Primitive Archer

After a very strange deer hunting year with acorns so thick they were touching on the ground after they fell out of the tree and the deer going nocturnal in mid November, I got a doe in the hollow below my house on Saturday. With 3 days left in the season and two empty shelves in my freezer I went modern and full on Ghillie suit. I am a very experienced deer hunter, in spite of this I hunted hard and had not seen a deer in two months.

The wind was right as was the moon phase for an afternoon hunt so I gave it one more try and got lucky, finally.

I used my new 3K# deer winch and a Craftsman cordless drill for power to pull the deer across the hollow, across the creek and up the hill to an old logging road where I could get to it with my 4 wheeler. This is a very deep, steep hollow. My 88 TRX model wheel drive Honda couldn't make it up the steepest part of the hill pulling the deer, its turf like tires couldn't get a grip on the powdery forest floor a would just spin. Fortunately my neighbor was home and has a monster 4X4 quad, he came over and helped me get the deer out with his machine.

I put down 4mil plastic that I get shipped for free from Home Depot, I get 10X100ft rolls, they have 20X100ft rolls that would be better on your 40X40 plot.  It is hard to keep down and will come up like a sail when you first put it down if it isn't anchored or weighted down well/ I have collected a lot of used metal T posts over the years and use them to hold the edge of the plastic down along with huge staples I make out of grape arbor wire. Even with all of that I scatter about a dozen gallon plastic water filed jugs around to make sure the wind doesn't pick up the plastic. I burn holes for things like beans and okra with a propane torch, I cut about a foot diameter hole for the tomatoes and squash with a box cutter. I put newspaper on the ground around the tomato plants to act as mulch to keep the weeds from coming up.



After I get the plastic down I go over it with a turning fork and punch thousands of holes in it randomly to let the rain flow through. I usually get two years out of the plastic, sometimes three if a shady plant it planted in it

Lately I have been mixing landscape fabric with the plastic because of the scorching summers we have had lately, the plastic may get the ground so hot that the plant seeds of some varieties have trouble germinating. Tomatoes, squash and okra don't mind the heat, beans don't like it. I have found I get a bigger bean crop if I put a strip of landscape fabric under my trellises to plant my beans through. I grow all of my squash, tomatoes and cucumbers from plants instead of seeds. I start the plants I March. The plastic in the picture is 2 or 3 years old, I pull it up before planting my winter garden, spread the dirt side up to let it dry and fold it up for future use. I try to use it as long as it will stay together. If I decide to plant something different through it that doesn't match the cut holes, I fill the holes with squares of newspaper once it is on the ground and cut the new holes that I need for the different crop.   



Delicate plants like spinach have to have a bed of landscape fabric, the seeds won't germinate in hot ground. There is cheap landscape fabric that I use for beans and last one year and there is commercial grade that never rots that I got from my sister-in-law that I use year after year for my spinach. Spinach can't compete with the rampant weeds that come up in my garden from years of manure application.

Spinach;



 

 

Been working on a set and got the atlatl roughed out enough to start throwing.

My spears/darts are 7' long before I add 2' foreshafts.

The spears are bamboo I can source by roadsides. No rivercane anywhere near me.
This bamboo is quite tapered. Over that 7' they are about ⅜" at the nock end and about ⅞" at the point end where the foreshaft socket is.

Throwing the spears without foreshafts they are badly nose diving and flying point left. Now I don't know weather this is my technique or the equipment.  A really weak underpowered throw seems to fly better.

Could these big heavy bamboo spears really be underspined? How can I correct this and get them flying straighter? Scrape the front end to try and get the front more flexible?

Oh, and my throwing forearm is really feeling it. The muscle on the top of the forearm is seriously tense and strained. Loss of grip strength.

Quote from: superdav95 on February 08, 2026, 12:07:08 pm

.  Right now the flexion of the shaft measures .525” on my little home made spine tester which put it’s around 50lbs. 

that deflection is with a 2 lb weight?

where does the 50 come from?

Might be worth reading this, as there are two very different ways of "measuring" spine.
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2017/10/spine-measurement.html
Del

Kevin, North Carolina is the capital of sweet potatoes so you could probably buy them cheaper than you could grow them.