Bowhunting Follies

Originally Published in April/May 2019 Traditional Bowhunter Magazine

I am fortunate enough to have a brother who is 10 years my senior.  Chris is an accomplished and seasoned traditional bowhunter of over 30 years’ experience.   Comically, he gives a whole new meaning to bowhunting “the Hard Way”.  Humorously, on every hunting trip it is inevitable that he will burn his boots or socks while trying to dry them by the campfire in the evenings.  His driving is so erratic and distracted, that it is a slight miracle that no serious car accident has resulted.  He is often speeding and braking on twisty mountain gravel roads while keeping one eye off to the side spotting game.  My sister goes so far as to nickname him, “Crash”.  

Chris still has not been able to figure out how to sharpen his broadheads with the file he insists on using.  No two arrows in his quiver are identical.   His wood arrows have differing lengths, spines, point weights, and varying degrees of straightness.  The fletching on his homemade arrows are often left-wing and glued on with a right-wing jig.  Chris sometimes uses his pen knife to crudely create his point tapers.  You can also forget about any attention to grain or nock orientation, and I make it a habit not to stand next to him while he shoots.  His arrows fly to their mark usually with varying degrees of angle, sidestepping, wobble, and noise.  Despite all this, he is an amazing bow shot and hunts with the tenacity of a pitbull.  He never seems to have much problem killing game. 

Chris has been set on fire, fallen, smashed himself in the face, gotten lost, and been on the receiving end of many disasters by his own hand while hunting.  He has a most impressive track record of “incidents”. He always survives, mostly due to amazing luck, yet he refuses to learn from most of his mistakes.  I am not sure how many of you have known a fellow like this, but I bet everyone has a similar story or two in their own past.  Chris’s experiences are unbridled entertainment around the campfire, and he always leaves the listener shaking their head in disbelief. 

Regardless of all this, he’s a great brother and hunting companion.  Sit back and listen to a few of my recollections about hunting with Chris over the years and across America.    Sadly, you just can’t make this stuff up!

The following story is typical for Chris, and variations have occurred on a few occasions.  One day, Chris was clearing away branches from a log crossing over a creek.   He was moving quickly and pushing a particularly sturdy dead branch away from him by the top to clear his path, when he failed to consider what would happen if the branch snapped higher than he anticipated.  The remaining wood sprang backwards toward him. CRACK!  He later recounted that a bright flash of light illuminated his vision as the broken portion of stick smashed open a gash directly above his right eye.  Miraculously, he did no permanent eye damage or get knocked unconscious into the freezing water.  

Another time, at the end of a day long elk hunt, Chris realized he was not in possession of his tube style side quiver and all his arrows.  It would soon be dark and It was too late to backtrack and look for them.  He returned the following morning to all the places he had stopped, until he miraculously found the camo package at one of his stops.  Good thing he did not see any elk until he had an arrow!

Exactly one year later, Chris returned to the same area in Idaho.  Yup, you guessed it.  He “felt light” and found he again had left his quiver at one of his stops.   At least this time he had one arrow on the string and could backtrack that day to find the rest.  Again Chris? 

Chris’s boorish and uncouth field habits are so suspect that most will not be eager to share a car ride, let alone a tent or sleeping quarters with him.  Midway through another week-long hunt while a companion was away from camp, Chris decided to use their collapsible drinking water bucket to rinse out his underwear.  His rationale was, “It’s okay because he used it inside out”.  The owner of course did not think it was such a good idea!  Very heated discourse ensued over the next several days around camp.

We were speeding down the freeway on a mid-hunt comfort break another time, when we were passed by a large pickup truck whose driver was emphatically motioning to his roof.  Suddenly, Chris realized that he had put his bow on the roof when he returned from hunting.  I will never know how the bow stayed on that roof rack at 70 miles per hour.  Typical for Chris it did.  Somehow, he always comes through in relatively good shape.  

On an arduous backcountry hunt in the Colorado wilderness, we found ourselves far from medical attention about 8 miles back on foot. Chris marveled at the large bright reddish-orange colored mushrooms everywhere, and decided he wanted to eat one.   His rationale was, “Well, the elk seem to be eating them and they’re fine.”  It was all I could do to persuade him not to do it.  He even threatened to eat one when I wasn’t looking.  I have no doubt without my emphatic protests he’d have eaten one.  Returning to civilization, I looked them up and identified the shrooms as Amanita Muscaria — toxic and hallucinogenic.  I can just picture him stumbling around the woods, talking to invisible creatures and shouting at the trees. Sheesh! 

