Episode #8: The Inevitable Paradigm of The Hunt

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery, brought to you by Primitive Stone Archery and the founder Grant Richardson. Welcome, welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery. My name is Grant Richardson. I'm the owner and founder of Primitive Stone Archery and the Arches Trinity Shooting Method. This is the eighth episode in our Lessons Learned podcast entitled The Inevitable Paradigm of the Hunt Loss. I'm drawn to the wild as many folks are, inexorably as much as I'm drawn to hunting the hard way. The inevitable connection it brings to us is we're drawn one step closer to a simpler time in our chaotic patterns as humans, I believe, is one of the primary drivers for this. Hunting with a stick and string does that, it restricts us ethically to hunt close and at the same time lets the ego check ourselves and frees us of the restraints of everyday society. If we're allowed to slip off the collar, and we run free, so to speak. I've personally found nothing brings me to the present as much as hunting traditionally does in making me feel connected to my ancestry and the wild part of who I truly am. I've always been more at home in the trees, swamps, and rivers of my life than I've ever been in the concrete and paved cities we've erected. That's not to say the comforts of home aren't appreciated, and I strongly believe people would truly appreciate the things they did have and not what they did not have quite a bit more if they spent some time in the forests of their own areas. Venturing out and experiencing some discomfort for even a limited time would give them some perspective many could use these days. There's a part of hunting, a piece of the path and process that little is spoken about. It is synonymous with hunting of all types, and yet it is for me I find the acute part of hunting with a stick bow that forces being ethical and discerning of my hunting shots on game. Anyone young or old that is hunted has felt what I'm speaking of, and the subject that needs more light shed on it than darkness, the loss of a game animal that is not recovered. Almost all hunting shows and videos out there show some success and less ability in the hard part of the process that may not seem as heroic or glamorous for the show or the viewer, or the sponsors for that matter. And it does not matter if that loss is from a poor hit, poor shooting, or poor tracking ability, or any of the other anomalies that can and do happen when hunting. If you hunt, it will happen. You will lose game, and I dare say it will affect you in one way or another. It is the truth. And coming to terms with this, and more importantly, how to mitigate these issues should be at the forefront of everyone's not an afterthought. I taught the archery and bow hunting portion of the hunter safety course when I was in my late teens into my twenties. During that time, both on the in-class portions and range demos we did, I emphasized that the bow was a close range weapon. It always fascinated people to learn about archery hunting and the process it took to be proficient with a bow. However, as I've said prior, these days we are moving farther away in the shot and distance game with bow hunting in general and technology. And in doing so, we move farther away from ethics. Coming to terms with all this is not easy for some, and for good reason. I feel loss as well as unparalleled appreciation when I'm successful in arrowing game, but I have also felt the gut-retching sickness when the realization hits me that I'm not likely going to recover the animal I've just taken a shot at. Indeed, those early year hunter safety courses I assisted in were the very best platform of the time to make people very aware acutely of the importance of ethical shot distance and placement. Nowadays, everywhere you turn, there's a new show out featuring 70, 80, and 100 yard shots on game. Frontal shots, all vetted and justified, of course, because someone else did it. And if, you know, if we did it on the 3D range, then it must be doable in real time. Sadly, it's what we are not seeing as much as what we are not talking about in the loss of the game we pursue. And those hero shows do not show the misses or the poorer shots taken all in the name of entertainment. Hey, I get it. You know, they need to sell to make money, tech sells, new product sells, and frankly, I've said it before, I don't give a good goddamn what anyone hunts with as long as they stay within the boundaries of their equipment and remain ethical. These days, the simple switch needs to be thrown back to what the original archery or in some cases primitive weapon seasons were really meant for. Hunting with a weapon that required skill, time, and patience, and the ability to get close. In other words, it was harder. It was understood that it was harder, and the difficulty was born in appreciation for the process of being a good archer and hunter, and thus a bow hunter. The synthesis of the two was born. I always like to tell people when I coach them that stick bow hunting is, you know, one 50% effective shooting and 50% effective hunting skills with some luck sprinkled on top. This podcast is about difficulty, the work, and unfortunately the loss that at times can accompany being a hunter. I'd gotten up late, working the night before until 1 AM hadn't helped, and