Episode #17: The Ethical Predator

We're building a MOVEMENT - a community of like minded people who celebrate the code of traditional archery worldwide.

Our dream: Connecting everyone that loves Traditional Bowhunting, inspiring people through the sport we love, to carry on the legacy of traditional bowhunting.

🚨URGENT: First 1000 members get LIFETIME FREE access!🚨

Once we hit 1000, membership becomes paid-only.

Secure your spot NOW!

Join the ultimate Traditional Bowhunting community and get:

• 🔥 Join a community of like-minded hunters who shoot traditional
• 🦅 Expert tactical tracking and scouting strategies used by the best
• 🌎 Global connections with Traditional Bowhunting enthusiasts
• 🎯 Exclusive training tips to elevate your game
• 🏆 Contests, giveaways, and members - only perks
• 🌲 Gain exclusive access to resources 
• 👕 Vote on Traditional Bowhunting merchandise only available to members

The clock is ticking on FREE lifetime access!

Join now and be part of the movement of Traditional Bowhunting.

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 Podcast. I'm Grant Richardson, your host, and welcome all those who have been following us thus far. Our original intent of this podcast was to bring back traditional archery and bow hunting to an older era where hunting ability met archer, and together the two formed a bow hunter. A strong resurgence in shooting and hunting with recurves, longbows, and self bows is being seen, and our intent is to fill a gap in what we see as really an art and a process and not so much a product. I've been shooting bow with my daughter that afternoon, watching as she measured each arrow sent to its intended target with careful focus. And as usual, the questions were coming fast and continuous about the upcoming season. Spring turkey had now long come and gone, and the whitetail season now four months away was on her mind. The intention she had with each arrow loose was evident. As she collected her arrow, she would stop and ponder the deer tracks that littered the ground not too far from where I have one of my go to stand locations. Would you take a shot that far, Dad? She gestured to the tracks in the ground now, hardened into the dirt and clay meccured at her feet, some sixty yards away from where we had started our walk down. No, I shook my head slowly in response to her, and looked up at the black spruce and white pine trees, my eyes straying to the upper branches of the closest Goliath, distracting me from the routine of shooting. My thoughts bring me back to decisions made in pine forests of my youth, and trees very similar in stature, and that is where this lessons learned episode begins. Enter the ethical predator. As a youth, the trees themselves held reverence to me in both the greatness in which they grew so tall and foreboding to my young eyes, but equally for the cover and food they provided for the wildlife I pursued. I became superstitious with certain trees for deer hunting as a kid, and was fond of what I like to call scout hunting an area, that is walking and hunting almost still hunting for both game and sign and tracking without a commitment to hunting it exclusively yet. You know that walk you can start on, an exploratory process that begins with bow in hand and the urge to see what is over the next hill. And as you may be aware, these can start off as short strolls and turn into day-long affairs of trudging into new areas with abandon, letting go of oneself to the nature of your ancestors, and walking off into the forests and past to see what one can encounter. It is precisely this type of exploring I spent much of my youth doing with recurve in hand. I'd always known about this location I was about to head into, and I'd found it one day quite by accident while training for a half marathon, and was at the time in the middle of some road work on my beat up red CCM racing bike. I cleared the small hill taking care to miss a rut in the pavement when I saw the first small, reddish brown, white dotted fawn only a couple of weeks old stumble onto the black rocked asphalt. The wobbly dance number was soon followed by a second and a third fawn that stood there in the middle of the right lane, oblivious to the danger of the vehicles roaring upon them. I watched as the doe, mum, crossed ahead of them into the ditch, looking back before herself almost getting hit in the opposite lane. I hurried and pulled my bike off the road and held it above my head, walking into the highway slowly as I stopped traffic in both directions. A walking up the rear fawn, it dropped and curled into a ball at my feet, attempting to blend into the dark asphalt. I gave it a gentle nudge with my foot, and it stood hobbling across the road, with its new siblings in tow now making the way to the opposing ditch and through a small break in the fence where the doe had gone moments earlier. Stupid kid, a driver yelled at me. They're just damn dear, and he flipped me off. Being a brash teen, I shook my head, flipped him back, and glared at him as he drove off. Up ahead a pickup truck driver had pulled over. I stared back at the fawns as it ambled through the cover. I'm not gonna hurt him, dude. Come here. I strode up to the passenger side window. You don't remember me, do you? That was a fine thing you did. We chatted for a few minutes. I'm the owner of the lumber store across the way. You're Fred Richards' son, aren't you? I am, I remarked cautiously. Well, not too many folks bonehunt around here like your dad. If you want, he pointed across to an old weathered fence gate now grown into nearby trees and barely noticeable. My granddad's old hunt camp is in there, and no one goes back anymore. You're welcome to hunt in there this fall. He responded with