Tag: Hunting

BAREBOW! book review

barebowcover

Dennis Dunn must be quite the character, I should surely like to meet him someday. Dennis is one of the very few people to take all of the North American big game animals with a bow and arrow. The title of the book reflects that he did not use sights or a release even with the animals he did harvest with a compound bow.

This book is awesome! There is a nice bit of an intro to address the audience of non-hunters and I think every bowhunter should read it word for word, probably twice. There are many fantastic quotes and illustrations throughout the book, many of my favorites from Jose Ortega Y Gasset. I’ve got to get Meditations on Hunting onto my reading list.

Once you get through the warmup, each species gets it’s own section. They all start with a description of the animal, information about their behaviors and environment and other interesting facts. These offer a great primer to understand the locations, conditions, and why certain methods of pursuit might be more effective for a bowhunter. After spending a few pages getting to know the species, Dennis starts telling the tales of his pursuit of each species in chronological order.  Some of these pursuits are very short where success was achieved quickly. Other stories sound much more like my own where several trips are made before he’s able to harvest the animal he was seeking.

Taking a moment here, I think everyone who is new to bowhunting should read at least one of these volumes to appreciate that even a very accomplished bowhunter might take two or three long hunting trips over the course of several seasons in order to harvest an animal. This is the reality of hunting free ranging wild animals. I think many hunters today have watched a few too many TV shows where they need to punch 3 tags in 22 minutes of airtime.

Some of his stories are really incredible! Hazards of mountain weather, bush plane travel, dangerous animals, and troublesome hunting laws are well chronicled. There is a chapter in this book for every hunter, and if you are a generalist, you probably have several. After reading the entire thing end to end, I realized that I’d really like to hunt mountain goats at least once even if not successful, but I don’t ever need to put in for a sheep draw. Moose has gone WAY up my list, while muskox has completely fallen off. Reading about all species at one time really let me sort out which things I want to double my focus on, and what I can ignore all together.

After closing up all the 29 species, there is a bunch of really good advice for bowhunters. A lot about picking outfitters and interviewing guides. Some very practical advice about how to go about the Super Slam if you intend to.

All in all, part of me wishes this was the first bowhunting book I’d read. If I had 5 starts to give, it would get all 5 stars. Totally a winner.

While I purchased all volumes separately on my Kindle, I wish I would have bought this in hard copy available on his website. There is so much referenceable information in this book I’m still considering buying a hard copy inspite of the price and having already paid for all the electronic versions.

Two Knife System

After years of carrying a combination of fixed blades and sharpeners, I’m changing up my approach a little this season.

Last year a successful hunter and I hung his hog in the skinning shed and we broke out our knives to skin, quarter, and pack his meat for the road. I was using a much beloved custom knife for my parts, he used this little scalpel handle with replaceable blades.

piranta

I’d seen these before, but I’d never used one. He put a fresh blade on that thing and I was very impressed by seeing how sharp it was and how well it held that edge over the course of the entirety of the process. I appreciated how the tiny blade helped in freeing up things in tight spaces.

The following Monday I bought one of my own, and just two weeks later I got to use it to dress and butcher a few hogs. One benefit I really liked was putting on one blade to do the dressing and skinning, then putting a fresh blade on for butchering. I purchased a 100 pack of blades on Amazon so my cost per blade is only about thirty cents.

I see only 3 “cons” to this system. First, those blades are so crazy sharp a guy could cut himself up pretty good and not know it. Second, those blades are so sharp that even a tiny slip will cut easily through a hide during skinning. Finally, the folding system can get bits of meat and debris in it that you need to clean out. For that last piece I also ordered a Havalon #8 Handle which is a solid handle for the same blades. This is what I do my basic caping and skull work with.

The other half of my two knife system is my multi-tool.

rebar

I recently sold my Juice, my Wingman, and my Skeletool and purchased a Rebar. It is bigger and heavier than any of my previous tools, but it eliminates a few other items so I believe it to be worth the weight.

So if my Havalon only comes out for game processing, this is going to be 100% of the rest of the time. Here is how I came to chose the Rebar and found myself paying for yet another Leatherman:

Pliars – required to change blades safely on Havalon. One million other uses too.

Saw – pelvic and breast bones in a pinch.

File – retouch a broadhead if needed out of camp.

Blade – “rope and cheese” as Steve Rinella would say.

Serrated blade – I actually had a main blade snap off one of my old multi-tools, it had a serrated blade I used as a backup until I could get a replacement. Glad to have a second blade on this one.

Everything else – nice mix of wire cutters, screwdrivers, awl, etc.

