Episode #10 Instinctive Art - Traditional Bow Hunting

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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 to the Code of Traditional Archery. This is episode 10 on our Lessons Learned series. I'm Grant Richardson, the founder of Primitive Stone Archery and the Code of Traditional Archery. And we want to welcome all the new folks who are listening in for the first time. This episode is entitled Instinctive Art Honed. Yes, Art, you heard me right. Bow hunting in its truest form is a kinetic human trait, an art of casting projectiles. All of us, whether we care to come to terms with the fact or not, are born hunter gatherers, and hunting the hard way was normal for bow hunters in the not so distant past. Think about it enough, and you'll ponder what drives us to head into the woods with various bows and sharpened sticks to try to get close enough to wild game with our strong instruments. And when everything just seems to fall into place effortlessly, a no mind exists. When we become so involved in our connection to those wild places and the game we pursue them in, it just seems natural. There are moments of pure clarity, moments that are often raw with failure, and at times when bow hunting with traditional gear is more often than not the case. I see an interest in industry not so concerned with ethics but with make it easy approaches and savvy marketing driving bow hunting into new territory and in most cases one that has already been charted with rifles and scopes. Bow hunting with a stick and string is about experiences and a process that we all hope to result in bringing home game to our tables. And those efforts take time to develop into formula that connect us much more intimately to the game we pursue as we hunt closer. Remember, you're not going to shoot like the person next to you. Your experience and flight time is different, and making competition about yourself and your form and your structure will be much more satisfying. That year had been tough. I was too far to get off work and drive out to my family's farm to scout or hunt, and the few times I had been out were a write-off due to weather. One evening on the way home, I ran into a coworker of my wife who mentioned that he was heading up to his deer camp later that week, and he invited me to his farm to hunt, and I gladly accepted his offer as he lived only a mere minutes from our home. My deer season at that point would consist of two days that week, in a new area I wasn't familiar with, and no knowledge of the deer or their habits that lived there. This was a small farming community, only thirty acres that was huntable. In addition to this, a group had been hunting it hard the prior week, both with shotguns and moseloters. I was surprised to learn the groups hadn't been successful though, even though they had hunted it hard, as several large bucks had been seen frequenting the property. Even so, he assured me there was still a high number of deer, and I met him the next day to go check out what the property had to offer. This area was stuck in between two heavily hunted areas, as I said, and I was skeptical that it would work out for me. Meeting him, he explained there was a large beaver pond at the back end. It served as a natural barrier for his property, and the deer frequented an adjoining conifer stand for bedding. I had only two hours of scouting time to put in, and quickly found the deer seemed to be using one main trail from the beds to a large grain field and adjoining soybean field almost a kilometer and a half away from the main run. It appeared to have been doing a loop back and forth to the feeding areas as well. This run I found near the beaver pond consisted of so many rubs and scrapes that it seemed that several bucks had been using it. It looked like something right out of an outdoor life magazine. On the way out I came across two other tree stands that other folks had been using on the property. They both showed frequent use. There was garbage littering the area, and I noted they'd been set right on a significant bedding path at the back end of the place. Not a great idea when the wind was coming out of the north, primarily blowing directly past the stand in ingress path. I backed out carefully, and taking great care to stay off the trails they were using, I left quietly, and picking what I surmised to be the best spot for an ambush on the ground, went home to prep for the next two days of hunting. Tree stands were out, I didn't have the time to go get mine, and I started thinking as I walked down the old path back to the farm. I was out of the truck for several minutes the following morning. The forecast was calling for some sun and clouded cover with a chance of a snowflare in the afternoon. With the barometric pressure dropping, I was hoping the deer had been feeding all night and would be moving back into the area I was intending on sitting in. It was still dark, and the snun the sun had yet not crawled out of the east to greet me as I placed my case bow across the back end of a small cedar fence post at the entrance of the landowner's property. I could hear flights of ducks leaving the river nearby, and heading in the dark to the same soybean fields across the ware where I had hoped to intercept a deer when the light would come creeping back as they entered the property I was hunting for the first time. I began to walk into the edge of it, flushing three woodcocks simultaneously, the winning of their wings contrasting sharply with the utter stillness of the morning. They twittered across the field together. My grandfather's favorite upland bird, and I couldn't help but think it was his way of telling me he was walking with me that morning. Turning, I saw the first glimmers of orange peeking out from the clouds and made my way to where I decided to set a small berm that overlooked the trail coming from the fields, and opposite, by about a hundred yards from where anyone else had been sitting