Episode 19: A Hard Walk Back

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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 Podcast. I'm Grant Richardson, your host. We want to welcome all the new people joining us, and a big thanks to 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 we intend to fill what I see as a gap in some parts of an art which is not a product, but a process. This episode nineteen is entitled A Hard Walk Back. The ripple that formed on the far edge of the pond gave the fish away. This was no creek chub, I subvocalized to myself, and another red and white belly rolled nearby. My heart jumped with the fish the same way it had when I was six years old, roll casting to my first rising brook trout on an eastern Ontario willow choked stream. The beaver dam and feeder stream had given me respite from the camp routine that Saturday, having been busy the past two days with assisting in camp chores and setting up other hunters for their archery moose hunts. I was adept enough at tracking calling in those younger days, and had recovered the day before a moose for another hunter. Focusing on the trout they were now obviously tailing for something under the water and not taking anything off the surface, I swapped out the Leetort Hopper Dryfly I was plying for them, having seen many grasshoppers along the upper grassy bank, and switched to a size twelve peacock curl laden picket pin, one of my father's favorite go to brookie wet flies. On the first cast, a shadow shot out of the nearby willow choked clo close to the dam, rocketing to the drowning fly. Even though my presentation was weak in my excitement, I set the hook and saw the vermiculated back twist in the spring fed tea colored water, and I felt the same admiration I had when I was six years old return once again for the haloed ancient chair. As I landed the wriggling trout, I could hear a voice calling my name from the old logging road nearby, now nothing more than a small car sized path, having been choked out from little use. Over here, I yelled, concerned the urgency in the voice meant someone had been injured. Jeff, one of the camp equipment hauler workers, appeared and asked me how the fishing was. I held up the trout for him to see, getting a thumbs up in return for a response. We need you back, he spoke. They're recovering another moose, and there's one hit they can't locate. I wondered if it had been the bull I'd seen the day prior. He'd been pretty spooky. I'd had a bull tag, but that was there to assist and only hunt the tail end of the week. I'd helped a different client get within eighty yards or so of them prior the day before, but unfortunately there was no shot, and I was tasked to recover another moose later on. I was concerned that if we're coming to get me there must be little or no trail to follow or no one else to help, as the hunters that guided that day were very knowledgeable with firearms hunting for moose and bear. As we made our way down the rocky road allowance, the black flies appeared out of nowhere, now that we were out of the wind, and I ate a couple of them swatting away before reapplying some bug spray to my hat. Jeff filled me in. Fella shot a bull moose apparently at close range and it took off with the arrow still in it. We jumped into the old beat up ram pickup and took the roller coaster ride out to the now main logging road back to camp. The area was dense, interspersed with open swell, two to three year old poplar stands and sudden swamps and bogs that were treacherous, this coinciding with many beaver ponds and sandy openings. The high contours were almost all Canadian shield formations or clear cut areas filled with red and jack pine, tamarack, and tall cedar swamps. It was an old landscape in its vastness, and far from the farmland and swamp whitetail habitat I was used to. We returned back to camp and I learned that the other moose had been hit and was being recovered. A cow had been tagged out, and his friend had hit the bull. I asked who was after the bull that had been hit, and no one was. There was just no one else. The hunter felt that his hit was non lethal, and I asked where he was. He was helping his buddy with the cow he'd shot. He should be back soon, replied the camp's coordinator. Go have a look, will you? He nodded at me. I'm a little concerned. I nodded back, sure thing. I knew he was worried. This was just his third year running archery only, and he was taking only a few hunters for the two week period he had, and he had mainly focused on rifle seasons prior to this. He'd been convinced eventually that a boat was capable after seeing some good success running archery for his bear camp, but he was worried. And I knew as he did that when the CO stopped in for a visit, as they did, questions would need answering. It was colder that day, but I opted for a pullover hoodie and one layer of thermal I stuck into the day pack I had with some mixed nuts and a protein bar that looked like it had been stepped on and was showing its age, and a liter of water as well. I grabbed my bow and sat down to clean the plump halo brook trout I'd caught and packed it in foil with a couple lemon wedges, sticking it out of sight in the large secondary camp cooler in the main cabin for my dinner. I grabbed a radio and