike would ensure it didn’t breed a doe, and it would yield a good amount of meat. I’d rather hunt and pass than to not hunt at all. I did have a button buck at 1 yard today, and had a slam dunk shot lined itself up I would have taken it. I’d say the chances of him making it through firearms season is very slim, and I would have liked that tender meat for my freezer. Alas, the shot was never right. I’ll just hold out for a spike or a cow horn in that county.

Clearly there is a difference between meat-harvesting and trophy-hunting, but for the meat hunter it’s important to consider all aspects of the current herd when deciding what animals to pursue. Likewise, I don’t think “4 points on one side” is the end-all answer for trophy hunters. If your land and habitat can lend itself to a much higher quality animal, why not go to a 4.5 year or 5.5 year minimum for trophies? There are a lot of 2.5 year old bucks killed in the name of quality deer management and it has little to do with their potential, their place in the reproductive lifecycle, or their true trophy quality.

If you hunt deer, I ask you to consider the big picture before considering what you will pursue when you go afield. If you are a non-hunter, consider every animal raised in a pen will be killed regardless. I’m very honored to be connected to these herds and to be very selective about what I harvest in each area I hunt.

Treestand System

stand setup

*** UPDATE*** I recently found out that my Muddy Pro Sticks were recalled years ago. I tried to get in touch with Muddy via their website to get replacement parts to make my sticks safe, but I never received any replies. Although I was perfectly happy with the idea of buying the parts and paying shipping to keep my beloved sticks, it seems they must be terribly busy with other things. Now I have Lone Wolf climbing sticks, but I will leave the rest of the post as it originally read.

I have used maybe a few dozen treestands at this point, and I’ve owned 5 different hang on models and 7 different pairs of sticks to use with them. While I know lots of guys who’ve used many more over many more years, one good thing is that all of my experience at this point has been in the last 6 years.

When it came time for me to invest I thought long and hard about the different styles, and I immediately eliminated ladder stands due to my mobility requirements. I like the idea of a climber and have many friends that love them, but you always end up with the “hunting the tree instead of hunting the spot” problem. While a hang on system maybe have more parts, you can get into some crazy trees and sometimes it’s those crazy trees that are where the animals are going to pass. I decided that a hang on stand would be right for me.

I had many friends encourage me to invest in a Lone Wolf, and I ignored them and bought a bunch of cheaper stands instead. In total I bought 4 stands that together cost much more than a Lone Wolf, and then I bought the Lone Wolf and gave away all the other ones. I purchased the Lone Wolf Alpha 2 at Cabelas using points. While I love this stand, had I needed to pay cash out of my wallet I would have bought a XOP Air Raid instead.

While I think my stand was amazing coming out of the package, I was inspired by Jason at the TBWPODCAST to do a little better. I wrote up how I used rubber, zip ties, and military surplus gear to drastically improve how quiet and comfortable my stand is to use. Read about it HERE if you missed it before. The final modification I made was to remove the beloved “batwing” and go with an EZ-Hang strap. Look at my zip tie and Yak Grips in the Sticktalk article, those are really slick!

With my treestand 100% awesome, now I needed sticks to get me up there. Muddy had just released their new Pro Sticks and I was intrigued. While I much prefer three long sticks to 4 short ones, these had a few HUGE advantages over the LW sticks. First the rope and cam buckle system is absolutely perfect. It is actually impossible to make metal to metal noise with one of these sticks. Second, every step is a double step so you don’t have to swap your step from side to side. As a nice bonus they are geared together so if you pull one side down it brings the other side along with it.

Assuming I’d hang my first stick at waist or chest height, I could set my second stick across the top of the first. That left me two sticks to figure out. I ended up putting two loops on each side of my harness at my waist, but out of the way of my lineman’s belt loops. I also added 550 cord loops to two of my sticks, now I can click them in to my waist with rubber covered mini carabiners. Other than the loops on two of them, I have not modified them in any structural way. I did wrap them with Howie’s Hockey Tape on a slow winter weekend last year, but functionally they are just like they came from the factory.