I rushed out to get out the door and into the truck to the back of my folks' property where I was deer hunting the archery only season. It was almost a half hour after sunrise, and I was worried it was nearly the end of the pre-rut, and I knew the deer would be moving. I passed up shots at two different bucks in a large solo dough two days prior as they ran by me at full pelt. The chase was full on, and I was situated on the west side of a dense cedar swamp and blow down that was a regular travel corridor and convergence trail in between a large bedding and feeding area. I had decided and opted not to take the normal route to my stand, concerned I would be walking right into the feeding area and spooking any deer already moving through the transition area. I walked the shorter route around the edge of an old sandpit area that had once been used to hold lumber for an old skid system when the access roads were being built hundreds years prior. A grouse strutted along the edge just a few feet away from me, a large adult male with a solid tail fan and large black ruffs, and I paused with them both, half raised. But my mind wasn't on grouse that morning. My eyes were staring at a massive rub on a pine tree that had been rubbed clear of all the bark on one side for almost two feet clear. The rub was very fresh, maybe only a few hours old, and pine tar was slowly beginning to run out of several large gouges as a result of the buck's brow tines raking the young tree far past the armor of its bark. I stopped and knelt, looking down at the ground, at the large hoof prints in the mud and sand, and kicked up moss from where the buck had turned and continued to the lip of the berm, where I intended to cross to where my stand was located. The wind was light, but in my favor, and blowing across the old pond now more of an overgrown meadow, with only a small bit of water at the south end. The buck's tracks were deep and stood out even on the worn game trail I was walking next to. The grouse had had enough and burst from its walk, flying into a nearby birch tree, staring arrogantly at me with its crest up like a king disturbed from his early morning garden walk. It woke me from my trance, staring at the tracks, and looking back at the pine tree nervously and concerned I'd fouled things up, waking up late, fumbling my way into the stand that day. The woods were quiet, however. It had rained the night prior, and the crisp leaves that had come down from the week before were like a wet carpet to walk into that day. My wine went back to the day I had picked this tree, which, by many others' opinions, would be have been way too low to the ground, maybe eleven feet in total height. This tree stand covered a wide convergence of three trails and was close to bedding areas and feeding areas, and deer can transition in between either. The wind was normally prevailing southeast, and this was beneficial since even with the evening thermal winds it blew my scent away from the bedding areas and across the trail into the roadway, where I entered and parked almost a mile and a half away. The September day had started bright and sunny while I walk swatted away black flies lugging in the old portable tree stand, and I picked the tree and old Birch split perfectly into two main branches wide enough to provide good back cover for me. I had to clear little for shooting lanes that day. I guessed the trails would only be around fourteen to twenty feet away from the tree and well within my effective range with the recurve I'd been shooting. It gave me time to hear and see deer coming down any of the main trails. I'd stood up on the stand, shot a few arrows at stumps and leaves that littered the ground up and down the trail as my springer spaniel ran around chasing rabbits and juvenile wood ducks off the pond nearby, and having to recall her stout little rough coat back several times as she drove the area with gusto. However, on this day I'd amused the rabbits and fowl were free to go about their business, unimpeded by her pursuits as she was at home, waiting for me to return to show her displeasure and not being able to tag along. I made my way to the tree, walking through a mess of small pines, slapping my face as a wolf in and around them avoiding the main run, and tried to peer at it to see if the same tracks from the rub pine had gone down the path past the stand. I hooked my bow onto the rope that I had twined around the base of the tree and climbed up like a giant insect latching my safety belt around my waist. I grabbed the bow rope and hauled the recurve up the tree. I knocked an arrow, then looked around at the main trail. The wind picked up and began to blow across to the front and concerned me a little. Either way I thought to myself, I'm out, I might as well make the best of it. I sat for the entire day. I'd brought a granola bar, that was it, and having raised the ire of the local red squirrel population, my youngest calling them furry rattlers after their chiding barks with the movement I'd made, digging the bar out of my pocket, I settled in after checking the safety belt again. It always seems to be something of a miracle when a deer appears when one is hunting big words or swamp whitetails, especially where our population is around between eight to ten deer per square mile and spread out. They're not there suddenly, and then all of a sudden