I remember several posts about who bowhunts or rifle hunts and such but I was curious about how many of you bowhunt with traditional equipment and what do you shoot?

I shoot recurves and currently have a 55#@28 X-200 Martin that I bought because I couldn't shoot my prized possesion which is a 73# Brackenbury Drifter but I went out the other day and decided to see if my wrist would take it and I was able to shoot it for the first time in about 5 or 6 years and I'm actually drawing to 30" so I'm pulling between 79 and 83# depending on which figures you use to get the approximate poundage. Since I've been out of it for so long I've forgotten alot and have some questions for you guys that are up to date on the subject.

I've still got my first bow, a Fred Bear recurve rated at 45#, that I got when I was 13. I hunted for a few years with it but never was successful. I could consistantly group within 3" @ 25 yards with it, instinctively. I haven't hunted with a bow for many years tho, just not enough time :-(

one thing that blew me away is the price on this stuff now, I paid 450.00 for my Brackenbury in 89-90 and now they are 1200.00-1500.00 and there is a 24 month wait and if I want an extra set of limbs they are 425.00 which is just about what I paid for the whole thing.

I love to use my Bob Lee Recurve. But I also like my Trodishinal Osage, Black Locus, and Hickory, bows that I made.

Rod I was like you… I looked up the Bob Lee’s bows and after realizing what I had I was quite content.

do any of you guys remember something about subtracting 4" from the AMO length of the bow when ordering a new string? I had someone tell me this recently but I can't remember and the measured string length on both bows matches there AMO lengths so I can't decide if I need a 66" string for my Brack or a 62".

I shoot a Howett Hunter by Martin. My wife bought it for me back in the early 90s for 175.00 new, now they run upwards of 500.00.
There was a surge of archers going tradional in the late 90s and that is supply and demand at its finest. I started shooting tradional when the manufactures started pushing all the gadgets. I just could not stand all the marketing.

Good Post, Rod. Brings back tons of memories. My dad taught us all archery at an early age. I just went and dug out my Bear Kodiak Special, "Glass Powered" (it says so right on the bow.) That was new technology back then. It is a 69" and 34# and the string is EXACTLY 4 inches shorter than the bow length around the curves.

My dad even made the bow strings and we had ten Bitzenberger jigs for fletching our own arrows: 4 straight ones and six helical right hand twist (you know that on each wing on the turkey the feathers are curved either right or left by God depending on the right or left wing and therefore you need to use the proper jig when gluin' em on your arrows.

We made our own flu flu's also - arrows that don't go very far due to the drag on the extra large feathers for shooting squirrels and such out of trees and birds out of the air. We made giant cardboard frisbees with a large triangular section that stood up in the middle for a better target and sailed them through the air to shoot at with the flu flu's. Talk about a rush when you hit that airborne target!

I have killed lots of small stuff...marmots, porcupines, even a rattlesnake that is still a hatband on one of my old cowboy hats. I shot a crow through his wishbone as he sat looking at me by a dumpster at 40 yards - a lucky shot I'm sure. Oh yeah...I have two cow elk kills also.

I was never totally comfortable with the switch over to a compound so I cheated in the 90's and I bought an Oneida Eagle bow, which gives the best of both worlds IMO as it has the recurve limbs plus two cams and has the looks of a recurve that is turbo-charged and also has the 50% let-off that a compound does. Due to my two torn rotator cuffs I can no longer shoot a recurve bow. I shoot my Eagle almost every day to keep in shape...if I go too long without shooting it I have to go back to the weights to work back up to it.

Don't hold this against me but this year I am hunting archery elk and the season opened a week ago today but I have not yet been out...too busy. I'm sure I will have some time later this month...

There is nothing else like the feeling you get stump shooting and hunting with traditional archery gear! The prices of bows have sky rocketed lately but I have had great luck buying used bows at reasonable prices. My favorite is an old 68# Bear Kodiak Hunter that was made the same year I was. My first game animal taken with a bow was a rabbit on the run when I was about 11 years old and its still one of the best shots I've ever made. Back then I would sneak my dads Browning Nomad Stalker out of the house without him knowing. It was a big improvement over my fiberglass bows. My brother always shot compounds until he tagged along on a hunt with me a couple years ago in Colorado. I got him stump shooting with my 55# Martin Super Diablo recurve and he was hooked. When we got back to town at the end of the week we stopped at a traditional archery shop. He bought a longbow and has not used "training wheels" since.

Do we drive to the store or ride a horse or walk? Does anybody use a scope on their guns? Does our favorite handgun use self-contained cartridges or is it a traditional flintlock muzzle loading pistol or better yet is it a wheel-lock?

A bowhunter using "training wheels" is for the most part facing a greater challenge than using a SBH with iron sights.

Us HUNTERS need to join ranks these days, not start fights 'twixt us.

I have to admit "training wheels" was funny. I think its all in good fun.

Thats just been an ongoing joke with my brother and I since he switched to traditional. It was not meant as an insult to anyone. There has always been good natured ribbing between hunters over the types of weapons they hunt with. My friends always tease me for picking weapons that limit my effective range which often results in me passing up shots due to range and going home empty handed while they fill their tags. I have no problem with any type of legal weapon anyone chooses to hunt with.

10-4

Man, Browning Nomad Stalker--had 1 of those years ago back in MD and shot my 1st deer with it out here in CO west of the USAFA when i was stationed there '77-82.

I now have and am hunting with my old 60# HoyPS bow ( bet u don't know what that 1 is). It's actually an old Hoyt Huntmaster that delaminated on me while hunting 1 day years ago. I called Hoyt and they didn't have any limbs for it anymore, but they told me to call PSE and they might. Sure enuf they both marketed a generic takedown--the Hoyt Huntmaster and the PSE Blackhawk that used the same limbs (probably made in Korea). Now i still use it hunting elk/small game with a Hoyt riser and PSE limbs. I have several recurves and killed 2 bull elk and maybe 10 deer with them over the years now. I'm actrually getting bacxk into it myself. Always do go after carp in the spring/summer after coyote season.