So aside from the hardware, there is one trick that makes all of this work especially good for me. I walk to my tree with my stand on my back, and my backpack hanging on it. I have my bow in my right hand, and my sticks in my left. At the bottom of the tree I always do the exact same thing:

  1. I put everything on the ground.
  2. I put on my harness, I put my EZ-Hang strap in my right cargo pocket, and my second strap in my left cargo pocket.
  3. I take my lineman’s belt and attach it to my harness.
  4. I have a rope permanently attached to the top handle of my backpack, I fish it all out and make sure its tangle free.
  5. There is a loop 6′ up from the backpack handle, I secure the top limb of my longbow to that.
  6. The every end of the 30′ rope has a loop on it, I attach it to my right side mini carabiner.
  7. I put the stand on my back like a backpack, without using the waist belt.
  8. I put the first stick on the tree, balance the second stick on the first, then put my other two sticks on my sides with the mini carabiners.
  9. I climb up on the first step and wrap my lineman’s belt around the tree and adjust the prussic knot to fit.
  10. Put on the second stick, climb up to the bottom step of it.
  11. Pull the third stick off my right side, mount it, climb onto it’s bottom step.
  12. Pull the fourth stick off my left side, mount it, climb up to it’s bottom step.
  13. Take EZ-Hang strap out of my right cargo pocket, put it chest high and cinch it up.
  14. Get a really good check on the lineman’s belt, loosen up the shoulder straps, and hang the stand on the EZ-Hang.
  15. Make all adjustments for the platform angle, etc.
  16. Install the second strap on the bottom button, cinch it up tight, double check platform level, try to twist sideways, etc.
  17. Take rope going to the backpack and longbow off the mini carabiner, put it on the top (unused) “button” on the stand.
  18. From top step, install tree tether as high up as I can reach, click the strap from my back onto it.
  19. With seat up, step down from the top step of the fourth stick onto the platform.
  20. Give it a one legged kick/push/and apply weight while keeping 3 other points of contact.
  21. Move second foot over, feel it out, remove lineman’s belt.
  22. Drag up bow, put on seat.
  23. Put backpack’s handle on the top step of the top stick. Secure excess rope.
  24. Sit down, put an arrow on the string, put the lower limb in my boot, and hunt!

OK, that looks like a lot of steps but as long as you prepare at the base of the tree for the steps you’re about to perform, it just flows from one thing to the next.

One thing I realized in typing this up, instead of putting the loop on the string between the backpack and the treestand, I want a 6′ rope on the bottom of the backpack to go to the bow. This way I can drag up the heavy backpack and hang it then bring up my bow last (without a second haul rope.) It is good to maintain a “beginners mind”!

The Inevitable Arch

I’ve written of this before, but it’s such an important event in my life I think it’s worth recapping for anyone who missed it.

A few years ago in February of 2013 I was on a hog hunt in Georgia. Every hunter in camp had an American Semi-Longbow, or a “Hill style longbow” if you will. There were folks from coast to coast and Canada in camp that weekend and it was a wonderful hunt regardless of all of us being universally skunked.

Among the group there were two gentlemen who had hunted all over the world, including several Africa trips each. The crowd gathered around these guys as they talked around the fire at night, but in the early mornings there were just a couple of us who came to them to pursue more info before they went after pigs. Of many pieces of helpful advice, here is the one I clung to: Figure out the biggest and toughest animal you ever want to hunt, buy a bow suited for the job, and start there.

I spent quite a time reflecting on this. Surely if I waited until “retirement” at an official age of 67, would I be able to draw a heavy bow for truly big game? Surely not! Being already 38 years old I needed to make a plan quickly while I was still able to draw a bow sufficient to penetrate thick and heavy boned animals. Whatever I lack in knowledge and finesse at this age can be overcome with sheer poundage and arrow weight.