poof they appear. And that's exactly what happened. I've been watching the skies grow grey. I thought rain? No. The sun still hung low and the clouds were framed against the pines to my east when a buck appeared from a thicket. I had not expected a deer to come out of. One minute he was there, about twenty yards to my front and walking in. It was a respectable eight point, and I'm not an antler hunter by any means, and would gladly have taken a dough, because you just can't eat horns as my grandfather used to say. But hey, I love seeing them too, but I love eating venison far more than I like eating antlers. You can't roast antlers, my grandfather would say, always remember that. And this guy would do nicely, I thought. Besides, if over at my hunting career I'd waited for the biggest rack deer to walk by, I'd likely have rarely tasted venison. Our whitetail population is around, like I said, six to ten deer per square mile, and does have higher densities in some areas, but our herd in Ontario is roughly under half of what Michigan has in population numbers, for example. The balk ambled into an area. Checking his back trail frequently and staying in the tight cover, the wind was good, but blowing slowly and steadily out of the north now. I focused on the crease of his shoulder three quarters of the way down and watched him intently as he walked closer. It was now or never I thought, and I stood very slowly. I was sitting in that old tree on a portable stand a buddy had given me. It wasn't a large platform, but it was easy to toss into a tree in a hurry and weighed very little. I managed to sit slowly shift and get into a good position. I turned, brought the bow up, and began to bend at the waist, leaning out and waiting for several minutes until the deer began to give the shot I wanted, quartering and turning to his right. He was around over twenty yards out and well within my effective lethal range when I shot. And the arrow flew well until it reached him, but appeared to kick a little high as if it hit something in front of him. The arrow did take him, and he ran scrambling away, not stopping for anything. I sat down and took a deep breath, focused on a tree where the buck had disappeared. The shot had looked good, I thought. No problem, I said to myself. I'll get down in thirty minutes and look. I, even at that time, was sure of where the arrow had gone, but I had this feeling. I did not like the way the arrow had kicked prior to reaching him. It had hit something. But I tried to ignore that and stood looking for the arrow. I unhooked my hull rope and realized I left my larger pack in the truck, the tracking pack I used, with my main light, when I walked in, stuffing my license tag and wallet into my smaller fanny pack. As I began to climb down, the wind picked up, blowing from the direction the deer had vaulted from. With my feet back now on terra firma, I looked over at the spot where the shot had happened. I could see it plainly from the ground now, almost invisible from my perch. But nonetheless it was there, almost like it had grown in front of me while I sat in the tree. A small contorted swamp maple around a meter high, maybe less. I walked up. It was plain to see the mark on the top branch, around a quarter of an inch thick, was cut and hanging, sliced by my broadhead en route to the whitetail only a short time ago. The arrow was nowhere to be seen. I stopped and marked the little tree, no more than a sprig coming out of the ground, and cursed myself for not clearing it from that direction. But it was too late now. I unhooked my haul rope and realized I left my larger pack in the truck again. Taking care not to make too much noise, I walked back to the truck, grabbed my bowcase and the pack, and made my way back. I'm be up front, but like to say I recovered that animal, but sadly I did not, and several plac factors played a part in not finding him in a timely manner that ended up being the perfect storm. I made some mistakes that day which I've never made since. And they've tempered my ability both as a hunter and as a tracker. The area in which I was hunting was a part of a larger swamp system, simply known as the Long Swamp. It was one time part of a larger river system long before settlers had tread on this part of the earth I was hunting on, and it was still massive in size, now reduced to a long, winding, extended swamp of blowdowns, beaver dams, with a small creek running right through the middle. Movement in its inaccordance was treacherous. It was full of deadheads and partially dried up beaver ponds and four foot deep muck. I'd had hunted its fringes for years with some success as the deer loved the cover and food it provided, but the inner breaks where I was on that day challenged the hunter and me. I returned with my tracking pack and light and searched for the arrow. After almost twenty minutes and finding nothing but some gray hair at the shot site, I opted to head to the last location I'd seen the deer. The old birch was weathered. It stood there where I'd last seen the buck, running as if he ran headlong past it. It began to perish some years earlier, but was still hanging on to life in its upper branches, its maid trunk hollowed by weather and insects up higher, only now a nesting spot for a Merlin over the past decade. My father had sat in the trees years earlier prior to the onset of