Geez Gregg, i've been trying to get a marmot with mine just a couple weeks ago and they jumped the string on every shot. How did u do it?

Going up for elk/small game again this Thur. with my buddies up in the CO State Forest near Walden.

Just last week buddy Mitch and i were out trying to shoot some prairie dogs with our compounds. Mitch made a great 37-yd. shot using a homemade blunt tip i came up with. We use the el cheapo Wal-Mart carbons for this to minimize expense from lost arrows. Mitch hit the mound in front of the dogs head and it went thru and hit it in the head killing it from blunt trauma--what a shot!

This thread's got me all excited again--can't wait now!

Steve, You speak of home made blunts: we used to use 38 special cases on our wood shafts!

If my memory serves correctly, back then we used to go deer hunting up near Cucharas Pass and we hunted near timberline where there were rockslides. In Colorado if you find rockslides you usually find marmots. Back then there weren't a lot of hikers running around in the hills and the marmots were maybe dumber. But they used to let us shoot at them fairly regularly at 20-30 yards. Oh... not to say we didn't sacrifice a "few" arrows (when you miss your target that is sitting in a rockslide, oh well...) but we did nail one every so aften. I remember I got two on one trip but I had brought along a bunch of extra arrows. They were wood arrows back in those days. "Microflite" arrows (new technology fibergass arrows) had just come out then but they were too expensive to "waste" on such foolish stuff. We would tie big rubber bands on our bowstrings for cheap "string silencers." As a matter of fact when I dug out my Kodiak Special it still had the rubber bands on it!

Whenever we came upon a porcupine in the woods if the day was slow we would shoot it and I remember one time I put a wood arrow into a big one and he twisted and broke my arrow shaft!

I'm glad this post turned out to be such a hit with you guys. I have to admit after several years of not being able to shoot my recurves I'm having a blast. I waited too long to bowhunt this season but next year I might bowhunt for deer but the deer hunting in this area isn't the greatest but I'd really like to get out for elk since we have alot more of them and even gun hunting for Roosevelts around here is a short range game unless you shoot across canyons. I've taken some blacktails, squirrels and grouse with my recurves and I've chased bears and turkeys but never got a shot. I really used to like going out in the spring time and just walking around with my bow and stump shooting and looking for sheds but I haven't done that in close to 15 years but I think that will change and the great thing is they finally changed the laws in Oregon a few years back so I can also carry my sidearm. It used to be you couldn't carry a sidearm while bowhunting but once they stopped dogs and baiting for bears and cats they started having alot of problems with run ins especially with cats.

Keep 'em coming Rod.

Archery season just started here so my son and I hit the woods. We got a late start and I didn't count on seeing any deer or elk but we got our limit of grouse. Here was the first one of the day. I used my 1969 68# Bear Kodiak Hunter.

very cool and looks like a happy hunting partner.

Yeah, it does. Saw some last week up high but couldn't even get close to them--they get wary out here in some places.

Nice setup PAB!!

Hey Gregg--Cuchara Pass is right around me down here close to Pueblo.

alright I'm posting another thread kinda along this line but I'll put it in the off topic section.

Good idea Rod.

Hey Pab, r u shooting wood arrows out of your recurve?

I just started shooting Gold Tip carbons in this bow. I have shot cedar arrows for years but have a hard time getting them heavy enough to shoot from my heavier bows. I like an arrow thats 10-12 grains per pound of draw weight. With the Gold Tip weight system I was able to get 750 gr arrows that fly like darts with this bow. I'll still shoot wood arrows in my lighter bows but so far I have been very impressed with carbons. I would like to try some heavier hardwood shafts or the new Woody Weights to get some heavier wood arrows.

do you guys subscribe to Traditional Bowhunter?

I've bought it off the shelf since about '94. I've missed a copy here and there but have most of them from then on. Its the best archery magazine out there IMO, traditional or not. Primitive Archer is a good magazine focused more on self bows.

If your interested in a great traditional archery video, check out Primal Dreams. You can watch a trailer for it on the link below. Its not your typical hunting video and has only a few kill shots, but it captures the "feeling" of the hunt more than any other video I have watched.

http://brothersofthebow.com/html/primaldreams.html

I've got Traditional Harvests and Traditional Harvests II both are earlier Fred Eichler projects but they are both good.

I use to...

My first bow was a 45lb Bear Grizzly. I no longer have the bow but I wish I still did. I have been hunting with compounds for the last 12 years,but I would like to get back to the basics. I cannot belive how the price of even the production recurves have went up.

I have a 60" Howatt Coranado 50# and a Browning Mirage 33. I started with a one piece Telum recurve at about 5 yrs. old. It runs very deep in the family. Dad and my brother are long bow shooters and I switch back and forth. Dad has a Mtn. goat in the books, but I never have got anything measured to go in the books.

I made selfbows, longbows and recurvesfor a few years and hunted with them pretty much excluseively. Dont have as much time now so Ive laid off the bowmaking, but I still hunt with a recurve. I think bowhunting and handgun hunting have alot of similarities.

I made the bow and arrows I shot this pig with.

very cool FLS, I thought about getting one of the kits and trying to build a recurve but I'm not much with wood working and the tinkering on guns has kind of absorbed any extra time I have.

Nice work FLS!

I like em all,dosent matter, traditional Rabbits compound deer and foam critters.crossbows wife uses one.I teach 4 h archery and tell our kids that it dosent matter what you use as long as you have fun.