It wasn’t lost on me that these gentlemen were around 70 years of age as they conveyed this to me. They were still hunting internationally, but their bows were drawing in the forty pound range. They had the benefit of fifty years of experience, decades of tuning expertise, and an impressive idea of what the word “sharp” really means. In this I saw the beauty of what I call “the arch of the bowhunter.”

Two years later I hunted hogs in South Carolina with a fantastic gentleman 81 years young. He’s taken plenty of big game and gone on many fantastic adventures. These days he hunts with a longbow in the low 40s and I would be terrified to be on the receiving end of one of his arrows. Still shooting wood shafts and broadheads with stunning sharpness, he is likely more lethal at his age as I am at mine.

Thus an interesting aspect of the arch: While I’ll need 40 more years to get this level of experience, I can’t wait to get that experience before I pursue the really big game. Having now passed my 40th birthday, I realized I was at that crossroads. I had to choose now if I would pursue any of the truly big game of this world before I lost the ability to physically draw a sufficient bow for the task. I have accepted the challenge, and I will hunt a magnificent animal in 2017!

Philosophy part 4: The Morality of Killing

After reading parts 1-3 I hope everyone (hunters, non-hunters, and anti-hunters) realize that I’ve given my pursuit quite a bit of consideration.

  • I have very good reasons for wanting to get high quality meat unavailable from our industrial meat growing and slaughtering operations.
  • Likewise, I have seen that an arrow can produce a far more peaceful death than a bullet.
  • Finally, I am very selective about what species I even endeavor to pursue based on ecological and ethical reasons.

In this post I want to talk about the act of killing itself. I have killed countless mosquitoes. I have on a few occasions accidentally run over squirrels.  I bought a nice leather jacket once. Years ago I purchased a good amount of meat at the grocery store or local butcher’s shop. All of those things boil down to killing. What’s worse, it’s the type of killing that almost nobody really thinks about.

When I go hunting I make a very conscious choice to go way out of my way to try to kill an animal. I think it’s good that the direct effect of being “successful” is front and center in one’s mind as they lace up their hunting boots. When I kill a specific animal I’d say my feelings are split between gratitude for all nutritional benefit I will receive, and remorse that a wild animal died so I could get it. I’ve never seen anyone shed a tear buying a steak wrapped in cellophane, but maybe they should.

I’ve studied the teachings of the Buddha, and I can clearly understand the philosophy behind not killing anything including insects. I think it’s admirable that some people can live with this level of consciousness. The main takeaway I have from these studies is the idea of “wholly good.” It could be looked at this way: If I kill a pig and eat it, it is not wholly good. It was clearly bad for the pig, and even though I received nutritional benefit, I had to kill the animal so that was not entirely good for me either.

This is wonderful when you are sitting on a pillow and considering the way that people get their food in first world counties today. Where it starts to get tricky is when you are looking at a male black bear and considering it might kill a dozen cubs per year. It doesn’t seem to me that letting that bruiser walk is really doing a favor to their herd or the ecosystem. Killing that bear is actually beneficial for everyone but that individual bear.

As a hunter out in nature, you are faced with many questions about what you should kill and what you should let pass. One example from a couple months ago; I had a coyote right in front of me in Wyoming on the opening day of pronghorn season. Ranchers (especially sheep ranchers) would consider it a great kindness for a hunter to kill all of them that they could. Moreover getting it and it’s smell away from the animals it was spooking (the ones I wanted to hunt) would have helped me too. Alas, I never even considered shooting him. I took a few comical pictures of him dancing around a waterhole with a doe pronghorn and I’ll cherish that memory forever.