stuck it on the charger port, checked to ensure the pager we each had for messages was working okay. The range wasn't great, but it helped communicate because we had no cell phones. They were just not so much a thing back then. Stepping outside, I walked with my pack and ball and grabbed a judo typped autumn orange XX75 from my pack where I kept two for grouse and stump shooting around the camp, or en route to a hunt to warm up my eyes. I took several shots at some throwaway kindling that was too wet to ignite off the wood pile in the sandburn nearby that was used for practice area. I then replaced one of them with a field point and shot at the makeshift moose target I'd made out of camp shipping crates, duct tape, and cardboard boxes. I began to wonder where the boneer was that had shot the moose, releasing another arrow off my Damon Howitt Mamba into the full moose target when I heard the three wheel ATBs and a camp truck coming down the path from the hunt area. In the back trailer was large cow moose tagged and whole and not yet quartered. I asked if they needed help. No, we're good. You gotta go look for that moose that was hit. Everyone else is pretty tired. He pointed to a hunter that had arrived late the night prior, I'd not met yet. This is the guy that took the shot. I walked over and shook his hand. I noticed at once he was hesitant to talk about it. I shot it from around twenty yards, got it in the ribs, he said, but the arrow stayed in him. We gave up after about an hour. There was no blood. He went into a mess of cover. I explained some of the camp rules to him, and to remind him he'd drawn blood and needed to look for the animal immediately. He said there was no blood. I walked over to the camp pan and asked him what happened. The guide said he'd called the bull in a three to four year old, and it sounded like the same one I'd seen the day before. He discouraged the hunter from shooting as the bull was really fired up and nervous, was moving a lot, and there was a much larger bull nearby that was making the younger three to four year old nervous. He passed up two broadside shots only to shoot the bull when it was turning in mid flight, and he thought he'd hit a little bit back. He had not seen the shot angle from where he was standing, but he felt the arrow had only gotten in a few inches of penetration. They looked, had no blood, and they backed out after busting the moose about a quarter of a mile from where the shot was made as it ran into a swamp area. I did the usual routine. I went back over the shot with the hunter as we made our way down to the road, jumped into a truck for a lift, and as before we got dropped off, I asked him again, what happened? Look, I'm tired. I hope it doesn't take this too long. I said nothing at his calm, but my impression of him was just he was not taking the issue seriously. And this was fading fast into my younger brain back then, and my patience was hitting a brick wall. We exited the truck and walked into the area we'd hunt he'd hunted earlier that morning, and he grimaced at the thought, man, he's pretty far back, dude. He's gonna he's he's not gonna die, he said to me as we walked off the gravel roadway, crossed into a wide burn cut over to where I'd located the bull the day before, which was almost a kilometer and a half walk in. I stopped him near one of the open areas near a berm of dirt that acted as a barrier. Why don't we throw a couple of arrows? This was a large berm created by force firing efforts earlier, and it presented a great target shot just to take a look at where he was hitting. He bogged for a second, not wanting to even be there, it seemed, but relenting he drew the compound back, a wheelbow with an overdraw system at that time, and let loose the shaft, flying like a rocket to the blackened stump in the center of the berm twenty five yards away, heading it squarely. I shoot three D every summer. I'm a pretty good shot, he held the bow up. That's great, I replied. I thought he could shoot the bow well enough. He pointed to my recurve. Shoot a recurve, eh? He pointed to the black glass limbed howit mamba in my hand. Ever kill anything with that thing? he asked. Yeah, I nodded. That's all I had for him. I took my shot, narrowly missing the stump myself. I was attempting to connect with him as he did not seem to be overly interested, and more so the gravity of what had happened was not present in his mind. We stopped for several minutes. I wanted to chat about what had happened in more detail, and I just couldn't pull it out of him. I quizzed him again about the shot, and he reaffirmed he hit the moose back in the ribcage. A little further back, he thought. The moose had turned and ran. They waited for about an hour, and then started following the tracks only to push him out of the thicket into the swamp. They backed out and returned to camp. We walked through a large stand of tamarack now yellow with early fall colors. They reflected the sunlight in such stunning display of brilliance that it distracted from the job at hand. Up here he pointed, seemingly impatient, just over the small ridge. I urged him to slow down. Stop, I said, I spoke quietly. That bolt may have weighed us around or behind us if the wind's better in his direction. If he's hurt, he may circle right