a story of my father, where he had met me involving a bet over shooting a red poker chip after my father had won his ninth local twenty two caliber turkey shoot, and he had beaten the best local shot, who is now part of that hunt camp, and he was making fun of the Browning Explorer recurve my dad had in the back of our Browning Ford Bronco. A bet was made. They would both shoot at a red poker chip fifty yards out. If one missed, they would be the loser of the pot. If both missed or hit the chip equally, it would be a draw. The fellow with the twenty-two took the poker chip down with a shot, and his friends gathered around until a silence had fallen around my father's turn. Walking back five feet further, he turned, drawing the bow, and pinwheeled the poker chip with a field point tet porter for its cedar arrow. Giving the stunned onlookers a stern look, we thanked them, piled into the Bronco, and we left not to return. Of course, the incident had become a story and quickly into a small town legend, and although I didn't recall my father, I did recall the day and the event. We chatted several more minutes before he drove off. I biked home as fast as possible to tell my parents my good fortune, of course, omitting the parts regarding the busy highway and such, only that I'd held some beer across the road and got permission to hunt the large expanse of property behind the building supply store. That day started off as any other, and I'd finished all my house chores earlier that morning before school. It was October, I was sixteen years old and fully immersed in grade eleven, but daydreamed of nothing but bow hunting. I had a spare at the end of the day and ran home full sprint, thinking about the next several hours I had to explore the new area I'd been given permission to hunt. My bow was sitting there waiting for me where I'd left it. It's tat in a worn case, a holdover from seventies era World War II swamp camo, stitched together with some old fly line backing I found from my father swapping in a new line earlier that summer for an Atlantic salmon trip we had down in Nova Scotia. I carried little in those days, a small Uncle Schrade skinning knife with a bighorn ram's head scrimshot into the scales, gifted to me by my dad, and regrettedly some years later stolen, some cheesecloth, a hall rope, and some snacks, and I was good to go. Walking out of the small town north, I crossed the highway and entered the woods. A long gone former hunt camp stood rusting, a small bus that had been transformed into a bunkhouse just inside the woodline. Grandad's camp had set across an old spray paint. I walked past it, peering inside, wondering what success and adventures the crew had experienced in its prime. Entering the overgrown dirt covered tote road, I slowed hearing the putting of a grouse, and as a teen as it still stands now, any game was trophy for me, and the thought of bringing home a plump rough grouse was always appealing. I had a judo tipped arrow with me in case of a grouse popped up, and as I turned around the bend of the road there ahead on the trail was a large rough male strutting out several feet away. Easy easy, easy shot, I thought. Fifteen feet out on the road, I let the wiret blunt fly and missed the bird cleanly as the point did its job and grabbed a clod of weeds and earth, the bird running into the cover of a patch of low hanging frost bitten grapevines. I stopped to retrieve the arrow, and two additional birds flushed from the patch of tangled vines, rocketing through the yellow and white pines of the poplar trees lining the old road. I shook my head and walked on, only to see the bird I'd missed and two others, an additional three or four more, running ahead of me. I walked fast pacing the birds and knocked the orange XX seven five again, picking the lead bird now well over twenty yards out, running fast, and drew in one motion and watched the Zwicky Judo take the bird cleanly. I walked up slowly, stopped and knelt at the bird, raised it skyward, admiring its bronze tail as the sun shone through the bird's fan. I looped a piece of cord around the bird's feet, attached it into my fanny pack, and walked forward smiling with satisfaction. Something suddenly caused me to stop. I don't know what it was, but I froze and an awareness flooded over me. I don't know if I sensed it first or my brain had first picked up the fact that an extremely large bodied white tailed buck was staring at me a mere feet away from inside the edge of the low berm, where the overgrown road turned into a mere pathway choked by brambles and purple and reddened leaf raspberry bushes. He stood there like he'd been conjured by some unknown woodland force, and I froze, of course, almost as if I could not believe he was actually there. My eyes wandered across his brow tines and upward into the crown of ten long points. His neck was thick, and I could see clearly his nostrils taking in and expelling the cold autumn air in short but purposeful breaths. It was a standoff, I told myself, and of course I just demonstrated my intention of actually why I was there, happily tucking the gross into my fanny pack right in front of him. Still hanging onto the judo tipped arrow, I looked down at my hip quiver, containing four razor sharp zwicky delta broadheads securely in the foam. I mentally tried wishing one of them onto the string of my short recurve, and my mind raced as to how it could get an arrow onto the string. I was wearing an old brown and grey hooded wool pullover my grandmother had knit for me years earlier, no camo at all. A pair of brown corduray pants I'd secretly hated gifted to me for my birthday, now hidden from my mother's sight under my bed, I had streaked and drawn black sticks up and down