I just got back from a week long hog hunt, and when I say hog I really mean to say feral pig. A very destructive animal planted in the new world to be a source of protein for the people who would inhabit this land in the future. In essence, a “put and take fishery” except for pigs. One day I had an immature sow, maybe 75 pounds within 5 yards of me. Why would I do harm to an animal that hasn’t even begun to participate in the cycle of life? A pig twice that size would yield much more meat meaning that I could kill half as much and still eat just the same. A few days before I had a male boar just coming into his prime walk in very close to me. He was asserting himself as a alpha boar by marking out his territory, but he lacked any nicks in his ears, or deep scars on his sides common with older boars. He has all the structure to support the heavy shields that will develop with time, and the heavy layer of fat that will come as well. He’s just still a little trim, I’m guessing around 250 pounds. He walked straight into my shooting lane at 10 yards and stood broadside. My bow was ready, and I could have easily taken a shot. So why didn’t I? Because he is just coming into his prime. He might have mated a few sows already, but the gene pool hasn’t been significantly diversified since the passing of the old alpha boar that has been running that swamp since 2009. If he lives a few years more it will be great for the herd.

When a hunter has a weapon in their hand they have a great deal to consider before they ever get to the point of trying to find a shot. To me this is a process of trying to rule out a shot instead of trying to find a way to justify it. If I can disqualify an entire animal for some ecological or “health of the herd” reason, that makes things much easier. Last spring I had a big group of mature hogs come marauding into my stand one evening. There were 13 hogs in total, and since no animal was off-limits for either of the reasons above I quickly settled down to the two I would take a shot on if presented. The oldest, biggest sow would produce the highest yield of meat. She was also wise and held back in the bushes for a long time after her offspring came browsing in. The other was the smallest male, about 150 pounds. It would be a great size to eat, and given the number of larger boars present I knew he had little chance of being part of the gene pool for the foreseeable future. Neither of those two hogs presented a clean shot opportunity, and so I let them all continue on their way.

I hope this helps folks who do not hunt to understand what many of us hunters go through before we ever decide to try to take an animal while afield. For many of us it’s much more involved than what the hunting television shows would have you believe. For a little deeper look into some of the emotions I experience while afield, I would invite you to read another hunting story I wrote a while back.

Philosophy part 3: Feral and Least Concern Animals

Did you know the “wild hogs” in North America were planted here by Europeans intended to be a food source for future settlers? That’s right, we basically left the gate open on the fence so the hogs could fend for themselves until such a time that we needed them to eat.

I hunt feral pigs along the Savannah River, a location that had Spanish hogs (Sus Scrofa) planted there in 1520 by Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. There were of course many other releases over many voyages, but I like to think that the DNA strain of these animals could go back almost to the discovery of the new world itself.

In retrospect it’s easy to see all of the damage done by releases of non-native species of different types on different continents. Just look at the feral cats and feral rabbits of Australia as a simple example. Our feral hogs have contributed to the extinction of ground nesting birds, and are currently one of the biggest threats to the eggs of sea turtles.

This is probably a good time to mention Conservation Status. If we look at the wikipedia pages for these two animals we will notice a big difference between them. The Green Sea Turtle is listed as being Critically Endangered, while the Wild Hog is listed as Least Concern. Often I’ll hear non-hunters say something like “all of God’s creatures deserve to live.” I think it’s a beautiful sentiment in principle. On the other hand, does that one hog get to eat those 200 eggs and not only kill 200 turtles before they hatch, but also push an entire species closer to extinction? While we estimate that hogs are responsible for 1.5 Billion dollars of damage in the USA every year, I don’t think that comes close to the real cost when we look at destruction of native flora and fauna.

Considering that I am not a vegetarian, I consider my choice to hunt destructive feral animals and to eat their meat as the highest possible good. I’ve had some wonderful debates with people who identify as vegan anti-hunters, and even they are quick to understand the seriousness of this particular problem.

As with all things that pull at our heart strings, discussions go downhill when we start talking about animals that we consider “cute”. Let’s consider the Black Bear. Here is an animal that many consider cute, or to have human-like traits, but it is also listed as Least Concern. There is no chance that black bears are going to go extinct, their range is actually increasing in size at a startling rate. Bear hunters sometimes get a dose of anti-hunter hate for the idea of killing one of them. I suspect they don’t know enough to consider that mature male bears can kill a dozen cute little baby bears each year. Why would a bear do that? Research has shown that sows can go into heat immediately after losing their last cub. It appears that male bears will kill cubs just to have more opportunities to have sex with their mothers. I’ve never pursued bears as quarry before, but after what I’ve read on this subject, and after having eaten a good deal of wonderful bear meat, I could see hunting for mature male bears someday.