back. I need to get back for dinner, he said irritatingly. We're going down into town for dinner. This is gonna be an issue, I thought to myself. He had literal interest, and I could tell that he could tell I was not having it. We gotta have a look, I retorted. We listened for several minutes, hearing nothing but the scream of a pair of red tailed hawks in the air to our west, no doubt looking for a meal. We walked back to the hit site and I had him hang back so I could check out the area. He was right there was no blood, but I did find some hair. It was in the upper branches of a small tamarack that was meshed into its yellow needles. The hair was lighter brown than I thought. I immediately thought it could be high back, it's pretty dark guard hairs. Could be back in the hindquarters, maybe high body in any event. No arrow, no blood, see, he said, and he pointed around with his arm. I gotta head back. I'll head back, you look for him. Could you radio the camp for me? I want to get a pickup, I want to eat dinner in town. His complaining was growing. I did a radio check and advised the camp that he was coming back. He walked over a rock covered knoll. Over there, he said, pointing to a tree line below. That's where he was last seen. I had him stare where we stopped. I wanted to make sure he knew exactly where he'd seen that bull. I walked down to the exact spot that he'd pointed out and I waved at him to ensure I was in the correct location, and he gave me a thumbs up. I could see indeed where a bull had ran into the thicket now, almost 150 yards from the shot site. It was hard to tell due to the amount of moose tracks in the area, but after I looked around, I was sure that it was the same animal, but I was very questionable that it was a twenty yard shot he'd made. I could tell the moose was moving fast at that point, and this was not good. The hunter was just not into looking for him at all. I was beginning to get short with him, and no amount of convincing was going to make him change his mind. He was not going any further. I radioed back to the camp and the truck was on its way. I walked him back to the main tote road, and as I didn't want him getting lost in the mess of terrain, we waited for about a half an hour before we could see the stone dust being kicked up back down the tree line near the road, and the beat up camp truck appeared. I relayed the issue to the driver and told him to head back for me at dark. It would give me five hours at that point of daylight left. It took me better part of an hour to make it back to the hit site. I was forced to box around a Sal Blackbear with two spring cubs who I surprised on the way back, and it was a hike to reorient myself to the correct location. I had took a bearing before I was on my way in, and it took another back boring from that point, ensuring the back boring was correct, shooting it twice so I could have the road location confirmed with my position, and I trudged on. I looked carefully, taking my time to go slowly, and once I got to where the moose had been busted, on a poplar leaf almost three feet off the ground, I finally found a drop of blood. I was on the right track. He was bleeding, but the issue was he was still running hard through some terrible cover, coming close to two hundred and fifty yards now from approximately from where he'd been hit. I followed at a snail's pace for almost another two hours just on the track, and he had not slowed down or bedded at all. Finally, with only a half hour of light left, I found a bed. He had temporarily laid down and appeared to have thrashed around in the swell before getting up and moving on now, walking, not running. I pulled out the topple mat ahead of the area. The map said to me he was circling back, a very wide circle but circled nonetheless. I marked several points on the map where I knew there was definite sign that I'd marked with a roll of white, degradable paper, and I realized now that he'd gone almost two and a half kilometers into a mess of cover, and I was going to have issues getting out in the dark. I noted a high contour to my east, only around 200 meters or so from the main road where I'd be picked up. If I went straight to the cover, I can make it out much faster as the road wound back towards the area I was in. I checked the radio, which was almost out of range, but told them to head up 20 more minutes down the road. They'd hit a berm in a high point and I'd meet them there at dark. Tracking alone in that area at night was not something I was prepared or wanted to go about at that point. There was numerous bear and wolf tracks littering the area, and while I was not too concerned about them normally alone, the fact I was tracking a wounded and bleeding moose made me wary of that in the dark. Looking at the sky it was showing no signs of rain at all. The sunset was spectacular, and as I pushed through the cover, the ambient light cast long shadows against the floor of the now sparse cover as I broke through the poplar and alder thicket. A covey of spruce grouse scattered ahead of me, clucking and putting as they ran, hopping into the nearby jackpines that bordered the road to rouse for the night. What to do tomorrow, I thought. I tossed my headlamp on as the sun was swallowed by the tree line, and I trudged down a