with permanent magic marker to try to break up my leg pattern. You're busted dude, a voice said in my head. Go for it, drop the judo, grab a delta and shoot. No, no, no, no, another voice said. If you make sudden movement, he'll bolt and that's it. Who to listen to? My sixteen year old brain ran through several scenarios until I paused and slowly without thinking, as if moving at ultra slow speed began to kneel down, setting the red barred fletched Autumnorn shaft down on my knee, drawing and knocking in slow motion one of the grey delta broadheads under the hand tied yellow knocking point on the string. The buck half stepped towards me and followed me, lowering his head with short, stiff movement. His antlers appeared immense, and I could see them polished white at the tine tips like a shining sword they stood out amongst the yellows and browns of the cover he was standing in. I adjusted a moment to try to raise the bow, and he exploded over the small berm, as I stood quickly to watch him jump at least five feet over a deadfall poplar inside the trail and depart for areas unknown, his patience all used up by my actions. I stood there defeated, mouth agape watching the leaves fall and settle where he had been moments earlier before as the drama of the afternoon unfolded. I opted to walk around the trail into a large opening to see if I could get a chance where he'd gone, but nothing was seen. Walking the path, my heart still racing, I saw it. Probably about twenty yards from where he'd originally stood, almost as good as seeing the buck again, a massive scrape the size of a dinner table revealed itself on a patch of high ground directly in front of a low hanging branch of an immense pine tree. Staring upward at the colossal coniferous titan, I frantically looked around for a good ground setup, anything to blend myself into or create a ground blind out of. I had discovered in my mind the spot of all hunting spots, but I had nowhere to sit. I looked up at the weathered pine again and back down at the scrape which appeared to be growing larger in my mind by the minute, and I imagined the wide ten point pawing at the ground and raking the sapling behind the dark brown exposed earth. The leaves from a nearby poplar, bright yellow and green had been ejected and piled with the dirt at the far end due to the buck's efforts. I looked up at the tree again. Could I build a tree stand there? The only stands we had at the time were stilt steel frame welded custom jobs my father designed and already placed in his favorite spot weeks earlier. And of course, the Baker climbing stand my father forbid me from using was way out of the equation, just simply from its ability to skid down trees whilst one was ascending, completely by surprise. I was on my own. Now groundstand hunting and stocking was still and is still my go-to method for hunting deer, but this tree it spoke to me. I walked home that night determined to return and set something up as fast as I could to hunt it the following week. I returned home and relayed the story of the grouse and buck to my dad, who listened intently, and said very little except to wish me good luck. I returned two days later and was delighted to see the scrape and were worked over. I'd taken a piece of two by four from home, cutting it in half down its center, and across its length I drilled two holes, and opted to drive a nail through the center, across the two branches, I would lash an end to each respected limb with a rope. I would then use an old seat bolt harness across my waist to strap onto the tree to lean out and prevent a fall. I sat in that tree almost fourteen feet up for nothing. I saw nothing but flocks of ornate colored wood ducks, squealing and whistling as they headed to roost night after night in the swamp area. Behind I was hunting. Not a deer was in sight. There was trash fresh throw, and the thought that any minute that ten point would return to freshen up the table sized plot of earth kept me coming back for another week. It was nearing the end of the archery season, and I'd hunted now for two weeks solid. I opted to climb up one afternoon to sit, one of the last days I'd have. It was an easy climb up the dark thick branches to my perch, but that sit itself was far from comfortable. After hauling my bow up, I would stand on the lone board and lean against the trunk of the great tree, the old seat belt strapped constricting my waist. I would practice fall straws every hour or so to keep sharp and awake, my eyes searching for the telltale signs of the great box antlers moving to the scrape. The sun was beginning to set and its rays danced across the open tote road now, fifty yards from where I was balancing in the great tree. Grunt. I heard the burping sound of a buck in behind me, and even straining could not see anything. I heard it again now, much closer to me, and I made out the shape of a train of deer walking cautiously to my stand. Turning slowly the grunt was not the large bodied buck I had envisioned, but a small train of deer some fifty yards behind me, and they were quite nervous. Once my eyes adjusted to the new shadows left behind by the sun shedding, I watched as a button buck, then another and a small doe, and a larger doe stepped out, then burst at a dead run. The lead buck stuck his nose in the air, then pawed the dirt a moment, and he too ran, with the second little buck running right behind him and bursting away. Moments later I saw the cause of the hoof chaos below me. A black and tan hound was running full pelt down the trail from my west that bordered the swamp I was hunting. I cursed under my breath and stood to see better. He broke to the right and the Don Fawn came back around, and I could see she was covered in mud