This is the best Leatherman I’ve owned (going back to the early 90s) and I’ve very happy with it after it’s first two hunting trips.

So there you have my Two Knife System as it lives in my backpack. I have some other fixed blades in heavy butchering kit that I really like, but I will save that for another post.

Black Eagle Arrows

VintageAndMagnus

When I restarted my archery journey as a man, I went immediately to the aluminum arrows I was accustomed to as a boy. I think that xx75s, xx78s and Legacy shafts are a great way to learn a lot about arrow building and tuning, and I’m glad for all of the arrows I built, shot, lost, and broke. The experience and knowledge gained was invaluable!

After a few years of that, as I was ready to really set my sights on hunting. I went back and forth on carbon as an arrow material for quite a while, but eventually I did build a few dozen. Augmenting what I knew with what I learned, I found the material to be superior to aluminum for my hunting needs. The only problem I had with carbon was that the shafts were so expensive! The shafts I was using where $15 per shaft at the local pro shop.

When Simply Traditional started carrying Black Eagle I had the opportunity to shoot some of the first two sets that came in.  I spent some time shooting the Carnivores as well as the Zombie Slayers. They both made fine arrows, but I wasn’t drawn to change my setup for either of those shaft materials based on performance or savings.

A short time later the Outlaws were announced. They were much cheaper for bare shaft purchases, and they held an even lighter Grain-Per-Inch than the previous models at .300 spine. Since I am a believer in high FOC I want my shafts well below 10 GPI and these came in at 9.1 GPI. I bought several dozen Outlaw shafts for different bows in different spines and found that I loved them in every application. At this point I converted entirely to Black Eagle Outlaws. At $70 per dozen I was getting 3x as many shafts as the one’s I’d been buying at the local pro shop.

When the much anticipated Vintage shafts came out I purchased a dozen of them as well. These are very much like the other Black Eagle shafts, ut they have a very nice wood grain look to them which is why I picked them for the picture above. They are advertised down to .350 spine, which is what I ordered. They came at 34″ total length which I thought was awesome, but I had to keep cutting them shorter and shorter to compensate for the weaker spine compared to my .300 Outlaws. In the end I needed to remove 150 grains of tip weight to get the Vintage flying right on my test bow and that created an arrow too light for my preferred hunting setup. IF I had a draw over 31 inches, you can bet this would be my go-to shaft!

I will say that all the other Black Eagle shafts hold tighter tolerances than the Outlaws. Outlaws are to a tolerance of .006 and all the other Black Eagles are about twice as good, or even better. Those are tolerances that I could never observe an effect from shooting a glove, finger release, from a stickbow. I’ve very grateful that Black Eagle provides what I believe to be the perfect shaft option for me to build extremely high FOC arrows, at reasonable tolerances, for an incredible price. I intend to shoot .300 spine Outlaws for the foreseeable future.

Freedom To Bowhunt

It was a hot summer night, but I was lucky enough to spend part of my “off season” in a treestand hunting hogs on Independence Day 2016. I wrote quite a bit in my field journal about liberty before this hog came down the trail. My campfire/philosophy story turned into a hunting story in the matter of short minutes. The related article has been written, but is not yet published.

Bucket List Hunts

Reading Dennis Dunn’s books about the North American Super Slam has left my head swimming! I do not intend to pursue any of the “slams”, but I should organize my thoughts a little. This journal page seems like a good place to put it.

Booked:

  • Ontario moose and black bear combo 2022

Planning:

  • Montana elk 2021 – tag draw?
  • Africa bush pig 2021
  • Argentina hog 2021/22
  • Wyoming elk 2023
  • New Zealand 2022?
  • Hog trips in Europe, and Asia

Done since I started this blog post:

  • Texas aoudad, deer, hog 2020 – DONE!
  • Georgia hog 2020 – DONE!
  • Australia buffalo, scrub bulls, hogs 2019 – DONE!
  • South Carolina hog 2019 – DONE!
  • Oklahoma hog 2019 – DONE!
  • Michigan fall black bear 2018 – DONE!
  • Wyoming mule deer 2018 – DONE!
  • Africa buffalo hunt 2018 – DONE!
  • Africa plains game 2018 – DONE!
  • South Carolina hog 2018 – DONE!
  • South Africa buffalo and plains game 2017 – DONE!
  • South Carolina hog 2017 – DONE!
  • Wyoming pronghorn 2016 – DONE!

Then the ones I need to figure out a little better:

  • American buffalo; where, when?
  • Caribou; what type, where, when?
  • Mountain goat; draw potential, where, when?
  • Something in Europe? Hogs in Hungary or caribou up North?