About this exact time last year, I was out fishing in a river with my son and a friend of mine. We werent catching anything, so we were goofin off with the 22 and BB guns, shootin random lures and bobbers that were tangled in tree branches. Lots of fun if y'all haven't tried it. Well here come floating down the river a nice long branch that a beaver had made a healthy snack of. It was fairly straight, a few kinks, and about 2 inches wide. I think, man, bet I can make a bow outta that, so I real my rod in, tie a big snaggin trebble on an cast on top to bring it in. All the while my buddy is laughin at me beaver like habits of always eyeballin wood.
A few months later, I was having massive elbow pain from shooting bows all the time, and decided I need a lighter weight target shooting bow around a 30 #er. I grab that beaver stick and look at the back. All the teeth marks were there, but somehow beavers are very careful when eating bark, and didn't actually hurt the wood. I decide to leave the markings. Being no arborist, I decide this sapling looks an awful lot like ash and treat it as such. I heat treated the belly, and decided to leave the stave naturally deflexed. The bow came out a nice shooter, and I shot it allot.
Well one day a fellow post an add, saying he is needing a native style bow for a museum exhibit in North Carolina to represent bows that may have been used by the natives of lost tribes in the Yadkin Valley. Well, I reckoned this bow was about as native as it could get considering the history of it, and if I were a native, I would have dove into the water for the stave, seeing as it was already cut and debarked. Half the hard word done already right? So After some talking back and forth, the gentleman decided my bow would fit right in and that he would like my bow and an arrow I made of a shoot from a bush I found at a lake in the museum display.
They Finally got the exhibit up and running, and he just sent me a pic of the exhibit. I still have to make him a proper squirrel hide string for the bow, as the one on it is hemp, and not very authentic. Soon as I can get my butt out into the woods I will make good on that end of the deal. Anyways, here are some pics of the bow as I built and tillered it out. The handle had a section where a large knot made the bow kink there making the tiller look off, more than it really is. The limbs enter into it at different angles.
Here it is with an arrow I made in the museum. My arrow is the one with the tied on white fletching, Not the nice looking river cane with Cherokee fletching.
Sorry for the book I just wrote and all the pics, but I am excited and wanted to share.