road to meet the camp truck at the high point. I was picked up by the very guide who had taken the fellow out who'd shot at the moose. And he said to me that the client had head back into town into a hotel and wanted to fish in nearby lake instead of hunt any more that week. His friend was still in camp, and when we returned, I went straight to him. We chatted for a bit. He agreed he should have stayed, but there was no way he'd get him to come back. The outfoot owner walked up to him as the sun was setting and I was placing my kid in my tent and asked me for an opinion. I told him flat out the guy who shot the moose wanted no part in looking for it, but there's a good chance wolves or the any bear could have gotten him out there. There was so much track, it'd be a miracle if I found him intact. I woke up early the next day, the sun was rising, and I looked up to see two ravens flying triangles, gliding high above in the air, croaking and burbling to one another. If only I could see what they saw, I thought. There was no wind, and after I downed some food, I grabbed a smaller truck used for firewood runs and made my way back to the entry point I'd cut the night prior. That day went much the same the other afternoon had, and I stopped to think on what to do next, and I was sitting on a fallen edge of trees that had been cut and left some years prior from logging. I'd found only two other spots of blood, and the moose had been trailed through almost three and a half kilometers at that point into a circled area. He was circling back, taking a wide berth. I watched as a skein of snow glees flew high overhead, their nasal short honks announcing their travel, and their white bodies and black tick wings flapping in the air. And that's when I heard it. Less than eighty yards from me, several short, abrupt, deep hiccups of a bull moose grunting, followed by a bark and a bellow. Was that the bull? I thought. I tied down the two judo heads that were clattering in my backpack after I'd loosened them up to practice for some shots and inserted them in, strapping them tighter as I tossed it onto my back. I knocked an arrow and ran my hand over the barred parabolic gray turkey fletch, and began to slowly walk, picking my way across the low part of the edge of tamaracks and into the shadows. I stopped to turn my old weather Easton camel ball hat around backwards. I could hear crunching in the brush ahead of me, and through the needled yellow trees, the faint outline of a moose walking across my front a mere sixty yards out. I could not make out if it was the injured bull or not. I waited until it was turned away and scurried ahead carefully on the edge of the clearing, trying to make my way quietly to the nearest opening. I checked the topple mat several times earlier that day, and this was a large open area with some patches of alder and new growth poplar. If indeed this was the bull that was hit, it meant he was going full circle on a large arc back to the original site. I lost sight of him skirting the cover, and suddenly something caused me to halt and I knelt down. A huge bull moose with massive shovels for antlers walked out of the cover to me, to my right less than forty yards away. The wind was in my favor. He was showing no signs of injury, and I had a bull tag. I drew my eyes down to the string of the howit where the arrow sat waiting to be released from its bond with the serving of black and white Flemish twist ring. I looked back and watched as the bull turned slowly and grunted low and thrashed the nearest alder tree next to him violently. He was riled up. No one had seen this bull, I thought. He was massive. He was picked out of every outdoor magazine I'd read as a kid, and I could see his nostrils flaring steam from his chest into the autumn air. The bull turned and ran a few feet, stopping suddenly and grunting and bellowing again. Being that close, it was almost deafening. I stepped and kneeling, half standing, brought the black limb short bow up, and then something in me gave pause. Just beyond the direction of my zwicky delta broadhead, which was pointing and quivering on the end of the arrow, another moose was moving slowly to my left. He was smaller, and as he cleared an opening, I could plainly see the white plastic veins of the bow hunter's arrow that had hit him now almost a day and a half prior. The second bolt was now quartering at around twenty five yards. He'd stopped grunting low again at the wounded bull. I watched him and lowered my bow slowly. And almost five minutes passed I lost sight of the wounded bull, as it seemed he wanted nothing to do with the chocolate colored behemoth that stood now well within my effective range. This was almost ten minutes now, and a small debate ran through my mind. I watched as a gray jay landed on a tree nearby. It was in between the paths of both the moose, singing its melody softly with interspersed trademark clicks. Wasakatok, I murmured to myself, in the initian Abbey people's name for the bird my father taught me as a young child. As well as a commonly known trickster and benevolent shape changer of the same name, the bird turned flying towards me above my head, working himself up higher in the air, and flying over the large bull now, walking slowly away, still less than thirty yards