It’s easy for me to come to the conclusion that hunting feral animals is both good for the environment and for my own sustenance. It’s also easy to see where selectively harvesting animals in the Least Concern category can also be beneficial for far more than just my own selfish interests. So where does one draw the line? Clearly I’d never hunt a rhinoceros. Would I hunt something that was Vulnerable? Near Threatened? By understanding that Near Threatened is really just a category for a species in decline, the answer is no. Least Concern is a broad category that includes animals expanding at a rate that could make them a concern in the opposite direction!!!

I believe as an educated and aware hunter I can make both a positive impact on the ecosystems that I hunt in, and I can nurture my body at the same time.  Wild animals do not get injected with hormones or other chemicals. They do not get penned up and force fed genetically modified foods. The quality of the meat available for those who are willing to work very hard for it far surpasses the very best meat commercially available at any price point.

 

 

Humans are not outside the food chain, and some of our rash decisions have had massive negative impacts on the natural world. We must do our best to live well in this integrated world.

Philosophy part 2: Why I Bowhunt

In Part 1 I talked about why I feel driven to eat wild game instead of commercial meat. Today I’m going to describe my path from rifle hunting to bowhunting, and hunting with a longbow specifically. This was a very conscious decision based on my personal ethics.

I grew up just down the road from Paul Schafer, but I never met him. Most of the hunters I grew up around felt that bowhunting was an immoral way to pursue big game, so I didn’t have a chance to socialize with any bowhunters to learn what it was really about. I really wonder what turns my life might have taken had I met Paul when I was a young teenager.

During the years of hunting with rifles I cleanly and swiftly killed several animals. Actually recounting them now, all of them were killed with a single bullet and recovered within 100 yards. While my personal successes were text book, I was on several hunts that didn’t turn out nearly as well. I saw other hunters miss shots for various reasons. I saw hunters get bad hits requiring long tracking journeys, a few included lost animals. I saw three occasions where wounded animals were kicked out of beds and additional shots were required to bring them down.

Twenty years later I realized that I could no longer support modern “farming” systems. I knew I would have to return to hunting for my own meat or become a vegetarian. I found myself at a moral crossroads. One option was that I could go back to hunting with a rifle with that big BANG noise and the animals getting hit with a projectile so hard it can damage a great deal of precious meat. Another option seemed intriguing to me, converting to bowhunting. As for becoming a vegetarian, I was determined to avoid that if at all possible.

Bowhunting wasn’t an easy choice for me given my well ingrained prejudices against it. I invested a lot of time researching how bowhunters go about the pursuit, and even more time dissecting hunting stories from the point of the shot to the recovery of the animal. Most of what I read provided very little helpful information. I watched several videos posted online, and most of that was initially useless as well.

As time went on and I read more and more about bowhunting, I realized two things started to become clearer. First, is that the guys shooting old wooden arrows with 2 blade heads seemed to get more consistent “pass through” shots leading to a faster death. Second, the guys shooting longbows and recurves sometimes shot animals and they didn’t seem to know they were hit. The more research I did on quiet “traditional” bows and heavy arrows with super sharp two blade heads, the more confident I became that this was the most ethical way to kill an animal. I purchased a longbow and began learning the skills needed to bowhunt ethically.

With my longbow I have shot through animals that didn’t know they were hit. More commonly, I see animals look at where the arrow hits the ground than towards me and the sound of my bowstring. My game recovery distance has averaged HALF of what my rifle shot animals ran with that big dose of adrenaline after the gunshot.

With my personal experiences over the past several years, I am now confident I made a great decision to become a bowhunter.  I believe that my bow and arrow are more humane than any slaughter house practices, or the bullet from a gun. This is why I am a bowhunter.

