Episode #18 Special Edition

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Transcript

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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 to a special episode 18, Walking the Path. 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 we intend to fill what we see as a gap in some parts of a process in an art which is less of a product and more of a process of self-discovery and walking the path. This is a special podcast edition of the Code of Traditional Archery, and if you've listened in and are not a bow hunter, but have always been intrigued by taking the next step into this art, or perhaps are an existing archer or compound user, maybe even a crossbow or firearm hunter, and want to take the path of the traditional bow hunter, this episode is for you. If you're already on this path, enjoy. I had not been out myself for deer yet when the phone call came in. I was actually prepping my own kid out back on our range a week into Ontario whitetail season. In an earlier warmer weather, we had a change to several straight nights of frost and autumn was in the air. I checked the incoming call and answered to an excited but worried voice. I got a hit. It was Ryan, a fellow I'd known for a couple of years and a former rifle hunter some years prior. I just helped that August and September get ready for his first deer season. I got a shot. The arrow reached the deer and it ran. I looked a bit, but I can't find anything. Can you help? Give me ten minutes, I said, meet me at your truck off the road allowance, confirming he was where I thought he was sitting. Back out until I get there, I said. Sounds good, he replied. I grabbed my tracking pack, checked it over for flagging tape, some fresh headlamp batteries, and I was off. I knew the location. He confirmed it to me. I had just spent the summer helping him get ready to set to hunt deer. It had taken around six weeks of dedicated commitment on his part to get to that point. And we'd hit it off earlier on at a local fishing spot where we were both trying to figure out which fly to use for the finicky brook trout that inhabited that lake. And the topic of hunting had come up, specifically with traditional bows. He was interested in the fact I hunted with a recurve, and after some chats about the options he had open for him, he decided to jump in. He had hunted years earlier with a rifle, but wanted something different. He'd shot a couple compounds as well, but they did just did not appeal to him the way the lines and beauty of the wood did on traditional bows. Initially he was not confident he could actually hunt game with a stick bow. And that's where this lessons learned special edition podcast begins. He showed up on a Saturday morning sometime later on our farm and was thrilled to tell me he'd just bought a bow. And hauling a gray case out of his truck, he remarked, What do you think? He drew a well known custom and very expensive takedown recurve from the case and laid it out across the back of his pickup. We chatted and I asked him if he had shot the bow much. He said not much, in fact he just picked it up a few days prior from an online sale. We chatted and walked back to where I had several targets set up, and after a few arrows off the boat, he asked me what was wrong with the shooting. Now he'd been hunting prior deer with a rifle years back, but not a traditional bow, and I felt that instead of telling him what I was sure the issue was, I would let him sort that out himself, kinetically and kinesthetically. And I went inside to our shop and walked back out with an older model, Damon Howard Hunter Recurve, with a draw weight of around forty pounds. He picked up the bow, looked over the recurve, and I asked him to shoot a few arrows. After almost a dozen shots at the various 3D targets I had set up from around 15 yards, he turned and said, Okay, okay, I get it. Too heavy. Too heavy, I nodded back at him, and I pointed to the custom bow sitting on the rack outside. But you already know that, don't you? I lent him the hunter for a month to get used to setting in a good repeatable structure without the strain of the heavier bow. And I gave him a series of very hunt ready specific drills to do daily. And the next time I saw him a week later, he was shooting very well with the Babinga striped Howard Hunter. He ordered a second set of limbs for his 60-pound custom bow, and by the end of August, he was shooting the new 45-pound limbs off his recurve very well. The custom was simply too far heavy for him to start out with, and he has still not to this day used the limbs he got originally with that bow. Still, at the end of all that, and his accuracy improved, he said, you know, I just I'm sure. Were you are you sure this'll take a deer? Holding the bow up and eye it with some skepticism. We went over the basics again of the setup, shot methodology and drills for actually hunting situations, and covered off some hunting arrow tuning tips and ended each session shooting either one arrow to time drills or roving in the backfield shooting at changing targets and varying distances. I explained it was