its demise, and I recalled coming to meet him one evening when I was much younger when he'd arrowed a large dough with his American semi longbow, a time when the area was still open and much more navigable, and I stood now under the same tree. The area changed drastically since an ice storm had ravaged the years prior, and I saw the shaft just beyond its falling bark. The arrow lying on the ground, its autumn orn shafts dark against the olive greens and browns of the swamp floor. I walked over and studied the blood and hair on the shaft. I had hit the deer I thought, but the blood was darker than I wanted, and there was no sign of bubbles or oxygenated blood. The hair was a lighter brown than I would like to have seen as well. I'd gone now a hundred yards or so by this point, and although I had some blood, the distance between the sign was six to eight feet, and I knew that the deer had been running all out and directly into the tall grasses and buckthorn choking tangles of the middle of the old swamp. Two hours had now passed since the shot, and I was about to call it quits and back out. I'd been on my hands and knees due to the brush, when a croaking caught my ears, the wind picked up, and I looked skyward, the sun setting. Two ravens looking more like black flying triangles against the dark grey backdrop of nimbus formations as if beckoning me to retire, flying prognosticators of what was about to befall me. As her croaking drew distance, drops of rain touched my bow hand, and I looked into the sky and began to pray it wouldn't rain any heavier. Rain. There was no rain today, I thought, not until tomorrow, which is wide gone out for the afternoon, not the following day. By that time I surmised the deer was long expired, if indeed the arrow had gone where I thought it had, and darkness was falling. I spent another hour looking for any sign after it had begun to rain. I was frustrated and concerned, and that gut wrenching feeling began in my stomach. I stopped, turned off my flashlight, and knelt next to a large stump. I collected my thoughts. What to do? I had no assistance at the time. It was dark and raining steadily now. Pack up, come back in the morning I rationalized. Opted to back out lest I ruin any more sign and at that rate was stumble by the deer in the dark and not see it. That's when I heard them off to my right, maybe less than eighty yards northwest as I was exiting the last thicket before hitting the old tote trail. Now quite some distance away from where I'd originally made the shot. Their mournful yelps and yippings soon turned to howls and barking, and the cedar canopy above me was swaying back and forth through their cries. I knew a pack of coyotes the locals called brushwolves had been south of me a couple of kilometers away that year. I heard them yelling at the train off the highway at dark several times that fall. All genetic dispositions aside, those dogs were far better than I at tracking, and my concern grew even more. I managed to get back head to my truck. I went home and didn't sleep much that night. I was back out at first light. The sun slowly rising created shadows of greens and browns washing over the air that was now dripping wet from the downpour only hours ago. The next day I searched again and found no blood, any evidence washed away. I did have a direction of travel, however, and opted to locate his tracks and find him that way. The meat should be fine. It was cold the night before. I tried to remain optimistic, but it was not to be. I spent the entire day looking until dark. And the next morning, all afternoon, to no avail. I crawled and crept as I pushed through a tangle of wet and dried swamp covered in buckthorn and bought blowdowns. I even tried grid method of searching and still nothing. Disheartened I walked back to the truck to contemplate the events. The season was not over, but the for the next week I would not feel like hunting. Later that afternoon a landowner out mowing on the property next door had found what remained of him. He had made it almost two hundred and fifty yards from where I had last made the shot before expiring, and he was picked clean by the coyotes. I gave the antlers to the farmer and called the provincial conservation officer as well to let him know what had happened. He was frankly surprised I'd looked for him for two and a half days. Then before packing it in, I attempted to retrace the path the buck had taken from where the shot was made, and in doing so appeared he had gone to bed down. He was almost maybe eighty yards from where I'd lost the last blood trail and had turned still running flat out of that point. It was evident the oats were hot on his heels. He had not bedded down once from any sign I found for more than maybe a few minutes, except for a smear blood on a tree I found no other trace. I had estimated he'd covered that ground in that mess and turned when the oats got onto him suddenly, and dead as death run into the open area under the property I hunted next to, but didn't have permission to hunt. All in all, it wouldn't have taken him longer than a few minutes to cover that distance at a dead run. I hunted the remainder of that season and passed on two other bucks a little out of my comfort zone with distance and the fact they were walking fast out past thirty five yards or so, and I wasn't about to poke out that far at that