away. At that moment I knew decisively what must happen. The decision had been made for me, it was plain to see. The wounded bull needed my attention without any doubt, even if the bird had just confirmed my superstitious side of myself as much as anything else had. Moments later the wind came up from behind me and swirled through the opening and into the clearing to the large bull. He suddenly snorted and ran for the dense cover of the pines nearby, and I listened as he crashed through the cover, the sound now growing fainter as he moved deeper into the conifer jungle. My attention was now fixed on where the wounded bull had gone. I was concerned he may have winded me, and I'd possibly blown literally in every sense of the word the chance to recover it. Stalking into the opening I saw his tracks but no blood. The location of the arrow that was still in him was very concerning. It appeared to have not been the head at all the client had thought he'd made. And for the next half hour I made my way in and out of the thicket he had run into. I sat down with only two hours left of legal light. I took out the topple mat quietly and determined that he was indeed circling back to the cover. If his tracks and movement were telling me anything, I could opt to try to cut him off by boxing the main pocket of cover I thought he was in, and wait for him to break out of it. He was heading back to his core area. After walking to the only high point for fifteen minutes, as quietly as I could downwind, I sat down and paused for a moment. Down below in the right side to my north, a red squirrel barked and sounded an alarm. Then another. I fixed my gaze on the area. Then I could hear, moments later, branches breaking and footfalls growing louder as the wounded bull emerged briefly, his nostrils flaring wide, and he was walking from side to side. It was evident the wound and injury was affecting him badly. I stepped off the berm, fearing he would see me silhouetted against the sky and snuck to within a hundred yards of him. My gamble had paid off, but closing the distance on that bull that was already hit and worked up was daunting. It took almost an hour longer to get into a better position by backing off and boxing several times to get downwind and stay downwind of him, and I was running out of cover. When I saw him, he was knee deep in a small pond runoff creek that flowed from the roadway culvert above us. His great sides were heaving. The arrow shot from the prior bow hunter was evident almost three miles. Quarters of it still showing, and the hit appeared to be high punch entering through his upper rear leg. He came out of the pond slowly and raised his head, shaking his antlers as if trying to free himself of his predicament. He stepped across a historic unused beaver dam that had eroded over time, and doing so tripped slightly forward and looked back at what's causing him the pain. I was now within sixty yards of the moose and had no cover, half sitting, half kneeling. I was forced to cant my bow parallel to the ground as I crawled into a better position and closed to around forty yards. His head whipped up in my direction and he bolted forward, stumbling on the edge of the berm in the leg that had been hit, tried to right himself and grunted at the same time. I don't recall loosing the string. It slipped from my fingers, now grey and black with pine tar and whip red by the past entire days tracking the bull. The arrow finding its mark as the bull walked fast, quartering from me. I saw the arrow fall out of his opposite side and burying itself into a large wedge of jackpine felled many years prior. Lunging forward he ran and circled to my left, paused to look back, and fell to the ground, gravity overtaking his senses as the sun rays appeared to bless him, shining onto his antlers and great back as the grayness of the day gave way to its warmth out of the shadows and nearby pines. I walked a few feet and stopped myself. Forcing the restraint onto my heart and knocking another arrow, I sat for some time, watched him lay there, and felt a piece of the hunter in me flooding with emotion over what had just happened, what I had just encountered and been through in the land and forest that bore him life. Even in now, in death, he was majestic and regal, and the sun faded over his antlers. And that moment had a tremendous impact on me as a bow hunter. I stood and walking to where the orange arrow I had just shot lay embedded firmly in the stump, I pried it loose carefully. It took some time before help arrived, and I kneeled beside the bull and said some words for him at the same time, placing a cedar bow into his jawline and teeth. I placed my hand on his head and wished him well. The partner of the hunter that had initially shot the bull came with the crew to take care of the animal, and he looked over and said, Thanks, you tagging him, eh? I nodded. I feel bad for what happened, he said as I walked away. We didn't chat much later on that evening, but he agreed his friend could have done much more for the animal. There was no doubt the arrow would eventually result in the death of the moose, only that a poor chot choice had resulted in a wounded animal that deserved far better from that hunter. We'd paced off the true distance she had shot the bull at later