and her wet muzzle from running. She stopped, I got the ball up and tracked the deer. I had a dough permit, but back then in our area of Ontario, we'd been hit with several severe winters, and herd numbers had been impacted. And even at that point, he stood around less than a twenty percent chance of drawing a dirt dough permit at that time. It was like winning the lottery. The dough presented no shot at all, screened heavily by a set of trees, until she stopped and ran again, with the hound coming back across the open space beyond the tree I was sitting in. I pondered taking a crack at one of the two young bucks, but something just stopped me, my inner conscious certainly. But I will say it made me think of just how many deer I'd seen that year, which was very little, and how taking a shot at the dog driven deer just seemed wrong. The deer appeared harried, were not relaxed at all. Now hang with me a minute. I was hunting an archery only season in the lost dates and still does no dogs in the archery seasons. And a shot at that point was risky to begin with simply because just due to the nervous state they were in, they could have run a fair distance even after I hit if the dog was after them. I watched this mess happen for almost twenty minutes back and forth around me. She sidestepped the suiting lanes again, the doe that is, and taking the other deer with her skirted the edge, evading the dog that ran off to the right, and moments later I heard a voice and a whistle calling for the dog off the adjoining property. I hunted a few more times that year from that stand and saw nothing else. No more deer except the same monstrous buck I'd seen earlier being chased across the road the following week by a group of rifle hunters and hounds, as is legal in our firearm season. As I said, several severe winters had taken our population down, dome permits being less than 20% of not at all in some areas. And in my first 11 years of bow hunting, I'd drawn two dough tags. Our population was slowly recovering in the mid eighties and nineties, although being in a northern environment for whitetails, we still have around eight to ten deer per square mile on average, although due to the northern climate, they are on the larger size. In any event, watching those deer that afternoon go about their business from above and not shooting made me evaluate my future hunting endeavors. Whether I gave them a pass or not, I became acutely aware of the ability I was endowed and given the privilege to conduct with. No, not the shooting of the bow or having a hunting license to pursue them. It was a decision to take that life or not. The weight of that stayed with me as a youth for some time, and was directly tied to the dogs in that situation and the shoot or not shoot decision I was left with that day. It was not and has never been for me, it's brown, it's downtime, being picky and decisive at the time, considering our herd was important to me, and frankly it still is, even though the herd is much healthier. Ethics. This is a subject that is often spoken about when discussed and often passed off as a minor concern. Fat don't fry or the arrow don't fly in tone's taking a chance, make a decision that perhaps at best is only a 50-50 shot or worse. I've heard many folks say there's always a shot. I will tell you, after hunting whitales for almost 40 years with a stickbow, with a stick bow, at least I call BS on that. Why? Experience and flight time. The best miss, I miss, we all miss. It's about what we did right that matters much more than the air and arrow, so to speak. And as soon as we allow more room for outliers to creep into our spectrum as hunters, and I mean outliers we cannot control, but certainly make a call on, whether you like it or not, we all lose out. Staying within the rules of fair chase as well as the laws concerning bow hunting matter. I was quite prickly in my younger days, and I once had an acquaintance who contacted me to duck hunt an enormous beaver swamp attached to a small river system. And from the first of November until the end of the month, it was packed with northern flight birds, mostly mallards and black ducks, and I was pumped to get an invite to hunt that swamp. And one morning while we walked out from a hunt, a green heron took off from its perch nearby, and my associate shot it dead midair. Never minding the legality of the issue, I was infuriated. Not only had he taken a shot in a non-game species he didn't intend to use, but he was careless and indifferent about it. And I grabbed my decoys, piled them into my car, and promptly left in there to walk the five kilometers or so back to town on his own, chess waiters and all. No, I didn't get an invite back, but we did talk later, and I was able to let him know how asinine his actions were, including after the fact that he didn't even own up to the fact he'd screwed up. Once as an older teen, I'd saved a five-day old cottontail rabbit from two fellows on a job site who had already destroyed the rest of the nest and were intent on shoveling the Leverett to death. Intervening got me into a good Donny Brook, which resulted in both parties taking some lumps from their ill will toward the hapless cottontail. I strolled into my mother's kitchen later that day after work with a black eye to boot and a tiny brown Silvagus bunny in my hands, which I fed with a dropper until he could eat greens, isolating the rabbit to reduce habituation. The brown ball of fur was released when he reached full size onto the very property we hunt now. As a hunter and as you connect with the prey you pursue, I have no doubt that you too have experienced the same fierce protection of the wild I have. How is that, though? How was I so intent on saving that