point. The importance of that experience should not be lost and discarded by anyone hunting. If anything, the learning curve should jump, and efforts should be made to assess what happened and what was under the realm of control and what was not. This was the first, not the last animal I would probably lose, I thought to myself that day. And with any weapons platform and anyone who hunts for any length of time, it will happen. It had been lost to a combination of factors, some under my control and others not. Shot deflection. I had not seen the small yearling tree three yards in front of the animal. It was enough to not stop but deflect the arrow farther back and higher than I had intended. Weather effects, another common issue. He had gone a couple hundred yards plus at a dead run after he'd been hit. In an open cover and field, I may have even seen him drop, and tracking would have been much faster as well, especially had it not rained. No matter what the forecast says, measure your hunting by this with your terrain and know the areas best you can. Knowledge of the terrain is key to being a good tracker. Had I known it was going to rain steadily, I may not have even hunted that area and opted for a more open stand setup or waited for the rain to let up and hunt later that week altogether. Weather and terrain again should be a focus of pre hunt tactics and strategy. I do not hunt that swamp now until the snow flies, and have since taken several deer from its jungle the past several years. It's easier to hunt on that mess and pattern than deer with the snow on the ground, and I've learned to set up on the brakes and edges as well from that issue all those years ago. Use mapping apps and weather updates. Check the temperature for drops in pressure that can trigger precipitation. Ensure you're prepared to track with the tools necessary to do so. I found this topic that most hunters of any stripe traditional compound, cross gun, firearm do not speak of much. And, you know, if any, tell many folks, if anyone, that it happens. The problem is that all hunters, humans, raptors, canids, bear, even big cats like cougars and lions wound and lose prey that will eventually expire. We are apex predators. And I dare say we can learn much to assess our abilities as hunters best by keeping our ego in check and staying within the reasonable limits of the fish and wildlife laws and our equipment's capabilities. I was recently bombed verbally for criticizing a person's black bear hunt on social media in the States. Why? I was referring to the chosen shot placement with his compound on a black bear practically facing frontal, maybe slightly quartering to the right. Did the bear expire? Sure. Did the fellow make a once-in-a-lifetime shot? Yes, 100% he did. But due to the shot placement, he didn't get a pass through. And had a poor shot been made, it would have been a terrible blood trail. The risk was much higher with that shot presentation. There seems to be a cannot let it get away attitude with many these days when it's questioned why they took the shot, did not wait for a better angle. And my comments got bombed as long as my query did, is if all hunting itself was being attacked. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone pertaining to the bear and the shot that was made from that fella, it regardless of the equipment, understands anatomy, knows damn well how much bone and cartilage and muscle you need to get through with the small window he had to thread an arrow into that animal. Ethics and hunting is not just about you. Full stop. It's about the animals well. Now hear me out. I'm speaking from experience here. I've tracked and recovered and lost a few of my own animals, admittedly, over the past 38 plus years. I've also tracked and recovered others' animals from other hunters for them for almost those 40 plus years as well, before I was even hunting. And I've taught quite a few folks both what I was taught as a youth by my own family heritage and what I've learned along the way as well. And my intent here is not to lecture, far from it, but stop and think for a minute about the whole process of what we're doing. The base intent for myself personally is to provide food for my family that is free range, free of antibiotics and other chemicals used for large animal production. The animal I'm hunting has a life. It's not caged, it's not fed growth hormones to grow faster and fatter. No. It is wild. And for as long as humanoids have been walking the earth, they've been hunted. We coexist and have a relationship that stretches back long before big box stores and lineups at the supermarket. That relationship has faded, you know, and is fading arguably as a species, I dare say has made us weaker and reliant on grocery stores for food consumption. And I understand the process it all brings to us or what is necessary and needed in an economy. But I firmly believe that making that connection even once in a while brings us much closer to who we really are as humans and increases our need to protect the wild places we still have left and the animals and fauna that live there. The relationship through bowing depends on me solely and my decision to release that arrow as efficiently as possible within my effective lethal range. And okay, you've heard me go off about that term in the past, but what does it mean? I dare to capitulate. Despite