not the bow. It was the input that he gave the bow that mattered more, and in that regard, he must have absolute confidence in shooting that bow before he could hunt big game with it. Within around thirty days, he was shooting much better, and in particular, good enough out to fifteen yards to hunt effectively. We spent a lot of time scouting an area for him, and in the end he chose a good setup for a tree stand on a convergence trail that led from a cornfield into the stand he'd chosen some fifty yards away between a bedding area. We covered off food sources, different tracks and what they meant, how to actually read sign from the tracks themselves and age them, accordingly to the weather, the environment, and the terrain, and the time of day as best he could. I saw him leaning against his truck as I rolled up. He was grinning but looked worried at the same time, and he relayed at what had gone down. He had seen several deer entering the cut cornfield as he drove by to hunt his stand, and he'd been coming in as quiet as possible, but today he'd been late from work and was rushing. We had opted for a setup well away from the bedding areas the deer used to travel to the cornfield, and back by his stand setup, a weathered white oak that had enough clearance around it and needed no shooting lanes cleared, was the place and the choice that he'd made. The prevailing wind allowed him to enter into it quietly without being scented, and he'd seen several deer already the three hunts prior, but they were all out of his effective range. He called me earlier that week to ask if he should move, and I advised him just to stick it out at the current spot. He was still fairly early in the season. It was only an hour into his hunt when he heard a commotion coming from the field edge, but the oak branches behind him obscured the action, and moments later a wide beam six point had walked right under him, and he had not had an arrow knock yet. The buck's neck, hairs, and back were raised, and he appeared agitated, and seconds later a much larger buck ran in out of nowhere and chased the six point off. The larger buck stood there only fifteen feet away, turned away, offering no ethical shot for Ryan before running off after the intruder. Collecting himself, he knocked an arrow again quickly and sat down, took several deep breaths to gather his thoughts. He had never been that close to a mature buck in his life. Not ever, and his heart was racing. Not more than two to three minutes later from his east side came another buck, and he thought this is likely all the bucks in the entire county here at my stand. The spot chosen was pretty wise, he muttered to himself. The buck trotted to where the last one had stood and rubbed a tree where the bigger deer had been standing minutes prior. Ryan stood, bending at the waist, he came to full draw. The deer moved, circling around to locate the sound he had heard, which was Ryan standing in his tree stand. The buck stared for what seemed like hours but mere seconds and turned slowly again back north to where he had access to the brushy trail he'd come from. Coming to full draw again, he let down the arrow only to draw a third time. Bending to clear a branch for clearance, the yellow crested white fletched arrow disappeared when it met the buck. The deer had spun and kicked hard, running fast and crashing through the incredibly tight covers some seventy yards away. That was the beginning of a section of bed cover. Now Ryan, as I said, had hunted deer some years prior with his work buddies at camp. He'd been part of that camp for a couple of years before losing interest, and it seemed to him that it was more like shooting than hunting. Due to his day job, he was very confident with the farm. But this was just different. There was an experience he was missing. They would end up tidying up the camp a couple days before the hunt, sighting their rifles a day or two ahead, and off they went. It just wasn't his idea of hunting. He wasn't against the idea of a deer camp, but the process in which he had prepped for almost two months ahead of the season was vastly different than his prior experience. That and the deer just didn't go down when hit with a rifle. He'd been practicing daily, and after getting his setup and coming out for coaching along the way, studying shots set up of the vitals of whitetails, their habits and habitat, it had consumed all of his spare time, and all the fine details of that process led to this very moment. We walked into the stand quietly, and he flagged the spot the deer had been standing when he pulled back the string and sent the three blade VPA broadhead at the buck. After several minutes of looking carefully, I found the arrow and I called him over. What do you think? he said to me. He looked very worried. I replied, Well, you tell me it's your deer. This is your learning curve, not mine. He studied the arrow. I think it's long, he said. I agreed, nodding my head slowly. I asked him to remember where the trail the buck ran up ended, and he recalled the map and scouting the day we had conducted back in the summer when the leaves were green and the ground cover