for deer that season, given the location of the tree stands I'd found. I was on the ground but almost ten feet on elevation of a berm as it rose from an ancient white pine root now long deceased, but still telling of its great life. The sun came up and the wind began to blow gently in my face. I had checked the wind several times as I walked in the night prior, and it was blowing direct to me. Mornings are meditative, watching the night leave and give way to light in the wildlife that inhabit both sides of the coin as they go about their lives is living education, and it seems like they have a different story to tell each day. I saw the ducks come up first almost a mile and a half away, a massive skein of northern mallards and black ducks rising into the sky like a plume of smoke with a feathered soul. Something had jumped them, and several minutes later I saw the cause of their feathered disturbance. He walked across the parallel fence farther down from where I had come in, like a king entering a throne room, the sun rising just for him. The large bodied buck jumped the fence across where I was sitting almost still a mile out and began to saunter towards a small broken cedar. I could see now in the light the cedar had likely many scars and was missing branches on its east side as the sun declared the massive rub like a bare wound to the tree. The Buck walked up to the tree, turning his antlers from side to side as if picking a fight with it. The tree of life. Squaring up he rub it gently for only a few seconds before attacking it with fervor and abandon. I could see even from my vantage point pieces of it flying into the air, with branches, bark, and mud dispersing for several feet. I took a deep breath. He looked like a donkey with antlers, and as he moved away from the tree, leaving it swaying from the assault, he finished, I saw that he would likely be walking right by where I'd been sitting. The deer followed the trail slowly, stopping to check the wind and momentarily rubbed another tree en route to the fence in front of me. As he paused I could see the hus of soybeans he consumed that morning on his jawline, moving closer, and shaking myself loose from the sides of him began to focus on preparing for a shot. A shadow on the edge of his shoulder became evident as he closed the distance, and a stiff breeze blew his tail towards my position. He stopped momentarily to rub another small tree, and froze and stared to my left. I looked over with my eyes only and saw he was clearly looking in the direction of one of the tree stands on the opposite end of the meadow. He stopped there for almost ten minutes, and I began to wonder if another hunter entered the area after I'd walked in that morning. My concern faded as the deer began to walk towards the setup I was on top of. Slowly he began to move, stopping every few feet to scent check the wind and staring toward the tree stand location across the field. Evident he knew someone had been sitting there frequently. I had the bow up now, pointing at him, and engaged livestream as he approached, and the next few minutes happened without thought. I came to half draw twice on him as he ambled around and changed position several times, deciding which route to the bedding area he was going to take. There were several small alders I expected him to skirt around, and I would be able to get a shot clearly once he was by them. However, he decided to walk right through the middle of them and give the largest one a good scraping, grunting softly as he did. He made his way to the old cedar fence that had fallen in front of my vantage point and closed the distance to around twenty yards. Behind him and to my left, a flock of greenwinged teal exploded into the air off of one of the small ponds in the field, and I expect he was as startled by them as I was. From behind a small screen of brush where the pond was, I could see a smaller sized buck standing. The larger buck's guard hair bristled and he grunted twice. That's it, I thought. He's gonna go chase the youngster off now, I'm not gonna get the shot. The other buck started to run in the opposite direction, taking a group of does with him, and the deer in front of me turned away, seemingly disinterested. I could feel my heart rate growing steadily after what had been almost a half an hour at this point, and I breathed in slowly. He began to turn to my left and walk briskly, appearing annoyed at the interloper's presence. I had been focusing intensely on the line of his shoulder crease where his hawk met his chest, and when he stepped out across the eroded cedar fence to my front looking back to where he had come from, I sent the arrow to him with precision. As the shaft reached him he spun hard, mule kicked into the air, and I had been kneeling and stood slowly as he ran full pelt directly to the thick beaver pond swale, disappearing that I had scouted the day prior. I could see the arrow protruding from the ground in its blazed yellow red cresting impacted by the sun now fully rising in the sky as a signal beckoning to the events that had just transpired. I heard a loud crash moments after he ran, and disappeared from my sight into the red and brown tangle of beaver cut over to my left, and I marked the last area I had seen him and sat down, cradling my recurve across my lap. I ran my hand slowly across the riser, onto the fade outs and to the limb tips. I thought about that bow at that moment and how much I'd connected with it in the past eighteen years. Its use had been heavy, and had some scratches in the glass and a couple of small dings. I looked up. From the moment I had seen the deer to the moment the shot had happened had been close to twenty five minutes, maybe longer. It had felt like hours, and my heart was racing to acknowledge what my brain was telling me had just transpired, and I stood quietly listening and gathering my thoughts. I had an awareness in that moment that my entire shot press has been made before I even drew back the