the obvious connotations, it has to do with both the mentality and intent, as well as finding the spatial relationship between you and an animal that you intend to shoot at, where you're absolutely without a doubt effective at placing that arrow where it needs to go. There is no I think I can, no hesitation, no doubt, no struggle stick, nothing but lethal intent. You owe it to the animal. You've trained, practiced, individualized, functionalized, and maintained your shooting ability with whatever platform you choose, and only you know what range is where you can put it into that animal. The arrow that is to ensure the best of your ability, it goes there. That mentality has zero struggle stick thoughts. Missing does not come into play, neither does any apprehension of the weapon. In my case, a stick bow, a recurve to be exact, and its ability to send a vorpal, and I mean vorpal tip shaft to its intended target with lethal results. Because what's on the end of the arrow is what does the job. An arrow does not kill by hadrostatic shock like a bullet. It needs to cut, penetrate, and sever arteries and vitals. Anything less in your intention is not going to cut it part in the pun. Your focus should always be that of a hunter that wants to ensure the game you pull the string on is put down fast and as lethally and humanely as possible. That mental game needs to be as sharp as the arrowhead on your shaft. Now stop for a minute. Let's talk about that because we all don't want the game we pursue to suffer. But as good hunters, we must come to terms with the fact that we will lose it. The anomalies and outliers in hunting happen. It's not absent from the process in any way. It is the ultimate test of your mental ethics game and should be the major driver behind getting as good as you can and staying razor sharp all year round, not just when the season is firing up. Good shooting ability with your equipment should be a primary. And the vehicle for that is to reduce the chance of wounding game. There should be no doubts, no hesitating, no excuses. If you're lazy your shot, we'll be lazy. If you're not confident, it will come out. If you're tired, it will show in your shooting. If you're awake and aware, your shooting will be as well. Pressure, flight time, consistency. None of these principles are about ego or machismo. Far from that, it comes from a part of us that has embedded us and into our DNA as humans and connected to empathy and the ability to have control over the decisions we make. Our intent is to be efficient and make that decision to be nothing less than the effective hunters we all are. It can be prudent and focused intent. To reduce the ones to prevent you from recovering that animal, we'll cover just a few I've come across. And distance is the one factor we can control. And I've seen folks, you know, that were XYZ away from that animal and it was way off. When the adrenaline starts pumping, your brain starts to go on autopilot. And unless we train ourselves to go through an OODA loop and relate our archery shooting to that, we will not control ourselves as efficiently. In other words, when we're reacting to a high stress stimulus, we all go through this. Observe, orient, decide, act. Slowing that process down, taking control through our various sensor, stressor, and pressure shooting abilities will help. And a good dose of experience will help most of all. It's simple. The farther away from an animal you are, the higher risk you are at something happening beyond your control. The animal changes direction, it moves slightly, another animal gets in the way. Suffice to say, and I've said it before, the farther away you move in shot presentation, the further away you move in ethics. And no, you know, because the hero of the hunting show did it, does not mean everyone can either. It's TV, it's a medium. It happens for a reason, it needs to sell. The medium is what it is, and I cringe when I see this happening, and you see it too, and it plants that seed that they too can make the shot. And it's less about reality. In essence, bows are not high velocity weapons. They're not rifles. And bragging about that elk you took at 80 yards is talking about a chance shot, not a sure thing. Anything less, and you're doing the art of bow hunting and the animal, more importantly, a disservice, and it shows a lack of respect. In any case, you're leaving your shot open to anomalies outside the realm of consistency on live game. 3D is one thing, but again, foam does not move. Penetration is key, and all boners should be looking for a shot that gets the best double penetration in one side and out the other, to be blunt, a better blood trail. This is one of the many reasons I'm dead against frontal or front quartering shots. I've seen more animals lost to these shots than any other. The very reasons these weapon seasons were formed for extending our tree were only due to be bone hunting was much harder. Being a good bow hunter, not just a good shooter. And yes, there's a difference. Do your homework on anatomical research on the species you're hunting. Bone is a problem no matter what weight or front of center you have on that arrow. Take the time to look at vital charge and watch real live deer. Get used to their movements when they're relaxed, spooky, and alert. This goes for any animal species. And broadheads, I've seen many MLs