Primitive Archer

I am sure the man on here that might know this is Del.  He has a you tube channel that has a lot of info too with yew.  As for my anecdotal experiences with pacific yew.  Has been that it varies from stave to stave and tree to tree.  I’m sure this would be the same or similar with European yew.  Ring count for me is a bigger factor for yew.  The better bows I’ve made from yew have been those with higher ring count.  This is true for variety of bow builds.  I’m not saying that a decent cannot be made with yew with lower ring count but it’s my opinion that higher ring count is better.  Yew is magical stuff and quite different then really anything out there and hard to compare it with other woods.  It’s basically a natural composite.  The tension strong sap wood side and compression strong heartwood side.  Congratulations on your wood score.  You will have some good bows come from it and be surprised at how soft it is to work.  It’s softer but also springy wood.  Very cool stuff. 

That's looking awesome so far! Are there plans to add anything to the belly or is it just the moso bamboo? Nice work.

Thanks rob.  Ya it’s just the bamboo nothing on the belly.  It’s been heat treated like my other builds so it’s basically a tension monster.  I made one of these steam recurve selfbows earlier last year but it was only 30lbs.  Shot nice but very light.  I posted a short video last year on it.  Typically with my bamboo bows they were 5 piece builds so was testing out the recurves really.   I had been testing many methods to steam bend bamboo.  It’s sounds easy until you try it.   We think of bamboo as this magical grassy wood material that we imagine will bend however we want.  The fresh green or even recently green stuff bends like rubber but when it dries and hardens it’s a different story.  The bamboo moso pole that I use is the larger diameter stuff which enables me to get the wider limbs. 

Strange year for deer, ours have gone strictly nocturnal, I had 300 pictures of deer in a week on the trail camera I have over my tiny food plot, the same deer over and over, I suspect there were about 15-20 different deer on camera and every picture was nocturnal except one.  I haven't see a deer in almost 2 months and hunted hard several times a week, the season ends on Feb 10th. I am off to a peak of the rut hunt on a management area this afternoon, with a lower stock of deer meat in my freezer than I normally have, I put up my flintlock and went modern.

Earlier I found out that us old or disabled folk could get a permit to retrieve deer from Alabama management areas past the locked gates with a 4 wheeler. It was a long process but I have just such a permit in my hands now, being old (78), and somewhat disabled to the point that I can walk just fine but can't drag a deer two feet because of back issues.

The 4 wheeler permit has me hunting places I haven't been in at least 10 years, everything has changed with clear cutting and replanting, it is a 50 mile drive and I haven't been able to scout and relearn the land. I once knew this land like the back of my hand and will again before the deer season opens next year. This management area has 30K acres, I hunt about 1000 of these, they will lock the gates at the end of Feb but open them again when squirrel season opens next year which will plenty of time to scout before M/L season opens on Nov 18th.

I am constantly at war with squirrels around my house and kill every one I see to keep them from wrecking my blueberry crop later in the year. If I have the time, I dress them and put them in the freezer year round. If I shoot them up too bad I feed them to the red fox that hangs around my place. I caught one headed to my gas grill to chew on things yesterday, it saw me looking out the window and ran down in the woods about 25 yards away to feed on the abundant acorns, big mistake. I could only see the very top of her head. I have a Rem 541S 22 that I bought in 1974, it is a 22 version of a 700 Rem BDL and has a match barrel on it, I had the action glass bedded a while back. I keep it ready to rock and roll by the back door, the squirrel in in the freezer now.

I have another problem around the house, the migrating crows cluster in the huge oaks around my house at daylight starting in the early spring. Strangely, a group of crows is called a "murder" of crows, after being abruptly woken up at daylight for the last week by their incessant CAW, CAW, CAW, I was ready to murder some.

I do this every spring, I was once a serious groundhog and crow hunter and put a pile of them on the ground, for the last 10 years I don't try to kill them, I just convince them that they need a new daylight gathering place. Crows are smart enough to recognize a gun from a distance, if I whiz a 22 bullet by their head a time or two they won't be back and they tell all of their friends to stay away as well.

The murder gathered like they usually do this morning, I was sleeping so well when their racket woke me up with a start, time for a 22 bullet lesson.

When I opened the garage door most of the crows flew off, I could only see one in the top of a huge oak about 120 yards away, I  put my crosshairs about a foot over it and touched one off. Dang, it spread its wings, quivered and fell out of the tree, a head shot I guess. I have taken this shot a couple dozen times in the past and never hit anything, it wasn't this crows lucky day for sure.

I am going to retrieve this crow later and hang it up from one of the limbs overhanging the field as dire warning to any other crows that have thoughts about gathering outside my window at daylight in the future to sing "here comes the sun". I have hung dead crows up in the past around my garden, I have found that the crows do mourn their fallen comrades, this is one reason I quit trying to kill them.

That's looking awesome so far! Are there plans to add anything to the belly or is it just the moso bamboo? Nice work.

Yes it was won but haven't heard what he picked either, guess we will get a message if we need to ship 
 Pappy