After four or five seasons of hunting with the compound bow, I wanted to harvest a few deer with the ole stick n string aka recurve bow for the extra challenge.  I ordered a Fred Bear 65# draw weight Custom Kodiak Recurve Takedown and practiced with that bow until I was proficient shooting instinctive style; e.g., no sights or using the arrow as a sight aka gap shooting but purely instinctive shooting; looking at your target and drawing your bow back and as soon as you reached your anchor at full draw, the arrow was released.  Over the next few years, I harvested a total of seven (7) deer using traditional equipment, but I harvested most of them with a custom made Black Widow takedown recurve bow.  I started gap shooting in 1989 and missed 5 deer in one hunting season and it was time to hang the ole stick n string up and go back to hunting with technology!  I attribute the gap shooting problem to shooting tournaments in the NFAA with traditional equipment and had to shoot targets out to 60 to 80 yards, whereas shooting purely instinctive didn't work for me at the longer yardages.  Got to make excuses, right?

From the period between 1980 through 2000, I took few hunting pictures because of the size and weight of the Nikon F2 35mm camera and once the camera digital age came about, I took the little digital camera with me regularly and totally enjoy digital photography.

In the early 1980s, I hunted land adjacent the Pee Dee River, Blewett Falls Lake area Anson County, NC that was owned by the Dr. Davis estate, whereas Joel Price had a lease on much of the pastured land and allowed myself and our son to hunt there.  I did much scouting said land and located several well used deer crossings that bordered property that belonged to Fred Teal who had soybeans growing that year.  There was a small tributary stream that ran into the ole grist mill canal waterway and found a deer crossing that had a good sized poplar tree about 22 yards below and downwind from the crossing.  I carried a Baker Pro-Hunter platform stand and placed it about 20 feet up the large poplar tree and secured it in place and tethered it off with some rope where it wouldn't move much at all.  I used a pair of Bashlin pole climbers to get up and down the tree and I believe I had a knotted rope to aid in climbing the tree but not sure on that one.

I hunted that stand many times during the 1983 archery season and it was a good twenty minute plus walk from where I parked my ole 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne model car.  Deer were using the crossing regularly but mostly at night but I was persistent and didn't give up.  I remember one morning, the moon was full and I heard a deer walking through the woods and he came right up to my tree but I made a little noise and he walked off no doubt wondering what was going on.

The morning of the deer harvest, the temperature dropped down to the low 50s before daybreak and the previous days temperature was in the 80s so I was under dressed for the sudden drop in temperature.   It was very overcast and cloudy and I remember it was cold.  Right about daybreak, the sky began to clear quickly and I heard a deer walking pretty fast coming from my right which was where the large soybean field was located.  I stood up slowly and go ready for the approaching deer but couldn't see him through the woods until he got to the crossing.  The dry creek bed was about twenty feet across and the deer stopped and stuck his head out and looked up and down the crossing and then started to slowly walk across the dry sand bed.  I had the ole Fred Bear Custom Kodiak takedown bow ready with an arrow nocked and when I tried to pull back, I couldn't pull it and finally had to grit my teeth and muscle it back and the Buck was about to the other side of the crossing when I released an arrow.  I hit him a little far back and didn't hear him crashing into any of the underbrush as he exited the crossing which isn't a good sign.

I lowered my bow to the ground, put my pole climbers back on and went down the poplar tree and checked my arrow.  There was dark blood on the shaft and toward the fletch I could see stomach contents which is not a good sign either.  I walked a few yards into the heavy cover using the well worn deer trail and heard a deer snort running off and I decided to back off and hopefully give the deer time to die.  I decided to leave and went to Joel Price's home and called my hunting buddy Charles Wesley McKenzie in Rockingham, NC who owns deer hounds who worked second shift at the same place I did.  I got up with him and he drove down the old logging road within a 100 yards of where I was waiting for him.  He arrived about an hour later with one of his dogs named Maggie who he had a lease on her and within a couple minutes the dog was trailing the deer.  CW and the hound was in front of myself and I spotted the deer in a small gulley.  The deer had cut back from off the trail and was barely visible in a small ditch were he died.  I shot him too far back and the arrow hit a kidney or his liver, can't remember which and he didn't go but about 50 yards at the most.  Below pixs of my first deer with a recurve aka stick n string:

Check out the antique camouflage hunting pants pattern.

Hunting with traditional archery equipment; e.g., longbow or recurve shooting purely instinctive was a total pleasure being able to see the flight of your arrow.  It is wonderful seeing the place you want your arrow to hit, whether it is a target or deer, pull your bow string back touching your anchor and release the arrow to watch its flight and striking the place you are looking at.  Modern cam bows send an arrow so fast that it is hard to follow the flight of the arrow at shorter distances but being able to make a successful deer harvest is what it is all about regardless of the equipment used.  Some of the traditionalists go a little overboard in condemning modern technology, but if it works for you, that is fine!  Been there, done that.

The above is a copy and paste from my hunting pixs from the past page.

Web published by Bill aka Mickey Porter on 10-05-17.