high and not yet frostfallen. We established a direction of travel, and not twenty yards from where the deer was arrowed was a tree marked with crimson. We then made our way down into a cover of pines almost sixty yards following the trail. I knelt and looked back at Ryan, who had a look of concern on his face. We had flagged several spots along the path, and the sun had begun to set, and through the trees we could see the cut cornfield some one hundred meters away, as a large flock of greater Canada geese pitched into the cut cornrows, honking in their glory and good fortune at the remnant waste green left behind by the pick. I saw the deer first, its broad back and tail lying still, highlighted by the sun in a small hawthorn apple tree as it lay down under Ryan, I nodded and pointed. Go get your deer. He stepped forward carefully, knocking an arrow, and once convinced, he waved me over to him after he spent several quiet moments alone thanking the deer, connecting with what had just happened on his own. He looked at me, then the deer, then his bow. I cannot believe I did that with that little bow, he remarked. I cannot believe it. We began to process the deer, and when we had it loaded into his pickup truck, he said again, I can't believe it, I did it, thanks, he remarked. I was your guide, dude, I replied. You put the work in. Darkness fell, and we headed out of the wood trail. That was Ryan's traditional bow hunting origin story, and he's made many more since that time. And over the years, the amount of pride he's taken into the process resonates still. It is one that can be yours as well. We are excited to announce our new project, the Traditional Bow Hunting App, and our exclusive six-week traditional bow hunting hunt ready boot camp to accompany the launch. This is available exclusively only to our podcast listeners for the next 24-hour time period before we open it up on our other social platforms. And we only have 10 spots for this boot camp. This app will be accessible on its beta platform to only the select tening founding members who are part of the Hunt Ready Bootcamp. It will be made available on other app platforms such as Apple Store and Google Play upon completion of the beta version. The 10 founding members will be part of a six-week traditional bow hunting Hunt Ready Bootcamp, which will include daily videos, weekly coach calls to personalize your plan and take you from where you're at just getting started to being functional to traditional bow hunting. Our objective at the end of the six weeks is that we'll have you in your first setup with your bow and hunt ready. It will give you next level access to training on our traditional bow hunting community right from your phone, no matter where you are at the cottage, the backyard, the back 40, the office, or home in your living room. You will have direct access to one-on-one training, including the Hunt Ready membership, for a month for free. This app will clarify and bring clarity to a direct approach to solving problems you may be having getting into traditional bow hunting, from buying your first bow to setups and shooting tips through daily and weekly updates. You will have access to a unique shooting method to maximize your results and learn from a third-generation traditional bow hunter myself, turning decades into days and cutting through the confusion to develop your own path in your own way and holding you accountable in those six weeks along the way. This includes all of our traditional bow hunting content, community and private coaching program weekly, and coaching table recorded in a library and access to all of our online courses and any new courses, such as our new hunt accuracy and target panic mitigation courses coming soon. As the first people to go through our app, we will customize your experience and we will be getting your feedback as part of the launch for the first traditional bow hunting app that allows for direct access in the palm of your hand, much like an online fitness app, to personalize the experience. This is for people who have never hunted before or people who have always wanted to get started off with traditional bow hunting and just don't know where to begin. This is someone perhaps who doesn't even own a bow or is transitioning from a compound or crossbow to a traditional bow. To apply, you need to hit the link in the comments below and fill out the application form. I will be personally talking one-on-one with each of the 10 selected founding members of this amazing opportunity to lay the foundation for your success walking the path of traditional bow hunting and the ethical predator. Look for our new podcast, The Ethical Predator, coming to Amazon and Audible or wherever you find your content. 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. Weapons proficiency with the 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, be sure to check out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, a great organization that ensures the traditions of bow hunting with a stick and string are 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, become the ethical predator, and walk with us.