string, hit my anchor point, and sent the shaft on its way. I had made the shot before even drawing back the string. I slowly walked to the arrow and knelt. The hit was evident, and I tagged the arrow and began to track where I'd last seen the large deer bolt from my view. The tag alders he had run into were incredibly thick, and I was forced to crawl and soon found a trail that I had followed by crouching. The blood had almost started immediately and was bright red and full of bubbles, and I stood slowly as I could to the trail which had become boggy due to the nearby beaver pond. As I stood I saw him expired and lying on his side. The arrow had caught him where I was looking through the top of the heart and had traveled less than fifty yards. That day the shooting method I had been training in had just not become much more of a method but more of a process that had honed into an application that had been completely now functional. It is within these moments I have learned to step back and take in the entire process of what happened. In some days it seems the easy button is pushed, but one steps outside the periphery and looks within the amount of preparation that culminated into success. Anything but anything was easy. This is much more than an intuitive process connecting the brain, hand eye coordination with a kinesthetic perception, resulting in the ability to develop an instinctive method of shooting and hunting a bow. And that's it, a process of self-development, of focus, concentration, and training drills for hunting conditions. This allows for a progressive training evolution that follows, a point and shoot method in principle, look, point, shoot, bow arm, draw anchor, release, follow through. Executing the perfect shot is applied by varying the pressures of the hunting process itself and in doing so enabling your own platform, whatever that may be. String walking, gap, point on, instinctive, or even a compound with sights. This is a building foundation approach. Train the individual to learn to shoot the way that best suits them and the bow they've chosen. I do caution you on this journey. Choose your foundation wisely. I've seen recently many folks on social media and the internet considered experts on traditional ball hunting who have never pulled the string back on an animal in their entire lives. I am still learning, even after all these years, and I remain teachable. The open mind absorbs information, the closed mind simply does not, and in many instances rejects change. Training and shooting for groups at the same distance and target gets you good at that distance and target setup, but not necessarily for bowing shots, simply because anomalies occur. Challenge your hunting abilities, not your distances, and I assure you in doing so you'll feel much better about the bow hunter you're becoming along the way. This path becomes the stepping off point for the archer into becoming the bow hunter and finding for themselves their own effective shot process, effective lethal range, and the manner that suits them and the bow they are shooting, not someone else. I was recently asked by a pro compound circuit shooter from Canada and a bow hunter what the number one quality traditional shooter should have. What was it? Focus, I said immediately. It is a primary attribute related to shooting any style, split gap, point on, string walking, instinctive, whatever you want. And we use this ability in varying degrees each day and connect in a kinesthetic operating system. This is acutely used when visually giving attention to looking at things, focalized attention, our ability to focus attention on a stimulus. And when we shoot under settings specific settings where focal attention is needed at a high level, it increases our ability to have sustained attention, which in turn increases focus and concentration. Concentration being a crucial byproduct of focus. As with everything though, you need to learn to walk before you can run. It is a never-ending process of self-perfection that inevitably will challenge you every time you pull back the string and it will face your ego down at the same time. If you feel lazy, your shot will be lazy. If you feel tired, your shot will be tired. If you're alert, awake, and confident, you'll see the results in your shooting. It's full swing for our true deer season here in Ontario. And we actually prefer to hunt the late season here in November and December. We'll be after wild turkeys before the season closes on the end of the month here in October. And uh look at pursuing deer. Our youngest, uh, who is now 12, has become deadly effective in her range with her 40-pound recurb, and we're looking at getting her out for her first hunts as well now with her own bow in her hand. It's a pretty exciting time of year. We want to announce to you that our YouTube channel is up and running, the Code of Traditional Archery. And be sure to enter our recurb bow giveaway, which ends the end of October. Uh, we'll draw a random winner on November 1st. And to enter, subscribe to our channel, uh, the Code of Traditional Archery. And any video, make a comment on and shoot us an email. Uh, email is admin at primitivestonearchery.com. You can find it in the comments as well. Um, and we really appreciate you for joining us. Thanks again, and we appreciate all the positive feedback we've been getting from folks all over the world. Um, this confirms for us the intent we have in 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 conservation and stewardship in order to protect the wildlife, woods, fields, and waterways we hunt as our themes are resonating. If you haven't already, check out Compton Traditional Bow Owners. Hey folks, we just want to add that we're super excited. You can now find the Code of Traditional Archery podcast on Amazon Music. See the link in our comments and check us out there. Thanks again for listening in. We encourage you to immerse yourself in the art of the stick bow. Shoot straight and walk with us.