Philosophy part 1: Why I Hunt

Growing up, I hunted to help feed my family. If we didn’t catch fish or kill game there wasn’t enough money in the budget to buy much meat. There were many more deer and other species of big game animals within the borders of Montana than humans at that time, probably still true in spite of the population explosion of the 1990s and 2000s.

A deer tag was $8 and gas was around a dollar a gallon.  With a lucky trip a family might punch multiple tags on a single tank of gas. Here I am at twelve with a buck that dressed out over 200 pounds with a mature doe behind him.

buck

For $16 in tags plus $12 in gas we collected over 100 pounds of lean healthy all organic meat before noon that day. We also cast most of the bullets we’d shoot and all our fishing sinkers out of lead from the junk yard to cut down on expenses.

I was just thinking back as I’m writting this and I realized that this picture was taken just 3 weeks after the “Black Monday” stock market crash of 1987. Now I remember the big push to fill the freezer with deer and catch as many salmon as allowed to smoke for the winter.  A working class family in a hard economy is the reason I learned how to hunt, but I gave it up.

Some years later I had a career started, and with a little excess money in the paycheck, but no vacation time, it became far easier to buy meat at the store than to forage for it on the hoof. I only hunted one season between 1992 and 2010 because I simply didn’t NEED to. Even as I first became aware of the problems in our food system around 2008, it was easier to buy free ranging organic meat directly from a farmer than to endeavor to harvest wild game. I actually have no problem with this at all. Any consumer of meat who doesn’t hunt should go directly to the farm with the animals and talk to the farmers and look at the animals. If you want to eat meat and are opposed to hunting, this is what you should be doing. For many, many years I ate most vegetables from a CSA share, probably the best way to get organic GMO free vegetables.

Around this time, three things happened. These three things are the reason I chose to hunt.

First, I read Omnivore’s Dilemma. That really got my wheels turning. Next I read All Flesh Is Grass and I started studying integrative medicine and the benefits of wild meat over anything raised in a pen. I was well versed when Food Inc hit the stands in 2009. Getting really educated on the CFO feeding operations and slaughterhouse practices nearly drove me to being a vegan, but that isn’t my path.

Second event,this one a little more whimsical. A chef friend called me to his restaurant to eat some wild boar loin. It was some sort of special deal and they weren’t allowed to sell it or put it on the menu, but they could give it away (intended for management and staff.) I savored every morsel of the finest meat I’d ever eaten. To this day, it’s one of the greatest meals of my life. Many months later I got to enjoy wild boar shanks. I started searching for a way to buy wild hog meat and was crushed to find out that selling that meat was illegal. Realistically, the only way to get the meat was to kill the feral hogs for yourself.

Finally, I got cancer. Given all of my studies in the previous few years, I was quick to understand the link between our industrial food systems and the alarming rate of cancer occurrence in our country. Since I was already a Type 1 Diabetic, I felt that I was already living on borrowed time.

So nearly twenty years after I’d quit hunting out of financial necessity, I chose to start hunting out of moral necessity. In short

  • Concentrated Feedlot Operations are horrible, no animal should endure such a life as commercial meat business has standardized on.
  • I do believe I can kill an animal FAR more humanely than a industrial slaughterhouse.
  • Since I hunt only invasive/feral animals or “Least Concern” animals it means that I’m actually doing an important job in maintaining the balances in the herds of wild animals.
  • I have either personally eaten every pound of meat of every animal I’ve killed, or I have on occasion gifted it to people who wanted to eat it. More on this in an upcoming blog post.

Since I chose to eat meat, this is the most conscious and moral way of doing so that I can imagine. If I can think of a better way I will pursue that. Until that time, I will continue to harvest my own meat and process it myself.

As a final note, I’ve told vegan friends in the past that I admire their consciousness about our food systems and their extraordinary efforts in maintaining a healthy diet without animal protein. I still stand by that 100%. I think I have more in common with them than with anyone who unknowingly walks into a super market and buys ground beef wrapped in plastic.