on, to almost seventy yards or perhaps even more, not twenty. We also believed he was shot from behind while moving away from the hunter. There are enough anomalies as it is. Just don't shoot well, shoot smart, is what I ended up saying to his friend the last time I spoke to him. In any event, the shot should not have happened. It was not the weapon's fault at all. It was the user. Whether the ethics weren't in the right place, maybe needed to be replaced with, you know, this issue to shoot at all costs without the experience, a false sense of confidence or even ego led to that shot being made, whatever the factors that led to it, inexperience, poor shot selection, pushing the distance does not matter. It matters that the event is learned from and that it does not occur again. It's a myth. The oft-repeated there's always a shot mentality. To put it simply, there is not always a shot, and the best marksman and markswoman in the world will tell you that. I was left better over the entire event for some time. It was one thing to take the shot he'd had, and as poorly positioned as it was, it was an entirely different thing to not pursue it. I didn't hunt anything else for the rest of the week except the trout hidden in the creeks and ponds nearby for the remainder of my time there. And I mused to myself about the bull moose in his home, where I now firmly was a part of, where he'd lived his life, and ultimately I'd played a part in his final days, and I felt I owed him that much. I'd walked back that day all the way to the camp alone from where he'd been recovered. I wasn't interested in high fives or congratulations. And that walk back truly cemented my connection to that wilderness and what I already knew, the respect I'd earned and gained for that animal, its habitat. And that is precisely how I had been raised as a bow hunter. I will say most bow hunters I've met over the years have not followed the path of hunter dad and the poor shot. I'm happy to say that most of them I've met in my life are responsible and ethical, but as the saying goes, it takes one bad apple. Good shot presentation starts with strong weapons ability and confidence in what the weapon can do under certain ranges and within one's personal abilities and performance. Bow hunting is not a long-range method of hunting in any aspect. Moving farther away from the weapon's capabilities is moving further away from ethics and, in the end, the stewardship of the very animals we as bow hunters are lucky to pursue. There are real and significant reasons why we have bow weight hunting minimums and impose restrictions. By its very nature, bow hunting is an intimate form of pursuit that is not bonded with technology, but with learning through a process how to get close enough to humanely take an animal with a stick and string effectively. And effective is that part of the process. As I've stated in my book, we need to be capable in our bows' proficiency. Let our hunts be guided by ethics and leverage conservation and stewardship firmly in our grasp when we pursue game, not as archers, not as hunters, but the synthesis of the two into a bow hunter. It is not enough to shoot well. We must strive to shoot as we intend to hunt. It is not enough to try to hunt and then hunt poorly. We must hunt well in order to set up a high percentage shot. A friend of mine recently stated to me, we need more ambassadors, not influencers. Isn't that the truth? I thought. Amen. May the process be our guide and may your arrows fly straight. Good luck to all out there pursuing their quarry now as seasons open. We're about to make a big announcement and release a project we've been working on for some time now, so stay tuned to our podcasts and social media in the upcoming weeks. Our first traditional bow hunting boot camp is halfway through a very successful launch, and we look forward to starting another in the next two to three weeks. Looking for a new bow or new to traditional archery, head to Damon Howard Archery Online and check out their line of high quality traditional bows. I've used Howard exclusively for over 35 years, and they have performed flawlessly. Have been my steadfast and reliable bow hunting companion, and each bow is a work of art ready to accompany you on your next or first adventure. Find them at Damon Howard Archerchery.com. 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 with stewardship in order to protect the wildlife, woods, and fields and waterways we hunt as our themes are resonating. We're excited to announce our new podcast production, The Ethical Predator. This podcast highlights the thoughts of traditional bow owners put through the lens of the three pillars of the Code of Traditional Archery, and we'll be interviewing special guests and focused on their philosophy around the three pillars. Our first episode features Mr. Brian Burkhart, the current president of Compton Traditional Bow Hunters. Listen in as Brian shares his insights into traditional bow hunting. Look for it and this podcast, The Code of Traditional Archery, on Amazon, Audible, Spotify, or iTunes, or wherever you find your content. If you haven't already, check out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, a great organization, ensuring 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.