taken with different heads and different hits. And I've got to say, arguably, caught on contact is the way to go, no matter what you say. For what I teach, it's the only way. I'm not going to debate mechanicals, but generally I've seen both poor penetration and blade failure from hitting bone contact. I just, I have. It's just there, it's evident, which is something that can and will happen. Go with a good caught on contact head that will sharpen well and that flies off your setup. For new folks, I highly recommend a three-blade head. They've got a tri-cutting surface that leaves good entries and exits, good dynamic wound channels, and they're easier, in my opinion, to sharpen. Arrow flight equals good placement and penetration. Ensure that you're getting that off your setup with your broadheads, not just the same weight field points. And animal behavior and clearance are factors, of course. And I can say I've had an Anywhalt's bowl and it has had a branch or tree jump into the path of your arrow knows this. If I'm setting up, I'm very careful to ensure I've got clearly defined shooting lanes and I know my arcs and stay within those arcs. And finally, stay within the laws set forth by your province or state. This may seem obvious, and I'm not arguing the efficiency of anyone's setup or equipment by any means. But by diverting from those laws, you paint all bow hunters in a bad light. A sharp broadhead well placed off a decent weight hunting bow will take most big game with a well-placed arrow. Angle matters, tree stand shots overall produce better trails since you've got a downward exit wound. Again, the issues lie with those pesky anomalies, animal movement and bone, and again, the ability to make sure the animal expires quickly. Mitigate those anomalies with patience and good control and only take shots you are 100% confident in. Get used to tracking, go slow. And I'll say when you're on the trail and you've got any doubt at all, back out, get some help. And no tracking job is the same ever. I encourage folks as well for those anomaly tracking problems to find someone who has a tracking dog ahead of hunting season if your area does allow it legally. And on Ontario, we're allowed to have a dog track wounded game as long as it's under control and has to meet a minimum leash requirement as well. Check your local game laws for further information. I've trained two of our wimes to track deer, and on three occasions due to weather, we've recovered animals that possibly could have been lost. And finally, when it comes to your shooting, use a consistent method. I don't care how you're shooting. Just do it so you're burning those patterns into your neurological pathways. When the adrenaline hits and you're prepping for your shot, you'll be ready. The question is about pressure and how you're trained in shooting and your experience will handle it. And look, when hunting, even you're exposed to your elements, you know, no and such. No shot is a cold shot. In other words, your blood and heart rate's gonna go up, your adrenaline gans are gonna go, and you'll be getting warmed up. Take your time, don't rip the string back and know your limits. And guess what? But maybe, you know, maybe it doesn't work out. You don't get the shot. Better luck next time. Subjectively assessing what occurred is not dwelling in the loss, but learning from it will also help to prevent it from happening again and make you a much more effective and ethical hunter. It gives honor to the process and the animal's life. And that is why it's called hunting, not shooting. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the positive feedback we've been getting from folks all over the world. This confirms for us the intent we have on our platform message based on the three pillars of the code of traditional archery: weapon proficiency with a stick bow, ethics to guide us on our collective journey, and the conservation and stewardship in order to protect the wildlife woods, fields, and waterways we hunt as our themes are resonating. We're often asked about custom bowers, so we'll be shedding some light on some grassroots people making bows. And if you're looking for a handcrafted longbow, look no further than Riverbend Longbows. Check them out on Instagram, Ray makes a longbow that is a truly functional work of art. For self bows, check out Peter Graydon of Heritage Bows out of Vancouver, who makes some uniquely powerful self bows. For custom wood arrows, check out Stumpstalker.c out of BC Canada. Blaine makes some custom wood arrows that are second to none. And if you haven't already, I encourage you to check out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, a great organization that ensures the traditions of bow hunting with the stick and string is alive and well, not only now, but for generations to come. And we've had quite a few questions about getting started off in the right direction with traditional archery. And as a thank you, we are giving all of our podcasts, all of our podcast followers access to our Hunt Ready membership platform, which includes weekly coach calls, webinars, and access to our rapid entry into traditional archery course. To register, you can find the link in our comments on the podcast page. Thanks again for listening in. We encourage you to immerse yourself in the art of the stick bow, shoot straight, and walk with us.