young rabbit that he got into a straight up fist fight with two fellows over it, straining even the boundaries of the combative martial arts I've immersed myself in since I was a youth? I took a risk for the care of that rabbit, the very same species that I had first hunted and taken with this slingshot as a youth many years prior. I was now defending with my fists and elbows. It was due to that direct respect of the animal's life, my understanding of how I played a part, much like my ancestors had, in the very same cycle of life and death. We were bonded in the spirit of his life, in the very wild places the animals I pursued them in had as well, searing the struggle of life and the sheer rugged rawness of that onto my heart and soul. The rabbit species, their life cycle and mine, had become interconnected from the moment I had hunted them and immersed myself into their habits and habitat, pushing through brambles, raspberry canes, and scrub, missing numerous times before connecting, and then feeling that sense of acceptance for taking its life for food, right down to using the fur to tie numerous hairs of your nymphs and marsh browns for fly fishing. Paying homage to its life, to its habitat grew me closer to appreciate and respect, as some might just say it was just a rabbit. Yet every life has a part to play in the wilds we hunt, from the cricket to the hawk to the raven and brook throat. They are all barometers for us to measure ourselves by in the predator-prey cycle, and that very cycle drives us deep in our brains, an ancient connection that many shun these days. And one that has kept our species in existence since our feet walked on this planet, and we strived alongside the wildlife of our world. I was at that time and still am willing to defend that fiercely, for as a hunter, in particular the immersion as a traditional bow hunter using a single string weapon, you will understand, as you may already have, that it is an intimate form of hunting in close proximity you participate in. This immersion, if you will, is a process, a process bound in both the expectation of success and failure. There are no guarantees. And the more you are involved in this intimate, arduous process you allow into your spirit, the closer you will connect to not only the prey you hunt, but all those that dwell in the wilderness we venture forth to hunt into. You will become a voice of truth as a hunter to the world we now live, and that shields itself in many ways from the two nature, the truth of the nature of the wilds. You will speak for the animals, the woods, the trout, the streams they inhabit, the fields and the woods, by understanding their way of living. You have now become a part of something older. And in that respect, their protector. A long time ago, an old friend of mine, who eventually tried her hand at hunting for experience and connection, handed me a book to read by a well-known Anaida writer, and I quote that now. Who speaks for wolf? That is a question that can be applied to any of the species and their habitats we pursue, for it is and always has been in years past the hunter that spoke up about laws, wildlife acts, bag limits, equipment restrictions, fair chase, and in that very essence has in many cases saved species from extinction and protecting them from both over harvest or corporate or otherwise black markets. May your own personal ethics guide you well with bow in hand. And to quote a paragraph from my book, The Code of Traditional Archery, Chapter 5, Immersion. This is a process of true hunting, a path to woodsmanship, scouting and tracking that accompanies the code of traditional archery and walking the path of the ethical predator. The immersion of these elements is different for everyone, however, but that is the path of the traditional bow hunter. Hunting with sticks bow, so to speak, and its growth into various hunting seasons using a stringle sting bow is just appealing because it's simply a heck of a lot way to hunt. And those things require skill sets, dedication, woodsmanship, and experience afield that so many parts of the bow hunting industry attempt to circumvent with technology to shortcut are now becoming important to many again. You can find our book through Amazon and in-store retailers, and the link will be below in the comments. Watch for a very special podcast episode next week that you won't want to miss. This will also be a pre-launch announcement for an absolutely exciting product we've been developing, which will be an exclusive offer to our podcast listeners alone for the first 24 hours. 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 in our platform message based on the three pillars of the code of traditional archery weapon proficiency with the stickbow, 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. We want to announce our exciting new podcast production starting, The Ethical Predator, will be coming out in the next two weeks. And the Code of Traditional Archery and Priminal Stone Archery proudly present this podcast celebrating the hunter's mindset. This podcast will highlight the thoughts of a traditional bone or put through the lens of the three pillars of the code of traditional archery. And we will be interviewing special guests focusing on their philosophy around the three pillars. Look for it coming up on Amazon and Audible or wherever you will find your content. If you haven't already, check out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, a great organization that ensures the traditions of bow hunting with a stick and string is alive and well not only now, but for generations to come. Thanks for listening in. We encourage you to immerse yourself in the art of the stick bow. Shoot straight and walk with us.