Bowhunting 101: Boys With Bows… And Arrows

I have recently experienced a curious phenomenon. Since I have retired, my wife is getting more and more supportive of my outdoor sports activities. With each passing week, she encourages me to go fishing, hunting, camping, etc. at every opportunity. I thought maybe it was just my imagination, so, just testing, I said one day, “I have been thinking about going bear hunting with a pocket knife this weekend.”

She asked how long I would be gone.

“Really?” I said to myself. “That’s all you want to know?”

Ducky Jones, my lifelong friend with whom I grew up, was over the other day, and as we sat in the den talking, he suggested I take up bowhunting. My wife, listening from the kitchen, gasped in delight. He told me it would significantly increase the number of deer hunting days, and it was much more challenging than gun hunting.  The whole time we were talking, my wife was yelling, “That sounds like fun, honey!”

“What a wonderful idea!” 

“That’s sounds so exciting, it almost makes me want to go!”

I was cringing. “I’ll tell you where you can go…”(I said to myself). 

Anyway, Ducky began to list the equipment I would need. Compound bow, bladed arrows, practice target, target arrows, tree climbing sticks, stand, rangefinder, bowhunting techniques CD, etc. etc. I was doing some calculations in my head and quickly determined that venison taken by bow and arrow would cost approximately $32 a pound. 

When I told Ducky that it sounded a little too expensive for my blood, my wife burst into tears, ran into the den and sobbed, “We can take a second mortgage!”

I ignored her. As she sniffled back to the bedroom to plan how not to speak to me for the next three days, Ducky asked, “Do you remember when we used to go bowhunting?”

Even though we were born shortly after the dinosaurs became extinct, I remembered our preteen excursions all too well. We sat by the fire and reminisced.

Once, a bunch of us 10 or so year olds went to the Canyon on a grand hunting expedition. It was actually a gravel excavation pit that juxtaposed the plateau upon which our little community sat, and beyond it the land dropped off rapidly to the northern part of the main city. You could see forever up there. It had the grandeur required of young explorers and frontiersmen, and it was the prefect place for our hunting strategy that day. 

Our quarry that Autumn afternoon was the tens of thousands of migrating blackbirds that fly in massive flocks that time of year. Our weapons were bows and arrows. We weren’t old enough for real guns, and air rifles weren’t powerful enough, but archery was good enough for the Indians, so it was good enough for us. The bows were a motley lot. Some were store bought plastics which you could pick up for the price of  a few well-mown lawns. Some were made by older brothers in shop class. One, as I recall, was a real adult hunting weapon which Ronnie had “borrowed” from his father. It was taller than he was and must have had about an 80-lb. pull, for Ronnie could only move the string about 2 inches. But it was impressive, and when you’re 10 years old, impressive is what you go for. 

There were seven or eight of us, and we lined up on the uppermost bluff of the gravel… I mean Canyon… and waited as the huge flocks of raucous birds neared the edge where we stood. Someone would count to three, and we would fire in unison at about a 45 degree angle. To our great surprise, the stupid birds simply moved apart as our arrows reached their level and passed harmlessly through the resulting hold in the black cloud.

Since most of us had only one or two functioning arrows anyway, we had to climb down the nearly vertical 40-foot Canyon wall, go to the middle of the pit… I mean Canyon… and pick up our projectiles. Then we had to climb all the way back to the rim. After nine or 10 times, it slowly dawned of us that the birds were going to split up every time we fired at them. 

As we sat on the edge of the cliff, nearing arrow retrieval exhaustion, some genius said, “If we shoot straight up…(pant)…before the birds get here…(wheeze)… by the time they pass over us… (gasp)… the arrows will be coming down on them… (puff)… and they won’t see them…”

Each little preadolescent mind absorbed this idea through a haze of oxygen deprivation and unanimously determined it to be a brilliant concept.

As the next wave of blackbirds approached, we drew taut our bowstrings (except Ronnie, who was barely able to move his), aimed straight up and calculated an algebraic equation involving the speed, altitude and distance of the flock and the trajectory and velocity of the target arrows so as to fire at precisely the correct moment. (Actually, someone just yelled “NOW!”) We released our arrows more or less in unison. Miraculously, the arrows slowed, reached their pinnacle, turned and began to fall back earthward precisely as the great mass of birds flew underneath them. 

We had failed to factor into the theorem that if blackbirds could see down, they could also see up. The inevitable holes in the flock opened up again, the arrows went harmlessly through. Our disappointment was short-lived though, as it began to occur to us that we now have seven or so very sharp, accelerating feathered missiles raining straight down upon us. Inside each little head, what passed for a brain strained mightily to connect synapses and form a complete thought. None came.

Being of simple mind, we gave up trying to comprehend and turned ourselves over to primitive instinct. Years later, my grandmother would succinctly lace that feeling into poetic form: “When in danger, fear or doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!”

It was as if some great comedic deity had kicked over an ant bed. There was lots of scurrying around, but no one actually went anywhere.

This is, except Leonard, the more intelligent of our group, who chose to run in a straight line. Unfortunately, it was over the cliff. For me, the space-time continuum slowed to a crawl, as it has often done in my life during times of crisis, so I can distinctly remember with vivid clarity portions of that disturbing scene. I know I probably watched too many cartoons as a kid, but I swear he actually hovered in mid-air for a minute, legs churning, before he plummeted out of sight.

And I saw Ronnie run directly into a rather large dead oak tree. I never understood that. It was as if he had no inkling that it was there. Or he had gone suddenly blind. Ricky’s knees gave way, and he just stat down in place, quivering. Then he did something strange. He covered his ears. I never understood that either. Granted, the air was rent with screeches and shrieks, most calling on Mama or God. But even covered ears could discern the ‘thunk’ of decending arrows burying themselves in the ground all around us, seconds apart. It seemed like hours. 

Afterwards, Leonard, proudly displaying bloody contusions, ascended the cliff. Ronnie slowly regained groggy consciousness. Ricky babbled unintelligibly for a while, then his eyes became unglazed and he become coherent. We all just sat there, looking in amazement at the proximity of the arrows, as straight as little tombstones. Then someone said, “Hey, let’s do that again!” And we all knew we would.

After Ducky’s visit, I decided to give my wife a break and went to the sporting good store, just to price some bows and arrows. She mouthed a silent “Thank You” as I went out the door. After confirming my earlier suspicions about the price of that stuff, I ended up with a spool of monofilament. While standing in the check-out line, I overheard a young married couple in front of me talking about their kids. They were half-bemoaning, half-laughing about the dumb, dangerous antics of their children. They wondered aloud how those youngsters would survive to adulthood, given their recklessness and seeming lack of intelligence.

I was appalled at the examples they gave of their offspring’s idiocy. I said, “Guys, guys, guys… that stuff isn’t stupid, and your kids aren’t ignorant. As a matter of fact, they’re downright gifted.”