This post might not be popular among hunting peers, but most of what the hunting media publishes isn’t popular with me.

String Trackers

tracker

Everything old is new again.

I never really thought much about string trackers until I read this hog hunting story from Jerry Russell. If you haven’t read the Story of Kong before, you should click that link right now!

After that there was a little stir on the forums and I watched a few videos Jerry put on youtube that I found this one in particular very informational and helpful. with getting setup and avoiding the basic mistakes people make with them.

Once a person understands the basics, then you need to get one. Since none of my longbows have a bushing in them, I need a Great Northern Traditional Gadget Adapter. I mount this right at the bottom of my rubber bow grip. Next I got The Tracker and several spare spools to test and hunt with. I have found that I prefer the 17# thread, I see no effect on arrow flight and it’s very abrasion resistant.

The coffee mug holds two spare spools and ensures they don’t get crushed in my hunting gear tote. VERY important you don’t smash down a spool as it will drastically and negatively effect arrow flight. Besides, can’t hurt to have an extra metal coffee mug on hand, right?

Now after I got setup with what I described above, Chad Orde of Drifter Traditional Archery created a very nice looking tracker for us trad hunters.I bought one as soon as he announced them. Compared to the old plastic style, here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros: looks great, doesn’t require a gadget adapter, very quiet, nice large opening with very smooth wood endcap, made in the USA by a fellow trad hunter.

Cons: I had a big storm open up on me and I was soaked in the rain. As the leather got wet it started to bend into my riser. Perhaps I had it strapped too tightly to my riser, but I was concerned about what point it might effect the drag on the string.

I still use both of them depending on what my mood is. If I think rain could come in I always go with the plastic one. I’ve recovered a few animals using them, and in one case I do believe it was the difference between meat spoilage and not. I am thankful for that string every time I cook up some of that boar!

Binoculars and Harnesses

optics

I’ve made some public posts and comments over the years and some of them I admit conflict with one another. Here is my setup as it stands in 2016.

On the left you will see a 6 year old pair of Leopold Yosemite 6×30 binoculars. You can also see they are pretty well beat to hell. I bought these for under $100 with the intent on banging them up and breaking them, then replacing them with another set. These I use exclusively for hog hunting where I’m scanning very short ranges and never in early or late light. I did try to replace them with a pair of Vortex Raptor 6x32s and I didn’t like them nearly as much. If I wanted to upgrade instead of replace, I’d be very tempted to contact Maven and have them ship me a demo unit of their B3 in 6×30. At $500 that’s a pretty big investment in a pair of beater compacts.

Above my cheap glass you will see the Cabelas Hybrid harness. Even with these light binoculars I wore that neck strap for one hunt and found myself with neck pains. I bought this harness and never had the problem again. I also like how it’s never gotten in the way of my bowstring under any situation. For an added bonus I got these out of the Bargain Cave for a steal of a price!

Now on the right side of that picture, there is a whole different setup that I do not use often. My Leica Trinovid 10×42 binoculars are the older generation but the glass is phenomenal! 10x is right at the top of what I can hand hold when buck fever is kicking in, and they are small and light enough to not be a hindrance like models with 50mm objective lenses. I was using these to size up pronghorn bucks at long distances on the prairie this season and found these very well suited for the job.

To protect the nice Leica glass, I invested in a great harness. I first looked at the Kuiu and it had some nice features but a few things I didn’t like. Next I checked out the Sitka Gear Bino Bivy which looked great, but I didn’t want the zipper. That was when I found FHF Gear and I bought that one. I really like that the harness is fully connected all the time and the binoculars have separate webbing going to them and that everything is very adjustable. I also like the simple closeure system and that there are some pockets on the flap, sides, and under the flap for different small items like calls, a lens cloth, etc.  I actually spent more on this harness than I did on both my cheap binoculars and my cheap harness, but I’m very happy to have made the investment to protect my quality glass.

I hope this clarifies any old comments on old forums or websites that might still be floating around.