Sadly, this was not the only example of my brother attempting to eat something he finds in the wilds without doing his homework.  We were seeing abundant prickly pear cactus with bright red fruit on our first New Mexico mule deer hunting trip together.  Chris heard “somewhere” that they were safe to eat.  The Javelina were sure tearing them up, so he gave them a try not exactly knowing the “how”.   The spines made his shooting hand fingers so swollen afterwards, He was unable to shoot his bow accurately for several days.  

Speaking of arduous hunts to the backcountry, like most greenhorn bivy hunters to the wilderness, he attempted to carry WAY too much weight for the 3-mile hike into our hunting area at elevation.  Chris started out with a pack weighing over 80 pounds.  Halfway up the 26 switch-backs, it was necessary to bury a portion of “extra gear” just off the trail.  Somehow, He did not learn his lesson.  Despite my repeated warnings to “go light”, the feat was exactly repeated during the next two subsequent years to the same location.   

In the fading evening light on a hunt in a Northern Idaho forest one year, Chris got turned around.  He started to panic when his GPS did not immediately connect with the requisite satellites.  Unable to see the display clearly as he misplaced his reading glasses, he started to trot quicker over two ridgelines he suspected was in the direction of camp.  Blindly crashing through timber, over deadfall, and through brush he exhaustedly crested the last ridge in a soaking sweat.  Communicating with me via his radio, he instructed me to honk the rental vehicle’s horn three times to see how close he was.  I proceeded to honk several times.  The radio crackled with, “go ahead and honk the horn anytime you’re ready”.   Sleeping that night only under his emergency poncho, Chris spent a cold miserable night.  At first light he realized that he was about 50 feet from an access road.   He stumbled back to camp around lunchtime and lost a fine morning of hunting.  

After that incident, Chris decided that he would rely totally on his compass for navigation.  He proceeded to use a power drill to inlay a small compass into the riser of his custom bow.  Not realizing the proper drill bit and speed to use for such an application, the resulting wood tear-out and cracked riser had him ordering a new custom bow.

Home adventures are also abundant, though I will stick with hunting related stories here.  Our hero lives on a corner lot along a historic small town main street with houses all around.  Discovering a groundhog had taken up residence under his shed, he decided to dispatch it quietly with his bow.  Hanging above the hole along the side of the shed was his prized fishing kayak.  Flinching badly at release, the broadhead passed completely through both walls of the kayak with impressive penetration from the hunter head and wood arrow.  DOH!!!!!!

One year in a certain wildlife management area, he was savagely ravaged by chigger bites which painfully covered his entire lower extremities.  Overly paranoid the following year, he diligently doused his entire form in highly concentrated DEET spray during preparations for an early season hunt.  Unfortunately, he slightly miscalculated his application to the face, and inadvertently sprayed a stream of bug juice into both eyes and mouth.  Twenty minutes later, swollen and hoarse from the extreme burning and intense pain, he blearily recounted the taste as, “Having a little kick to it.”

There was also the “legendary bowfishing incident”.   Chris had a particularly successful outing one evening and harvested several large carp.  He made the decision to fertilize the garden, and dug several holes burying the fish.  Two days later he was horrified to learn his Chesapeake Bay retriever had dug up all the rotting fish and rolled around on them.  To his wife’s chagrin, this was discovered after the dog was allowed back into the house where he rolled around on the soft clean carpet. 

Roving and stump shooting also offer grand adventure for Chris.  One day he was leaving the deer hunting woods when he saw his truck in the distance.   He decided to “see how close I could come to it from here”.  Well you guessed it, he center-punched a judo head into the hood of his pickup truck.  On another clear beautiful day, he spied a white piece of trash about 70 yards out in the middle of the trail.  Amazingly, his arrows arched beautifully through the air and pierced the object completely.  Walking up with smug satisfaction, he immediately realized his skewered trophy had been a freshly used, heavily soiled, wad of toilet paper! “Now how do I clean this off?”  

Chris has a unique and entertaining talent for getting himself into these situations.  I bet we can all find a little bit of Chris in us from time to time.  I’m genuinely thankful to have such a colorful and understanding brother, who not only allows me to learn from his mistakes, but also to record them in print to share in the laughs.  There is a “special” angel looking out for him… one with a sadistic sense of humor.